DESPITE THE GLARING need to reduce the dizzying number of overlapping state agencies and make it possible to hold those agencies accountable for their actions, Gov. Mark Sanford responded to the Legislature’s initial hostility to the idea by lowering his sights considerably: He is asking merely that nearly a dozen health agencies be merged, that governors be allowed to oversee the purely administrative functions of government and that the public be asked whether governors should appoint five of the constitutional officers.

His change has made precious little difference. Although House and Senate leaders are going out of their way to claim they are working to restructure the government, their rhetoric rings hollow when stacked up against the actual legislation they are pushing.

The House voted to ask voters whether the governor should appoint the secretary of state and education superintendent. That’s an important step, but it still would leave us with seven elected executive officers, all independently running pieces of the government.

And now the Senate is debating a 150-page bill that does more to reduce the number of trees in the state than to make the government more manageable, efficient and accountable.

Sen. Glenn McConnell, the bill’s chief architect, acknowledged as much when he told a packed committee meeting that the most important thing the bill does is set up a computer system to help health agencies handle their caseloads. That’s worth doing, but it has nothing to do with streamlining a maze of overlapping state agencies, much less with holding those agencies accountable for their shortcomings.

As for actual restructuring, the bill consolidates two freestanding agencies, and it turns the part-time board that now oversees the Department of Natural Resources into an advisory panel, and makes that agency part of the governor’s Cabinet.

As for the alleged surrender of legislative control over the purely administrative functions of government: The Senate proposal is nearly identical to a House Ways and Means Committee bill that the House sent back to committee for further work after our editorials pointed out how completely hollow it was.

Some supporters of the Senate’s compromised-away compromise say they have no chance of passing anything if they try to do anything more. The opposition is so determined to block restructuring that the Judiciary Committee wouldn’t even move a handful of programs from the governor’s office into an agency the governor would control. Granted, those programs don’t belong in the Administration Department; they belong in agencies with similar duties. But they don’t belong in the governor’s office either. There is no justification for insisting that they stay there.

Holding a referendum on two constitutional officers is an improvement that the Senate should accept. So is making the Natural Resources Department directly accountable to the governor and combining two health-related agencies — although we continue to believe that creating a virtually hollow Department of Administration does more harm than good. But let’s be clear about this: The Legislature cannot say it has accomplished anything like meaningful restructuring if all it does is pass these few changes, while leaving in place an executive branch of government comprised of 85 separate agencies, most still run by part-time, largely unaccountable boards. The bulk of what should be done isn’t even on the table.