You'd think that legislators have enough business of their own to take care of without getting into the minutiae of how the board of the California State University system conducts its business.
Think again.

Four elected state officials serve as ex officio members on the boards of the University of California and CSU systems: governor, lieutenant governor, speaker of the Assembly and superintendent of public instruction. As the only elected officials on these boards, they gain important firsthand understanding of higher education and provide an important link between the public and the state's universities.

But AB 2339, sponsored by Gloria Negrete McLeod, D-Chino, singles out the CSU board for a major change in governance. It would allow ex officio members to designate deputies to vote for them in their absence.

Certainly, these elected officials are busy and should be allowed to send a person to take notes and report back if they can't be present at a board meeting. But it's important that the elected officials be actively engaged as board members. Allowing others to vote for them would undermine the purpose of having elected officials on the board. And the way this bill is written opens even more troubling possibilities. It doesn't set any qualifications for these deputies, which leaves open the possibility that any of these officials with continuing political ambitions might use this power of delegation to promote those ambitions.

CSU, which opposes the bill, points out: "Because ex officio members serve on the board of trustees by virtue of their office, it would be highly inappropriate to allow a designated deputy to act on their behalf at meetings of the board. ... In each instance, the perspective that these board members bring to the board is that of an official who has been elected by the public to serve in their office. No matter how well-intentioned and well-informed their designee, this perspective would be potentially lost with the passage of AB 2339."

This bill would disengage the state's highest elected officials from an important responsibility to higher education at a time when that system is undergoing dramatic change and needs engaged leadership more than ever. By any measure, California is slipping when it comes to higher education. Share of residents with a college degree; degrees in science and engineering; share of budget spent on higher education; resources spent on research - all these and more are declining.

Legislators should be encouraging the state's highest elected officials to take their CSU and UC board roles seriously. Giving them an out is a move in the wrong direction. Yet this bill is whizzing through legislative committees. Vote it down before it does any real damage.