Government of California

The government of California is the governmental structure of the U.S. state of California as established by the California Constitution. California uses the separation of powers system to structure its government. It is composed of three branches: the executive, consisting of the governor of California and the other constitutionally elected and appointed officers and offices; the legislative, consisting of the California State Legislature, which includes the Assembly and the Senate; and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court of California and lower courts. There is also local government, consisting of counties, cities, special districts, and school districts, as well as government entities and offices that operate independently on a constitutional, statutory, or common law basis. The state also allows direct participation of the electorate by initiative, referendum, recall and ratification.

California's elected executive officers are:

All offices are elected separately to concurrent four-year terms, and each officer may be elected to an office a maximum of two times. The governor has the powers and responsibilities to: sign or veto laws passed by the Legislature, including a line item veto; appoint judges, subject to ratification by the electorate; propose a state budget; give the annual State of the State address; command the state militia; and grant pardons for any crime, except cases involving impeachment by the Legislature. The lieutenant governor is the president of the California Senate and acts as the governor when the governor is unable to execute the office, including whenever the governor leaves the state. The governor and lieutenant governor also serve as ex officio members of the University of California Board of Regents and of the California State University Board of Trustees. Regulatory activity is published in the California Regulatory Notice Register and the general and permanent rules and regulations are codified in the California Code of Regulations.

State government is organized into many departments, of which most have been grouped together into several huge Cabinet-level agencies since the administration of Governor Pat Brown. These agencies are sometimes informally referred to as superagencies, especially by government officials, to distinguish them from the general usage of the term "government agency". When Brown took office, he was dismayed to discover that under California law, approximately 360 boards, commissions, and agencies all reported directly to the governor, and proposed his "super-agency" plan (then spelled with a hyphen) in February 1961 to impose order on such chaos. Brown appointed the secretaries of the first four superagencies (of eight then planned) in September 1961.

The superagencies operate as "umbrella organizations" or "semiautonomous fiefdoms," but their Cabinet-level secretaries are not quite as powerful as they may appear at first glance. The governor continues to directly appoint the leaders of superagency components. The appointments are announced by the governor rather than by the secretaries, who are merely a layer of management installed to ensure that the components of their respective superagencies can stay outside of the governor's "routine attention span" (unless something goes wrong). Today, the Cabinet-level agencies (superagencies) are the:

The independently elected officers run separate departments not grouped within the superagencies, and there are other Cabinet-level departments:

Most (but not all) of the leaders of these entities are normally appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate. Despite their independence, the governor can exert influence on them over time by waiting for incumbent leaders to reach the ends of their terms and appointing new ones who support the governor's current agenda.

Examples include the: