But as it stands now, the California Citizens Compensation Commission will be woefully underrepresented when it meets on April 27, with only four of the seven constitutionally-required seats having been filled, leaving the possibility that the citizenship will have a muted voice, the same as last year.

The CCCC in 2015 approved a 3 percent increase in base pay for state legislators and constitutional officers (like governor, attorney general, etc.), with the same four of seven seats filled.

“We’re certainly aware of these vacancies,” said Evan Westrup, a spokesman for Gov. Jerry Brown. “Our aim when filling any vacancy in the administration is to select the best possible candidate from a broad and diverse pool of applicants. That ultimately dictates timing.”

Brown’s office would not comment on how many applications have been received for each vacancy or how many people are being considered, because it does “not disclose details regarding applicants for appointments.” CalWatchdog argued that these are raw numbers, not details regarding the applicants themselves, but did not receive a response.

Why does it matter?

The CCCC is a seven-member panel, appointed by the governor to six-year terms, with different areas of expertise: one with expertise in compensation (like an economist); one representing the general population (like a homemaker/retiree/person of median income); one representing the nonprofit world; one who is an executive at a large CA employer; one who represents small business; and two labor representatives.

The state’s constitutional language on filling these vacancies states: “Within 15 days of any vacancy, the Governor shall appoint a person to serve the unexpired portion of the term.”

The 15-day window serves multiple functions. It ensures that there’s a functioning commission with a fully represented citizenry to decide on pay, but it also prevents a governor from holding nominations off until just before they leave office and then packing the commission on his or her way out the door.

Timing

As CalWatchdog understands it, “any vacancy” means any vacancy, which means a governor has 15 days to fill the vacancy. The shortest current vacancy on the commission dates back to March 2015, prior to the last meeting on May 11.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s office argues that the language on vacancies applies to seats vacated before the expiration of the term. By that logic, the clock wouldn’t reset until the next appointment, whenever that is, meaning Brown could in theory wait until the end of his term to fill the appointments, pushing them six years into the future (which could even outlive the next governor if he or she only lasts one term).

But that reasoning would only apply to two of the vacancies, where the commissioners left as their terms expired. The third was created when Charles Murray stepped down mid-term in 2015, after being reappointed in 2011. The data on timing was provided by commission staff. Brown’s office did not respond to this third vacancy.

Since the CCCC meets usually once a year and there is really no business in between, there is no immediate need for the seats to be filled until meeting time, besides of course to comply with the Constitution (as CalWatchdog understands it).

Read more: Some Legislators Proudly Refuse Pay Increases

“You up??” he asked his press secretary, Evan Westrup.

Nearly 45 minutes later, Westrup sent Brown and first lady Anne Gust Brown a copy of a Washington Post story on California’s high-speed rail project.

They needn’t have worried. This long Jan. 5 story by Post national reporter Reid Wilson appears to be the one Westrup sent the Browns, and it largely accepts the governor’s characterization of the project’s relative progress and downplays legal challenges.

The groundbreaking “really marks the transition from all the planning and appropriations and legal challenges and the design work to continuous construction,” said Dan Richard, chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, the project’s governing body. “It’s a significant milestone.”

Financing problems were acknowledged, at least.

Even with the legal and political victories, the funding structure is incomplete. Voters approved a $9.95 billion bond aimed at funding the initial construction of the rail project in 2008, by a slim five-point margin. The Obama administration added another $3.2 billion in federal grants, and the legislature agreed in 2014 to provide funding through cap-and-trade taxes on greenhouse gases, which will add another $250 million to $1 billion per year.

Still, that means the rail authority will have about $26 billion at best, less than half the estimated total costs.

Touting the Japanese financing model

But the reporter’s lack of background on the issue led him to accept uncritically Richard’s theory about how the project could be partially funded.

Richard, chairman of the rail authority, said his agency doesn’t expect federal funding in the next four to five years. He pointed to Japan, where nearly a third of funding for high-speed rail projects comes from real estate development near rail stations.

But the state government needs the money up front, not after the system is up and running — specifically $31 billion for the initial 300-mile operating segment, per a Superior Court ruling that Attorney General Kamala Harris chose not to appeal.

It’s interesting how East Coast reporters seem more likely than East Coast opinion writers to accept upbeat takes on the Golden State’s most costly infrastructure project. Both the Washington Post’s editorial page and Post editorial writer/columnist Charles Lane have expressed incredulity at the state’s handling of the project.

Failing the ‘best evidence’ standard

Here’s the opening of a tart Lane column from Jan. 9, 2012:

In announcing the appointment of a new economic adviser last summer, President Obama emphasized his commitment to fact-based policymaking. It’s “more important than ever,” he said, to get “recommendations not based on politics, not based on narrow interests, but based on the best evidence, based on what’s going to do the most good for the most people in this country.”

If only the president and his political ally, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), would follow that advice regarding their pet project for the Golden State: high-speed rail. No matter how many times they tout the mega-project as the job-creating wave of the future, they can’t change the mountain of evidence that high-speed rail is, in fact, a boondoggle.

You can read the whole Lane op-ed here.

A May 18, 2011, Post editorial — link here — was even harsher.

California may be about to spend a fortune to plan and build a stretch of high-speed track that would end up as a railroad to nowhere in the all-too-likely event that funding for the rest of the system never materializes. But the LAO, the state-level equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office, argues that the legislature should halt most further spending on the project and not start construction until the state can negotiate more flexible terms from the federal government and — crucially — relocate the first section to a route where a fast train would be economically viable even if the entire system never gets built.

There is a certain poignancy to the LAO’s plea for everyone to stop and think. The benefits of high-speed rail in California might indeed outweigh the costs, the LAO notes, but “at this time there is little reliable information to inform this decision.” Think about that for a minute: Fifteen years have passed, and millions of dollars have been spent on studies since the state first passed a law creating a high-speed rail program. Yet after all that, no one really knows whether it’s worth doing. If no one has come up with a convincing rationale by now, maybe there isn’t one.

Maybe this Post coverage is what made the governor anxious about the newspaper’s coverage of his project’s groundbreaking ceremonies.