A browsable catalog of the kinds of roles a California governor appoints — agency secretaries, department directors, and the boards and commissions that carry real regulatory authority. It covers 608 distinct positions.

The Leadership Now Project built it as a resource for people considering public service and for anyone trying to understand how the state is actually staffed.

No. This is a catalog of role types, not a vacancy board and not an application portal.

A listing tells you that a position exists, roughly what it pays, and what kind of background fits it. It does not tell you whether the seat is open today or who holds it. Appointments are made through the Governor’s Office of Appointments, which runs its own application.

The catalog is compiled from the Governor’s office appointment announcements published on gov.ca.gov. That is its strength and its limit: it reflects appointments that were actually announced, which is a good guide to what a governor fills and what those roles pay, but it is not a statutory index of every appointed office in California.

Two consequences worth knowing. First, the source is announcements, not seats — the same position recurs across releases as it is refilled, and those repeats are collapsed so each position appears once. Second, the editorial fields — role descriptions, policy areas, and skillsets — are generated to make the catalog searchable. Treat them as navigational aids, not as authoritative descriptions of duties.

The legal mechanics described elsewhere on this page are a different matter: those are cited to the California Constitution or the Codes and were read from the primary text. Where this page gives a statutory rule, follow the citation. Where it describes the catalog, treat it as a well-sourced guide rather than a legal register.

Offices the governor does not fill. Eight statewide executive offices are elected: Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Controller, Treasurer, Insurance Commissioner, and Superintendent of Public Instruction. Four members of the Board of Equalization are elected by district, with the Controller sitting as the fifth voting member.

One footnote for anyone checking the citations: the Insurance Commissioner’s elective status does not come from Article V like the others — it was created by Proposition 103 and lives in the Insurance Code.

Judicial appointments are also out of scope, though the governor’s power over them is real and substantial — see below.

And the long tail of part-time advisory bodies and occupational licensing boards is only partly represented — those seats turn over continuously and are a standing staffing task rather than a transition-scale one.

Source · Cal. Const. art. V, § 11 · Cal. Const. art. IX, § 2 · Cal. Const. art. XIII, § 17 · Cal. Ins. Code § 12900

There is no general advice-and-consent clause in California’s Constitution covering executive appointments. The requirement is imposed office by office — by the statute creating that office, or for a few bodies by a specific constitutional provision — so whether a given seat needs confirmation depends on the law behind it.

Government Code § 1322 adds a supplemental list of 27 offices and boards that require confirmation “in addition to any other statutory provisions,” which means it is a supplement rather than a master list. No single roster of every confirmable position is published.

Most appointments a governor makes do not require confirmation; a significant minority do. When a nomination arrives, it is referred to the Senate Rules Committee without debate. The Committee holds a public hearing — some appointees are required to appear, others are not — and confirmation on the Senate floor takes 21 votes.

Source · Cal. Gov. Code § 1322 · Cal. Const. art. XII, § 1 · Senate Standing Rules 13(i), 47

For many positions, yes — and the mechanism has a twist that surprises people. An appointee generally takes office and begins work immediately, before any confirmation vote. The Senate then has 365 days from the day the appointee started performing the duties to act.

If the Senate never acts, the appointment dies: the person may not continue to serve and the office is deemed vacant the day after the 365 days run out. If the Senate affirmatively refuses to confirm, the appointee may serve 60 more days or until the 365 days expire, whichever comes first.

So silence is fatal in California, not confirming. Until the Senate acts, the appointee serves at the governor’s pleasure regardless of whether the office itself is a fixed-term seat. In practice the lag is often long — confirmations arriving six to nine months after appointment are routine.

Source · Cal. Gov. Code § 1774

Agency secretaries — the cabinet officers who supervise the departments — are appointed by the governor, serve at the governor’s pleasure, and are subject to Senate confirmation. They can be replaced on day one of a new administration.

Department directors follow the same general pattern, but there is no single statute saying so. Each department’s own enabling code carries the rule, and the wording varies. The backstop is a default rule: any office whose term is not fixed by law is held at the pleasure of the appointing power.

Board and commission members are the opposite — they hold fixed terms, and the term lengths run long. Six years at the Public Utilities Commission and the Air Resources Board, five at the Energy Commission, four at the State Water Board and the Transportation Commission.

Source · Cal. Gov. Code § 12801 · Cal. Gov. Code § 1301

Usually not, and California has no general removal statute — the rule is set body by body, and the variation is striking.

• Public Utilities Commission — only the Legislature can remove a commissioner, for incompetence, neglect of duty, or corruption, with two-thirds of each house concurring. The governor cannot.
• Energy Commission — again the Legislature, by concurrent resolution, but only a majority is needed.
• Agricultural Labor Relations Board — the governor may remove, upon notice and hearing, for neglect of duty or malfeasance, “but for no other cause.”
• Fair Political Practices Commission — the governor may remove, but only with the Senate’s concurrence, after written notice and an opportunity to reply.
• Air Resources Board — no removal provision exists at all. A member’s term simply runs.

