Stacking the climate board

The California Air Resources Board backloads its exit dates to keep current appointees in place.

When the next governor is sworn in January, he will have the opportunity to shape policy by filling the many state boards and commissions with his appointees — except, apparently, to the powerful agency charged with overseeing California’s ambitious climate change program.

Last week the California Air Resources Board approved a plan to set staggered sixyear terms for the board’s 14 voting members, 12 of whom are subject to gubernatorial appointment. The terms were required by a bill passed by the Legislature in 2016.

Previously, board members were all atwill appointments who could have been replaced at any time — or as often happened, remain on the board for years and years. Now, members will serve fixed terms and can’t be replaced until their term is up. And under the distinctly backloaded schedule adopted by the board, most of governor’s appointees won’t come up for review until December 2020 and December 2022.

That means Gov. Jerry Brown’s imprint on the board will continue long after he leaves office and the next governor — Democrat Gavin Newsom or Republican John Cox — probably won’t be able to appoint a majority of the board’s leadership until the end of his first term in office.

Critics of the plan argue the arrangement ties the next governor’s hands. There would have been an outcry if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or other former governors had stacked the board on their way out.

Even worse, though, was the secretive way the Air Resource Board handled the change. Board members had the plan for phasing in the new terms for nearly two weeks, yet the agency refused to make the details public on its website until a few hours before the vote. That left little opportunity for advocacy groups to weigh in.

Yet one of the reasons lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 197 in 2016 to overhaul the board was to give lawmakers and the public more say over this powerful panel, which sets environmental policies that often become the template for the nation. The measure allowed the governor to continue filling most of the seats on the board, but imposed six-year terms to give the Legislature some oversight when seats came up for review and confirmation.

Board members and staff said the decision on how to phase in the terms was sensitive because the members were being asked to vote on their own seats. Yet that is exactly why the board should have acted with transparency and openness to public input. It did not.