Cleaner Coastal Agency

Legislators are moving with unusual speed to blunt the threat that a band of litigious outsiders has posed to California’s beautiful coast. As lawmakers rush bills to the governor’s desk to preserve the state’s Coastal Commission, they also need to add language that would make it easy to toss corrupt insiders off the panel.

The 12-member commission is made up of eight legislative appointees whose terms are open-ended and four members appointed by the governor to two-year terms. Property rights advocates had argued that the Legislature’s ability to remove and replace its appointees to the panel gave lawmakers an advantage over the governor that violated the state Constitution’s separation of powers.

In December, a state appellate court agreed. Two bills now before the Senate would correct this “defect” in the agency’s makeup and save the commission from possible disbandment by fixing terms for the legislative appointees.

The Assembly bill, which cleared that body last week, prescribes two years, and a Senate bill, now on the Senate floor, would have commissioners serve four years. The fixed terms -- we like four years rather than two -- would insulate commissioners from meddling lawmakers whose wealthy buddies may need a building permit for the Malibu mega-mansion of their dreams. Once Gov. Gray Davis signs the bill, as he has promised to do, the ax poised at the commission’s neck will disappear.

That’s good, but it’s not enough. Three senators are wisely trying to create a mechanism for dumping commissioners who end up on the take. The possibility of corruption is real.

In the early 1990s, Commissioner Mark L. Nathanson pleaded guilty to extorting payments from celebrities in exchange for permits to build along the coast. Nathanson, named to the panel by then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown Jr., went to prison for five years.

Sens. Byron Sher (D-Stanford), Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey) and Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento) want to add language allowing the Legislature to remove appointees for incompetence or corruption. They’re right to insist on this.

Many millionaires and commercial developers with land along the 1,100 miles of California oceanfront have been only too eager to write the commission’s epitaph so they can chain off more of the surf to beachgoers and build still-grander homes.

But keeping the coast open for all Californians requires protecting it not just from mischievous lawmakers but also from the people they appoint who go bad.