The practical effect is that a new governor inherits most boards and converts them only as terms expire. Policy disagreement is never a ground for removal.

Source · Cal. Const. art. XII, § 1 · Cal. Pub. Res. Code § 25215 · Cal. Lab. Code § 1141 · Cal. Gov. Code § 83105

It depends on whether the seat requires Senate confirmation, and the two answers are quite different.

The general rule is holdover: an officer whose term has expired continues to discharge the duties of the office until a successor has qualified. For seats outside the confirmation process, an expired term does not empty the chair, and members can serve on well past their nominal end date.

For appointments that do require Senate confirmation, holdover is sharply limited. The governor has 60 days after a term expires to reappoint the incumbent; if that window closes without a reappointment, the office is deemed vacant the day after. So on confirmable seats the appointments calendar bites much faster than the general holdover rule would suggest.

Source · Cal. Gov. Code § 1302 · Cal. Gov. Code § 1774

Not necessarily. The Fish and Game Commission is the clearest example: the governor appoints all five members, yet cannot remove any of them — only the Legislature can, by concurrent resolution — and the six-year staggered terms mean a governor may serve a full term without ever appointing a majority.

Term length, staggering, holdover, and removal rules matter more than the raw count of seats a governor fills.

Source · Cal. Const. art. IV, § 20

Yes, and they include some of the most consequential. The Citizens Redistricting Commission — which draws California’s legislative and congressional maps — has fourteen members and the governor appoints none of them. Applicants are screened by the State Auditor, narrowed by a panel of three independent auditors, subjected to a strike round by the four legislative leaders, reduced to eight by random draw, and those eight then choose the final six.

The Coastal Commission is split: of its twelve voting members the governor appoints four, and the Senate Rules Committee and the Speaker appoint four each. The governor’s appointees serve at the governor’s pleasure; the legislative appointees hold protected four-year terms.

The Fair Political Practices Commission — California’s campaign finance and ethics regulator — has five members, and the governor appoints only two of them, including the chair. The Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and the Controller each appoint one of the rest, and no more than three of the five may belong to the same political party.

The Student Aid Commission is a milder version — the governor appoints eleven of fifteen, with the remaining four belonging to the Legislature outright.

The Energy Commission adds a deadline the governor can actually lose. If a vacancy goes unfilled for 30 days, the Senate Rules Committee may make the appointment instead.

Source · Cal. Const. art. XXI, § 2 · Cal. Gov. Code § 8252 · Cal. Pub. Res. Code §§ 30301, 30312 · Cal. Gov. Code § 83100 et seq. · Cal. Educ. Code §§ 69510–69511 · Cal. Pub. Res. Code § 25206

They are among the longest-reaching appointments a California governor makes, and the two systems work differently in almost every respect.

The University of California Board of Regents has 18 appointed members serving 12-year terms — longer than any other appointment discussed here, and long enough that a two-term governor still does not fill the whole board. They are confirmed by a majority of the Senate, and they serve without pay: the rule is not in the Constitution but in the Regents’ own Bylaw 21.7, which states that no Regent shall receive salary or other compensation for service as a Regent.

The California State University Board of Trustees has 16 appointed members serving eight-year terms, and confirmation requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate — a higher bar than almost anything else in California government. Appointed trustees are entitled by statute to $100 for each day spent attending to official business, a figure set in 1998 and never adjusted, though the seat is often described as an unpaid one.

Source · Cal. Const. art. IX, § 9 · UC Regents Bylaw 21.7 · Cal. Educ. Code §§ 66602, 66603, 66604.5

Often, and they are unusually specific in California. The Energy Commission has five seats, four of which are reserved by law: an engineer or physical scientist with knowledge of energy systems, a California-licensed attorney with administrative law experience, someone with a background in environmental protection or ecosystems, and an economist experienced in natural resource management. The fifth is a public seat with no required background.

The State Water Board is similar — an attorney qualified in water rights, a registered civil engineer, a sanitary engineer qualified in water quality, another water-quality specialist, and one member with no specialized requirement.

Conflict rules can be just as binding as qualifications. A Public Utilities commissioner may not hold an official relation to, or a financial interest in, any regulated company, and a utility executive cannot serve as a commissioner within two years of leaving that employer.

Source · Cal. Pub. Res. Code § 25201 · Cal. Water Code § 175 · Cal. Pub. Util. Code § 303

Yes, and it is among the office’s most consequential powers. Every judicial appointment begins the same way: before appointing or nominating anyone, the governor must submit the candidate’s name to the State Bar’s Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation — the JNE Commission — which investigates confidentially and reports back within 90 days with a rating of exceptionally well qualified, well qualified, qualified, or not qualified. The rating is advisory; the governor is not required to follow it.

