A few weeks ago, without much fanfare, Robert Steinberg was reappointed to the Commission on Health and Safety and Workers' Compensation. Mr. Steinberg has been a member of the Commission from its inception. He is an attorney who represents injured workers in asbestos litigation and he is a trial lawyer. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but he is an employer appointment of Speaker Fabian Nuñez.

Mr. Steinberg will be on the Commission until at least 2009, dashing the business community's faint hopes that an employer representative who reflects their concerns and expectations would be appointed to the Commission by the speaker.

Therein lies the problem. The California Labor Federation or the California Applicants' Attorneys Association or the law firm of Green and Azevedo, which represents the CAAA and workers' compensation claimants, are employers. So is the California Medical Association, numerous chiropractic clinics, outpatient surgery centers, diagnostic imaging groups or, for that matter, the California Democratic Party. They are all employers.

Elevating a representative of one of these groups to the status of an employer representative to the Commission on Health and Safety and Workers' Compensation depends entirely on the whim of the governor, president pro tem of the Senate, or speaker of the Assembly.

It is unfair and unnecessary to target Mr. Steinberg or Democrat operative Kristen Schwenkmeyer as being the problem. They have served the Commission honorably and, we expect, will continue to do so for years to come.

Instead, the focus of scrutiny should be on the original compromise that resulted in the creation of the Commission in 1993. The original compromise, a Faustian bargain that could be crafted only in Sacramento, assured that the Democrat-controlled legislature would appoint half the labor and employer representatives and the governor would appoint the other half—a bargain that to date has assured that at least six members of the Commission would not see the world through the eyes of a payer of benefits.

Meanwhile, the Commission agenda essentially has spun out of control. The best the employer representatives could muster when the staff presented a very controversial report on permanent disability benefits last month was to compel the Commission to label the report an analysis rather than a recommendation. That nuance likely will be lost on the Senate Labor & Industrial Relations Committee when it hears the recommendation. Commission staff and consultants will present their report to a Committee, the majority of which will use the report as a bludgeon over the head of Acting Administrative Director Carrie Nevans. Nevans has the unenviable task of speaking after the Commission staff and trying to defend the administration's position on permanent disability. Lucky her.

The Commission exists as a semi-autonomous state within the Department of Industrial Relations. It is yet another example of the institutionalized interference the legislature has ordained, creating a hopelessly conflicted bureaucracy of gubernatorial and legislative appointees who report to the Administrative Director but who are accountable to no one. The Commission leaps at every opportunity to comment first on key policy issues, but since AB 749, that speed too often has resulted in policies that are ill-considered and not supported by research or—perish the thought—in active debate between stakeholders of the system.

Unless the appointment mechanism for the Commission is changed, it is time for the Commission to be shut down. The Commission has an important role to serve, but that role cannot be served without an appointment process consistent with the purpose the Commission was created for. Today, it facilitates a public policy monologue, and that ultimately serves no one.