When Governor William Weld created the African-American Advisory Commission two decades ago, he included a requirement that the commission meet regularly, including at least twice a year with the governor, to discuss issues of importance to the black community.

But no one can remember the commission meeting any time in the last decade. One member is dead; another left New England nine years ago. The rest of the panel’s seats are vacant or held by people whose terms expired in 2007. Several were surprised they were still listed last week on the state’s Boards and Commissions website.

“I haven’t been in state government for a number of years now,’’ said Jennifer Davis Carey, a former secretary of elder affairs.

The dormant committees reflect a broader problem. About one-third of the seats on the state’s nearly 700 state boards and commissions are vacant or held by “holdover’’ members, whose terms have expired but remain on the board because officials have yet to name a replacement.

“It’s a huge problem,’’ said Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts. “There are so many seats to fill.’’

In some cases, the vacancies have made it difficult for active boards to do their jobs. For instance, three of the seven seats on the Board of Respiratory Care are vacant. So if a single member can’t make a meeting, it has to be canceled or postponed, potentially putting off key decisions. The board was forced to scrub a meeting Tuesday because of a scheduling conflict with one of the members.

“We are hopeful that two new members will join the board soon,’’ said Tom Lyons, a spokesman for the Department of Public Health.

Wilmot and other observers chalk up the vacancies to a host of causes. The vast majority of board seats are volunteer positions. Some require significant time. And certain slots require special qualifications. For instance, one seat on the nursing board is reserved for a licensed practical nurse who works in acute care at a hospital, while another is for an educator in an associate degree nursing program.

A spokesman for Governor Charlie Baker, Brendan Moss, acknowledged the problem but said the administration is working on a plan to revive both the African-American Advisory Commission and the Latino-American Advisory Commission, another board where all the members’ terms have expired.

Moss said the plan should be unveiled in the coming months. Meanwhile, Baker is scheduled to address the African-American community Monday at a breakfast in Boston to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Adding to the problem of vacancies is the sheer volume of boards, dealing with everything from marketing dairy products to reducing the number of stray animals.

One commission with nine vacancies was created to help plan the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower landing in Plymouth in 2020. Another with seven empty seats has only a single duty: give away the annual Madeline Amy Sweeney Award for Civilian Bravery on Sept. 11 each year.

The Globe found three years ago that Massachusetts had far more boards than other states its size, in part because there is no mechanism to regularly weed out committees that are no longer needed.

A 2014 report by the Senate Post Audit & Oversight Committee found dozens of boards were redundant or no longer served a purpose.

For instance, one commission focused on Boston Harbor beaches issued its final report in the 1990s. Democratic ­Senator Cynthia Creem of Newton, who helped oversee the report, has filed a bill that would automatically eliminate certain commissions 60 days after their work is finished.

Baker didn’t create the problem. But when he was running for governor in 2014, he said he supported the idea of eliminating some boards and doing a better job of filling spots on others that have vital duties, such as licensing committees. “Those positions need to be filled,’’ he said at the time.

The governor’s office said some progress was made. It has made 1,337 appointments to state boards over the past two years.

But new vacancies are constantly arising as members quit or their terms expire, making it harder to close the gap.

As of last week, 33 percent of the 4,440 seats listed on the governor’s website were either vacant or filled with holdovers whose terms had expired, down from 37 percent before he took office in April 2014, according to a Globe analysis of data posted on the governor’s website.

In addition, the governor’s office said it deliberately decided not to fill or renew positions of certain boards that are no longer active.

But Baker has not proposed legislation or signed executive orders to disband any of those boards.

Not all of the backlog is the governor’s responsibility. Though the governor accounts for the bulk of state appointments, many seats are appointed by other constitutional officers, the Legislature, or other officials.

In addition, the issue is complicated by the fact that some of the lists maintained by the governor’s Boards and Commissions office are incomplete or out of date.

As for the African-American Advisory Commission, one board member, Glendora M. Putnam, remained listed a commission member as of last week — even though she died in June.

Putnam was the first African-American woman in the state to serve as an assistant attorney general, where she led the civil rights division.

Indeed, Juan Cofield, president of the New England Area Council of the NAACP, said the African-American Advisory Commission had such a low profile that he had never even heard of it.

Todd Wallack can be reached at twallack@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @twallack.