The Greensboro City Council recently set an example of excellent common and fiscal sense that's become increasingly rare in the Triangle. Greensboro actually cut a budget. Not just any budget, but the finances of a bastion of political correctness: the city's Commission on the Status of Women. That's admirable given that six of the nine council seats are held by women. Finally, a group of politicians who don't favor their own.

This wasn't one of those phony-baloney cuts in the rate of growth, either. It was a real-world, kitchen-table slice from $90,000 to $45,000 per year. The gash was so deep, it forced the commission's executive director position -- which is held by a woman -- to be downgraded into a part-time gig.

Granted, saving Greensboro taxpayers $45,000 out of a $386 million budget is peanuts, but that makes the council's cut even more meaningful. It would have been easy for members to simply hand over the cash. Few, if any, would have uttered a peep in protest.

Instead, the Greensboro council did what few others have done when it comes to the litany of civil rights and other special interest panels that have spread like computer viruses among local governments: It called the commission to task.

It seems the Greensboro Commission on the Status of Women is acting a lot like the good-old-girl women's clubs the feminists used to despise. The group holds meetings, stages lunches and hands out brochures for community service agencies. That's pretty much it. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just that the Greensboro Council prefers that someone other than taxpayers pick up the tab for the socializing and chronic rehashing of the same old issues.

To be fair, the Greensboro commission is not unlike the majority of women's panels. As far as I can tell, the typical body of work consists of celebrating Women's Equality Day, holding an annual Big Shot Women of the Year luncheon and -- this is the self-sustaining part -- raising "awareness" about obvious problems. When women's panels run out of meaningful things to do, they always "raise awareness." It's a stall tactic that always works.

Except in Greensboro.

"The women's commission was a strong, wonderful program when it was created (1973), but it's outlived its purpose," council member Florence F. Gatten told me. "They have not addressed one issue of substance or submitted a single report to the council in the past five years. I've appointed people who have wanted to accomplish things, and after two or three meetings they resign. It's no longer a venue to get things done. It's embarrassing."

Councilman Tom Phillips, an ardent commission opponent who came within one vote this budget year of killing it completely, told me that women who believe they have been unfairly treated because of their gender have been better served by the city's Human Relations Commission and the Human Relations Department.

The women's commission does have its supporters -- sort of. Council members Goldie Wells and Yvonne J. Johnson helped craft the $45,000 compromise that kept the panel alive. "I believe in reforming, not eliminating it," Wells said. "But it does need to get its act together." Both would like the panel to reformulate its mission on what Wells calls "survival" issues such as abuse, sexual battery and day care. But Gatten and council member Sandy Carmany told me those issues are already being addressed by organizations such as the Women's Resource Center of Greensboro.

The dearth of relevance of the Greensboro commission is hardly unique. If the women's commissions in Wake and Durham disbanded tomorrow, I doubt many would notice.

That's a fact we should celebrate.

The days of institutional gender discrimination that gave birth to these panels are largely over. One can always find an occasional incident of prejudice, but not at the level that justifies a plethora of time-wasting, government-sponsored, special-interest panels whose value is mostly symbolic.

I have yet to run into someone who has been meaningfully helped by a women's commission. Still, I don't belittle the intentions of those serving on these panels. I only ask that they read a calendar. It's not 1976 anymore. Time to declare victory and move on.