IT WASN’T JUST a good-government push to modernize state government that led to the partial restructuring of 1993. The state was reeling from a series of scandals in the Legislature and in many of the state agencies that autonomous boards and commissions ran as members’ own personal fiefdoms.

Among the poster children for restructuring was the state Aeronautics Commission. The tiny agency was known as an air taxi service for legislators and other well-connected state officials, a reputation that was cemented when it ferried a flamboyant senator and his companion to the Super Bowl. Such accommodation of the powerful produced budgets to underwrite excessive equipment purchases, from the niftiest communications gadgets to an arsenal that included an Uzi and a dozen other exotic weapons.

The commission tasked with overseeing the agency was either unwilling or unable to act, and neither the governor nor the General Assembly could intervene. The abusive and wasteful practices might well have continued had law enforcement agencies not gotten involved. The assistant director was charged with stealing equipment from the agency, and state and federal authorities launched investigations into allegations that the director had bugged meetings of his ostensible bosses on the commission. Both men got off light: The assistant was allowed to enter into a pre-trial intervention program, and the director was allowed to retire — and draw nearly a year’s salary in sick leave.

By the time the Legislature finally acted in response to the growing list of scandals, even the reform-averse Senate made abolishing the Aeronautics Commission and folding the agency into another one a priority.

Apparently, memories are short at the State House.

Just 11 years after the Aeronautics Commission was wisely abolished and the agency made part of a department that answers to the governor, the Legislature voted last week to reconstitute the commission.

That would be bad enough if the commission were to be accountable to elected officials. It would not be. The legislation uses the failed Transportation Commission model, which allows six small groups of legislators to appoint one commissioner each, with the governor choosing the chairman. While the governor could fire his chairman, even legislators would be powerless to replace the other six commissioners before their four-year terms ended — and thus powerless to change course if those unelected officials take the agency in the wrong direction, as their predecessors did.

Beyond that, the legislation attempts to wrap itself in respectable clothing, by keeping aeronautics inside the Commerce Department and having the governor name the director. Both are misleading: The governor could only appoint a director recommended by the commission, and couldn’t fire that person, and Commerce would have no control over the supposed sub-agency.

Supporters say the changes are needed because the Commerce Department doesn’t have the expertise or interest to properly promote aviation. If that’s true, changes are in order. But not these changes. These are changes that take us back to the days when powerful legislators positioned their cronies in key spots to provide them special favors, then looked the other way when those cronies helped themselves to favors — all courtesy of the taxpayers. The governor needs to veto this legislation, and next year legislators can try to come up with a reasonable way to inject some expertise into the aeronautics office — if, in fact, that is needed.