What happens next depends on the court. For the Supreme Court and the Courts of Appeal, an appointment is not effective until confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments — a three-member body made up of the Chief Justice, the Attorney General, and a presiding justice of the Court of Appeal. For the superior courts, there is no confirmation step at all; the governor appoints directly.

Anyone appointed must have been a member of the State Bar, or a California judge of a court of record, for the 10 years immediately preceding selection. Appellate appointees then face voters in a yes-or-no retention question at the next gubernatorial general election, for 12-year terms; superior court appointees serve roughly two to three years before the seat goes to the ballot, for six-year terms.

Source · Cal. Const. art. VI, §§ 7, 15, 16 · Cal. Gov. Code § 12011.5

The governor nominates a replacement, but the confirmation bar is higher than for an ordinary appointment: the nominee takes office only on the approval of a majority of the full membership of both the Senate and the Assembly, and then serves out the balance of the unexpired term.

The default cuts the opposite way from ordinary appointments. If the Legislature neither confirms nor rejects within 90 days, the nominee takes office as if confirmed. Compare that with a normal gubernatorial appointment, where Senate inaction for 365 days empties the office — here, legislative inaction seats the nominee.

The governorship itself is the exception: it is not filled by nomination at all. The Lieutenant Governor succeeds, which in turn usually creates the Lieutenant Governor vacancy that the nomination process then fills.

Source · Cal. Const. art. V, §§ 5, 10 · Cal. Ins. Code § 12900

Temporarily, yes. The governor may appoint a qualified California elector to hold a vacant U.S. Senate seat until someone is elected at a statewide general election to serve the remainder of the term.

The discretion is over who, not whether. The governor must issue a writ of election, and the timing is fixed by statute: if the vacancy occurs 148 or more days before the next regularly scheduled statewide primary, the vacancy election consolidates with that cycle; otherwise it moves to the following one.

Source · Cal. Elec. Code § 10720

It varies widely, and the directory records which. Of the 608 roles listed, 538 carry a salary, 47 pay a per-diem or per-meeting rate, and 21 are unpaid.

Most part-time board service in California is per-diem. The statewide default is $100 for each day of official business, and it applies to any per-diem-eligible state board or commission unless that body’s own statute sets a different figure.

Source · Cal. Gov. Code § 11564.5

Agency secretaries — the cabinet officers running the state’s superagencies — sit in a single statutory band of roughly $221,000 to $254,500 a year. The Secretary of Corrections and Rehabilitation is the outlier at about $317,000 to $330,000.

Department directors range more widely, from about $183,000 to $323,000, with most clustering between $200,000 and $250,000. The Director of Public Health is the highest paid; the Director of Aging among the lowest.

Full-time board seats are their own tier. The President of the Public Utilities Commission earns about $256,500 and the other commissioners about $215,600. Chairs of the quasi-judicial boards — Agricultural Labor Relations, Public Employment Relations, Unemployment Insurance Appeals, Workers’ Compensation Appeals, the State Water Board, the OSH Appeals Board — earn about $192,200, and their members about $186,300.

A few boards pay a part-time salary instead: Air Resources Board, State Personnel Board, and Central Valley Flood Protection Board members each receive about $59,100 a year, conditioned on devoting at least 60 hours a month.

All figures are authorized salary ranges as published by CalHR effective July 1, 2026, and they move. Be careful with the statutes themselves — the dollar amounts written into the Government Code are January 1988 bases carrying escalator clauses, so a section that says $81,635 describes a seat now paying well over twice that.

Source · CalHR Exempt Pay Scale (July 1, 2026) · Cal. Gov. Code §§ 11550, 11553, 11553.5

Two sources: the Legislature, for positions whose salary is fixed by statute, and CalHR, which approves salaries for other exempt positions on the appointing authority’s recommendation.

Not the California Citizens Compensation Commission — a common misreading. That body’s constitutional jurisdiction is limited to ten categories of elected officials: the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Controller, Insurance Commissioner, Secretary of State, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Treasurer, Board of Equalization members, and legislators. It has no authority over appointees.

One consequence is worth stating plainly: the Governor is paid about $245,900, which is less than several of the Governor’s own appointees. The Highway Patrol Commissioner, the Secretary of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Director of Public Health, and the President of the Public Utilities Commission all out-earn the office that appoints them.

Source · Cal. Const. art. III, § 8 · Cal. Gov. Code § 19825

Yes. The State Controller publishes annual payroll for every state department at Government Compensation in California (gcc.sco.ca.gov), searchable by employer and job title, with the raw data downloadable.

One caveat when comparing: those figures are what a person was actually paid in a calendar year, including overtime, lump sums, and partial-year service. They will not always match the position’s authorized salary range.

