Is there such a thing as objective policy making?

About thirty years ago California went through a revolution in forming commissions that were created to bring rationality into some key areas of public policy. So, for example, the state created something called the Postsecondary Education Commission whose job it was to help the legislature and the governor to think about rational policy options for higher education. At about the same time the state created an Energy Commission which was supposed to allow long term planning in that area to get away from the perceived ties that the Public Utilities Commision had in regulating energy companies and thinking long term. At about the same time the legislature decided that most commissions should establish a majority of "public" members. Those were defined as people who had an interest in the area but no direct tie.

So after all this time, how did we do? The evidence is a bit mixed. The excitement at the time that we were doing all this was certainly overblown. A couple of conclusions are obvious. The new types of commissions were neither as effective nor as horrible as their sponsors and detractors imagined they would be. At the same time, because the most important decisions always get moved over into the legislature, the utility of objective policy advice has been limited. At about the same time that the commissions were beefed up, the state also put a bit more reliance on something called the Legislative Analyst. Here without a commission to guide them, except members of the legislature, the evidence is a bit more promising. The LAO is not always successful in pursuing her recommendations but her independence and the soundness of her analysis is unquestioned. The LAO suffered a significant reduction in staff when Proposition 140 was adopted but she has continued to do some great work with a small staff. For the two commissions the evidence is a lot more mixed. There have been times when the commissions in question were major players in the policy process but those times are not now.

The evidence on the public members issue is also a bit mixed. On many commissions public members soon choose up sides or they come with hiden agendas that become exposed after they are selected. The commissions have long agendas, often dealing with minutae that would force a person to inject expresso to stay alert. The commissioners are paid expenses plus a nominal fee and their work is done mostly in obscurity. The arcaneness of most of the issues for these commissions requires a great deal of attention, so it is hard to find someone who has not been involved and has the requisite level of interest. Occasionally you find a public member who has the energy and the insight to make a substantial contribution. But on the whole the quality of the debate and discussion on many of these commissions is hit and miss, often depending on the skill of the executive director of the commission and the energy of the chair.

There are two other models that could be considered. First, since all of the issues in these types of areas are eventually brought into the political process, it could be argued that it would be more efficient to simply abolish these outside bodies. To make this model work one needs to assume that all of the relevant issues will be raised by the various interests in the process. From my perspective, that might not be an unreasonable expectation. As an alternative to abolishing the commissions, a policy related staff could be created in the office of the Governor and or in each house of the legislature that would oversee the research. Perhaps a pool of funds could be maintained to do the required policy research that helps to inform at least some discussions. That is certainly the intent of the LAO and as noted above, the level of expectations is often met. The risk is that when those things have been created in both the executive and the legislative branches that they have often devolved into political support groups for the incumbents.

I come down on this set of issues somewhat in the middle. Indeed, public policy can benefit from better data, but the old adage about lawyers hangs true here. At times in the policy process, when you have the facts you argue them and when you don't you argue something else. Political decisions can be improved by data, but they are still political decisions.