![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781450772_337_SAC_0056_Capitol_HA_260506.JPG\" "\\"The")
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The California state Capitol building seen from a drone on Thursday, April 30, 2026.<\/p>\n
HECTOR AMEZCUA<\/p>\n
hamezcua@sacbee.com<\/p>\n
We need to stop treating California constitutional offices as taxpayer-funded resting spots for termed-out politicians. At the top of the chopping block should be the insurance commissioner, superintendent of public instruction, the Board of Equalization, and the most glaringly redundant position of them all, the lieutenant governor.<\/p>\n
Being lieutenant governor of California offers so little political capital that it is viewed as an obstacle to actual ambition.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s such a wasted position that in 2009, John Garamendi chose to be one of 435 members of Congress<\/a> rather than remaining in the job.<\/p>\n Gov. Gavin Newsom spent eight years in the position and famously said: \u201cIt\u2019s not a good use of time. There\u2019s no responsibility. It\u2019s just not a job.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n But if the lieutenant governor\u2019s office suffers from a lack of purpose, the Board of Equalization suffers from a lack of power.<\/p>\n Once a regulatory juggernaut that collected a third of the state\u2019s tax revenue, the BOE was gutted nearly a decade ago following an authoritative state audit that exposed widespread nepotism, corruption, and the misuse of public funds by elected board members. The agency was stripped of 90% of its duties<\/a>.<\/p>\n In response, the Legislature created two new departments reporting directly to the governor to collect sales taxes and handle taxpayer appeals. What was left of BOE is now a hollowed-out shell.<\/p>\n Before the 2017 overhaul, the board commanded over 4,800 employees and managed roughly $60 billion in annual tax revenue. Overnight, it was slashed to a fraction of its size, stripped of its sales, fuel, and tobacco tax responsibilities, and left with a few hundred staff members whose primary job is overseeing county assessors.<\/p>\n Even Betty Yee, a former BOE member and state controller, has publicly questioned the board\u2019s ongoing relevance, advocating for its outright abolition<\/a>. Yet, because dismantling a constitutional office requires going to the voters, lawmakers have chosen to leave the empty shell intact. It\u2019s a taxpayer-funded holding pen for legislators searching for their next political landing pad.<\/p>\n Any arguments for keeping these redundant positions are illusory.<\/p>\n The insurance commissioner\u2019s role is heavily influenced by millions of dollars in campaign spending from the very industries it is supposed to regulate. Meanwhile, the superintendent of public instruction is a structurally weak position, constantly trapped in a turf war with the governor-appointed State Board of Education and the state secretary of education. Newsom has asked the Legislature<\/a> to shift authority of the California Department of Education to the governor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n Most voters have no idea who these officials are, what they do, or how to accurately judge their performance. In a properly functioning executive branch, these technical, regulatory roles would be appointed by the governor, ensuring a streamlined chain of command and clear accountability when things go wrong.<\/p>\n California faces recurring, massive structural deficits and a convoluted state bureaucracy. Asking voters to choose a team of hyper-specialized, down-ballot executives isn\u2019t democracy\u2014it\u2019s a distraction. It is time for California to grow up and eliminate the offices that our own politicians admit are a waste of time.<\/p>\n Matt Rexroad is an attorney, political consultant and certified fraud examiner.<\/p>\n Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The California state Capitol building seen from a drone on Thursday, April 30, 2026. HECTOR AMEZCUA hamezcua@sacbee.com We…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-360435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}