When Ronald Reagan tapped a Southern California congressman named Ed Reinecke to become his lieutenant governor three-plus decades ago, he clearly wanted Reinecke to succeed him in the governorship and did what he could to raise his protégé's public profile.

One of Reagan's Reinecke-boosting actions was to create a new Commission on Economic Development, make Reinecke the chairman, and charge the commission with securing the nascent space shuttle project for California.

Reinecke not only didn't become governor, he didn't even last as lieutenant governor, becoming entwined, rather foolishly, in one tentacle of the Watergate scandal. But the Commission on Economic Development has continued as an adjunct of the lieutenant governor's office, performing no vital function but giving the occupant of the office some extra expense money and some political staff slots.

About a decade after the Commission on Economic Development was born, then-Secretary of State March Fong Eu decided that she wanted a similar role for herself and persuaded the Legislature to create a World Trade Commission, with herself as chairwoman.

Eu's motives were a little cloudy; at the time she was thinking about seeking higher office, but she was also married to a very wealthy Asian businessman, and the commission's budget would finance her travels abroad.

The Commission on Economic Development, which still exists, and the World Trade Commission, which finally vanished last year, embodied a syndrome that developed during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s: the creation of countless agencies and programs that would, or so we were told, foster job-producing investment and trade. They included export financing, job retraining services, special aid to small business, dozens of business tax breaks, logistical help for movie production - even a dozen overseas trade offices that became mini-embassies for California.

It's never been proven that any created appreciable numbers of jobs beyond the staff appointments that politicians handed out. As the Legislature's budget office points out in its most recent state budget analysis, " the most comprehensive academic studies of economic development programs typically show a lack of quantifiable results."

Last year, with the state budget bleeding red ink, the Legislature finally closed down the Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency and canceled some of the least defensible economic development programs, including those ridiculous trade offices. But it left many intact, merely transferring them to other agencies, and didn't dig as deeply as it should have into the morass of programs, boards and commissions that purport to improve the state's economy.

California's economy should be a concern of its elected leaders. The state needs a quarter-million new jobs a year and has made itself uncompetitive on many fronts, especially in imposing higher operational costs on employers. Arizona's recent announcement that it is opening a business-recruitment office in California is a symptom of our competitiveness problems.

If politicians wanted to get serious, they'd deal with those costs (especially an out-of-control workers' compensation system), improve education (especially technical and vocational education) and provide an efficient infrastructure (especially transportation). Those tasks aren't as politically sexy as creating new commissions or handing out new tax breaks, but they have real meaning when executives decide where to do business.

That brings us to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's creation Thursday of still another commission charged with improving the business climate and recruiting investment, this one dubbed the California Commission for Jobs and Economic Growth, that the governor said would "be in charge of bringing jobs back and bringing the economy back."

That sounds fine, but given the history of such state agencies, it resembles the "politics as usual" that Schwarzenegger says he wants to banish. We'd be better served if Schwarzenegger would follow through on his pledge to fix workers' compensation and find some way to finance the vitally needed transportation improvements that his new budget would postpone.