Coastal Commission gets wings clipped due to lawsuit losses

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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California has had a Coastal Commission for more than half a century, beginning with a 1972 ballot measure whose advocates played on Californians’ fears of losing access to popular beaches and who pointed to the sprawling Sea Ranch development along the Sonoma County coast as an example.

The measure gave the commission a four-year term. A few years later, the then governor. Jerry Brown and the Legislature made it a permanent body of state government with 12 appointed members. The agency was given broad powers to monitor what happens in a legally designated “coastal zone,” which often stretches several miles inland from the Pacific coast.

Its members, all political appointees, would come and go, but the real power was vested in one man, Peter M. Douglasa former legislative staffer and the lead author of both the ballot measure and subsequent legislation. He was the commission’s executive director for 26 years.

Douglas, who died in 2012, made no secret of his belief that the commission should expand its protective mission as widely as the law and the courts allow. He believes the commission supersedes all other state and local land-use regulations, thereby having the final say on everything of substance along the 1,000-mile coastal zone.

This assumption had two consequences: fierce resistance from local governments and developers about having to bow to Douglas, and a substrate of influence peddling and corruption.

The commission’s decrees have a huge financial impact. Parties with pending cases often hired specialist lobbyists who—for high enough fees—could guide their clients through the often tortuous approval process.

This subculture was uncovered in the early 1990s when Commissioner Mark Nathanson was found guilty of soliciting bribes for building permitsincluding those of several well-known figures in the film industry. Nathanson, a Beverly Hills real estate broker, was sentenced to four years and nine months in federal prison.

In recent years, the Coastal Commission bias against coastal developmenteven in areas far inland from the coast, have run afoul of the Capitol’s efforts to remove barriers to new housing. Some housing rationalization laws cautiously tried to make the commission more housing-friendly, but the Coastal Commission stuck to its assumption that it was the final authority.

Last month, the state Supreme Court unanimously rejected that suggestion, saying the commission could not interfere with a project the local government had approved under its comprehensive coastal development plan.

The commission tried to block a three-home project near Los Osos in San Luis Obispo County.

The court decisionwritten by Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, stated that “both local and state goals are important, and neither the county nor the commission, as local and state bodies, respectively, should be accorded greater deference.”

Coincidentally, the Supreme Court’s decision was issued just as the commission also had it clipped wings in a lawsuit filed by electric car and space rocket magnate Elon Musk.

In October 2024, the commission rejected an application from Musk’s Space X to increase the number of Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg Space Base. Several committee members cited Musk’s close ties to Donald Trump, who was re-elected president a month later.

Caryl Hart, who chaired the committee at the time, said Musk “aggressively injected himself into the presidential race and made it clear what his point of view was.”

Musk sued, claiming — correctly — that the rejection was political vendetta. Last month, the commission relented, apologized to Musk and promised that it “will not consider the perceived political beliefs, political expression, or employment practices of SpaceX or its employees in considering any regulatory action affecting SpaceX.”

The two cases brought to light the Coastal Commission’s half-century-old assumption of nearly unlimited power over the land.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.