There are just too many of them.
At nearly 700, the number of state commissions and boards in Massachusetts far exceeds the number in states of similar size. Four states — Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, and Indiana — have only one-third as many.
Massachusetts has a Boxers’ Fund Board; it has a commission to plan the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower landing; it has separate housing authorities in scores of municipalities. And, as revealed in a Globe story by Todd Wallack on Monday, many state commissions and boards haven’t met in years or are riddled with vacancies: one-third of the total number of board seats listed on the governor’s website are unfilled or held by “holdover” members, whose terms have expired but remain on the board because a replacement hasn’t been named. Some are moribund in an all-too-literal sense: A dead person is listed as a member of the African-American Advisory Commission.
The idea of commissions tackling important issues makes sense in principle, but having too many of them only undermines their collective purpose. The clutter of commissions — effective and enervated alike — has the unintended consequence of diluting the talent pool for all of them. The sheer number of commissions has also created an unworkable bureaucratic burden — vacancies for various boards are too difficult to track and effectively fill. Making matters worse, Massachusetts has no mechanism to review and abolish boards and commissions that are plainly unnecessary, have served their purpose, or could be combined with other boards to avoid redundancy.
Speaking of redundancy, this is not the first time that the issue of zombie boards and committees has been exposed. A Globe story first pointed to the scope of the problem in the spring of 2014. Soon after, the Senate examined boards and commissions’ activities and produced a report with several recommendations to identify entities to be dissolved or “sunsetted.” The report also supported the creation of — wait for it — a new commission to review and sunset useless state boards and committees. (The idea went nowhere.)
Some boards and commissions do provide a real public service, offering a means for oversight, citizen participation, and transparency in state government. But commissions can also be incubators for corruption and government ineptitude, which is especially likely with obscure boards that meet (or don’t) far under the radar. Consider the Chelsea Housing Board, whose former director was sent to prison for inflating his salary — a crime that went undetected by the authority’s board.
State Senator Cynthia Creem filed a bill in the last session to modernize procedures for boards and commissions, which she refiled this session. (She also filed a bill reviving the commission to study commissions.) Creem’s proposal would automatically dissolve any special boards and commissions created to study or investigate a specific matter within 60 days of issuing their final report. Her bill would also address the backlog of vacancies by allowing individuals who meet only some of the requirements to join.
That last provision is unnecessary: If the state is having problems finding qualified board members, it’s an indication that the commission itself needs to be reviewed, not that standards should be lowered. And to the extent that vacancies happen because qualified people are stretched too thin, winnowing the number of boards is the better approach. After all, if the Pilgrims got to Plymouth without convening a commission first, the state can probably celebrate the anniversary without one either.