State Pares Outdated Boards, Committees Panels To Oversee Shorthand Reporters, Sea Urchin Harvesters Are No More

Washington state has committees to fine funeral homes, register sports agents and tell the state how to spend money on athletic fields. Legislators even have one committee just to design others. It’s called the Committee on Committees.

But these days, government committees, oversight boards, review panels and advisory groups are about as passe as the Warren Commission.

So lawmakers are trying to stamp them out. In the past five years, Washington pared the number of state boards and committees by 33 percent - from 569 in 1993 to 381 today. Next year, Gov. Gary Locke hopes to chuck 36 more.

Once a symbol of government inclusion, even progovernment politicians now use committees as metaphors for bureaucratic inefficiency. In his 1997 inaugural address, Locke said, “Everyone in state government will be held accountable for achieving results - not for convening meetings, creating commissions or following reams of clumsy regulations.”

It’s part of the run-government-like-a-business ‘90s.

“Who needs five committees to review something?” asked Howard Moyas, with the Council of State Governments in Lexington, Ky. “There are committees … and there are committees.”

As recently as 1994, Washington had a state advisory board for shorthand reporters, and two separate licensing commissions for people harvesting sea urchins and sea cucumbers.

Among those Locke hopes to eliminate: the panel that registers sports agents (only eight are registered statewide), one that oversees non-bank-employed debt adjusters, and fishing committees called The Advisory Review Boards for Puget Sound Crab, Trawl Groundfish, Herring and Commercial Ocean Pink Shrimp.

The cuts are part symbolic, part practical. Some committees marked for dissolution overlap with others, or have outlived their usefulness. Many no longer even meet, but are still recognized by state law. A tax advisory council still on the books hasn’t convened since 1982.

“I don’t think there are actually groups who still get together but don’t know why they’re getting together or anything like that,” said Fred Hellberg, who put together Locke’s list.

But, Hellberg said, chuckling, “When faced with termination, some (dormant) boards do start meeting again.”

One panel created in the 1930s to study building a waterway from Puget Sound to the ocean hadn’t met in years until lawmakers recommended eliminating it. Suddenly, committee members started meeting again, Hellberg said.

Other committees die hard.

Funeral directors and cemetery owners are fighting Locke’s call to regulate them with one board instead of two. It’s the third time the state has tried merging the Cemetery Board with the Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers.

Each time, the death industry rises up.

“The state’s proposal is based on public perception that the industry is one,” said Lola Franklin, of the Funeral Director’s Association. “But the public perceives a hospital as one entity, too, and physicians, X-ray technicians and nurses all have different commissions.”

In a joint board, cemeterians and funeral directors would sit in judgment of each other, which scares both. “We are, of course, both dealing with dead bodies,” said Jim Noel, a Tacoma funeral director. “But there are important technical differences, too.”

Locke’s committee-carving plans are more about streamlining government, than saving money. Hellberg said savings would likely be “in the thousands, rather than the hundreds of thousands.”

One reason is that most easy trimming was done under former Gov. Mike Lowry, whose staff estimated in 1995 that his proposed committee cuts would save $785,000.

Among Lowry’s streamlining efforts: elimination of the Commission for Efficiency and Accountability in Government.

This sidebar appeared with the story: Committee report The number of state boards and committees has been trimmed by 33 percent in the past five years: 1993 total 569 1998 total 381 On the block 36