Phoning it in

Upon his exit from the state Assembly last year, termed-out ex–GOP leader George Plescia of Del Mar bagged a lucrative four-year job as a member of the seven-member Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board. One of five appointees of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Plescia gets a cool $128,109 a year in taxpayer funds to attend monthly meetings and hear appeals of rulings by the state’s 205 unemployment law judges. But earlier this month — when the board met in Sacramento in response to criticism by the governor that it was moving too slowly to resolve a backlog of 82,500 cases — only two members showed up in person. Four others, including Plescia, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, used phone hookups, a practice the governor has criticized in the past. Meanwhile, Plescia has filed papers closing down the campaign committee he set up to run for lieutenant governor next year.