No — and the omission is visible in the statute itself. The $100 figure has stood since 1986 with no adjustment mechanism, while the sections in the same chapter that set annual salaries for full-time boards each carry an escalator clause tying them to general state employee salary increases. The per-diem section has no such clause.

Individual boards vary around that baseline, sometimes downward. Coastal Commission members receive $50 per full day of meetings plus $12.50 per hour of preparation, capped at eight compensated hours per meeting — half the standard rate for one of the most demanding appointments in the state. Fish and Game commissioners get $100 a day capped at $500 a month; Transportation commissioners $100 a day capped at $800 a month.

Source · Cal. Gov. Code § 11564.5 · Cal. Pub. Res. Code § 30314 · Cal. Fish & G. Code § 103 · Cal. Gov. Code § 14509

The directory records whether a role is full-time or part-time and how it is compensated, but not meeting cadence — that is set by each body and varies enormously.

Some nominally part-time seats carry heavy loads. The statute setting salaries for Air Resources Board members conditions full pay on devoting at least 60 hours a month to board work, and reduces it proportionately below that — a useful signal of what those seats actually demand. Utility rate cases, water rights adjudications, and licensing dockets all involve substantial reading between meetings.

Source · Cal. Gov. Code § 11564

Nobody publishes an official number, and that is the honest answer. The Governor’s office posts rosters of current board and commission appointees as alphabetical PDFs with no totals, and no page on gov.ca.gov states a figure. Numbers circulate online, but we could not trace any of them to a primary state source, so this page does not repeat one.

What can be said from official documents: the Appointments Office publishes an internal assignment index dividing the appointable universe among its staff, and that index alone names several hundred distinct bodies — with a single line covering all 54 district agricultural fair boards. The number of individual seats is far higher than the number of bodies.

The gap is closing. Senate Bill 702, signed in October 2025, requires the Governor’s office to maintain a public online list of every state board and commission — membership, purpose, duties, meeting frequency, and current vacancies — beginning January 1, 2027, with annual demographic reporting on appointments from January 2028. That the Legislature had to pass a law requiring the list is the clearest evidence that no comprehensive one existed.

Source · SB 702 (2025)

California elects a governor in November 2026, and the winner’s term begins on the Monday after January 1 — January 4, 2027. The incumbent is term-limited, so the office changes hands.

Three different rules then govern three different kinds of appointment, and the distinction is the most useful thing to understand. Agency secretaries, most department directors, and the governor’s own executive staff serve at pleasure and can be replaced on day one. Fixed-term board seats mostly persist — 12 years at the UC Regents, eight at CSU, six at the Public Utilities Commission and the Air Resources Board, five at the Energy Commission and the labor boards — so a new governor inherits those boards and reshapes them only as terms expire.

The third rule is the one people forget: holdover. An expired term does not automatically create a vacancy — an officer whose term has run continues to discharge the duties until a successor qualifies — so incoming administrations routinely find boards staffed by their predecessor’s appointees past the nominal expiration dates. The important exception is Senate-confirmable seats, where the governor has only 60 days after expiration to reappoint before the office is deemed vacant.

One consequential exception arrives almost immediately: both of the governor’s seats on the Fair Political Practices Commission, including the chair, expire January 31, 2027 — weeks after inauguration. California’s chief political-ethics regulator is among the first appointments a new governor makes.

Source · Cal. Const. art. V, § 2 · Cal. Gov. Code § 12801 · Cal. Gov. Code § 1302

Upload a résumé and the matching engine extracts your background — sectors, seniority, and functional skills — then scores it against the catalog and returns ranked fits with the reasoning behind each one.

If you would rather not upload a document, the guided questions on the homepage reach the same result by asking for the same information directly.

Use the role explorer. Every role can be filtered by policy area, department, seniority, compensation, and skillset, and the filters live in the URL — so any filtered view is a link you can share or return to.

California runs an open public application. Anyone may apply — no nomination or sponsor is required, and you can express interest in more than one position. Start at the Governor’s appointments page (gov.ca.gov/join-the-administration/government-appointments), which links to the current application portal.

The Appointments Office can be reached at (916) 445-4541 or appointments.office@gov.ca.gov. It also publishes a staff assignment roster mapping each board and department to the deputy who handles it, so it is possible to identify and contact the person responsible for a specific body.

Be aware that very little formal guidance on selection criteria is published. In practice the most informative public record is the archive of appointment announcements itself, which states each appointee’s background, whether the seat required Senate confirmation, and the compensation. Note also that the application portal belongs to the current administration and may be replaced after a change of governor — the gov.ca.gov appointments page is the durable entry point.

The Leadership Now Project, a membership organization of business leaders and investors working to strengthen American democracy.

This effort is not affiliated with any candidate or campaign. Listing a role is not an endorsement of any officeholder, administration, or policy.