It’s not so much in monetary terms that a Louisiana rife with commissions
and boards acts as a drain on the state, but in the inefficiency that this
condition brings to policy-making for which the citizenry pays.
This year’s annual report
on the number of boards and commissions not in and of themselves a separate
state agency by the Legislative Auditor reveals nearly 500 of them. The law
also requires computing the costs of personnel serving on these (salaries, per diem payments, and travel expenses),
which is at the least approaching $5 million. Note that this does include the
overall expenses of these, which can be considerably higher but most of which would
be spent by other agencies if that function needs to be performed, nor costs of
staff, which also would have to be paid for by another agency if it performed
that function, or already is as many of these bodies have minor administrative
assistance from personnel on loan from other agencies.
The member personnel expenses can be deceiving somewhat. For example,
the Louisiana Developmental Disabilities
Council is required by federal law and spending on this category is paid
for by federal funding, so the state does not have the option to not have it
and does not pay state funds for these kinds of expenditures. But perusing the
list of all of them brings considerable questioning into the utility of many of
these entities, which by their abolishment or consolidation into another agency
would save on these kinds of expenses.
A similarly-situated state Alabama, by contrast, only has about 350 and
the equivalent of some of these exist elsewhere in Louisiana government (for
example, each of its state universities has its own board of trustees, whereas
in Louisiana all public universities are under the authority of an agency which
does not count under the audit, the Louisiana Board of Regents). The multiplicity
of these in Louisiana might be attributed to a plethora of local governments
besides municipalities, parishes, and school districts, but, in fact, Louisiana
interestingly is on the low end of states in terms of its propensity
to create local governments. It has the seventh fewest total units, and the
fifth fewest special districts, whose presence often requires a board or
commission to govern them. Alabama has over five times the number of special
districts as does Louisiana.
Instead, Louisiana has a bad tendency to parcel out very narrow
functions, both in scope and geography, and set up some kind of body to advise
and even to govern in this thin slice of policy. Hyper-politicization explains
why: executives or legislators can get these created and have appointive power
to them, and then use them as tools of political patronage to win supporters’
votes but, more importantly, their campaign donations.
Yet it’s not really the personnel expenses that are the largest cost of
this fragmentation. By splicing out small bits of power in all sorts of directions,
it creates difficulty in coordination and invites working to cross-purposes,
driving up the costs of resources to make and implement policy in ways that
cannot be estimated, but which likely are far higher than the actual personnel
costs.
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