Environmental Groups Working to Oust Coastal Panel Chairman

It has been little more than a month since Michael Wornum was elected chairman of the California Coastal Commission, but he already finds himself at the center of controversy.

A coalition of environmental groups seeking Wornum’s ouster from the commission is lobbying the Senate Rules Committee to block the former Marin County supervisor’s reappointment to the board. Their complaints range from Wornum’s longtime ties to local government to allegations that he sometimes dozes during commission meetings.

Whether they will succeed or not is unclear, but the fact that the environmentalists are after Wornum, an opponent of offshore oil drilling who is usually regarded as a moderate on the panel, is a measure of the anxiety with which they view the future of the commission, the principal watchdog agency over California’s 1,100-mile coastline.

Under the state Coastal Act, Wornum and the 11 other voting commissioners have the responsibility of protecting coastal resources largely as an appellate body over decisions by local government affecting the coastline.

To the panel’s chairman falls the influential task of controlling debate. Moreover, the chairman’s role can extend beyond commission meetings, since he is expected to speak out on major federal and state environmental issues, such as offshore oil and gas exploration, in Sacramento and Washington.

Wornum was elected commission chairman Jan. 7 by an 8-4 vote, replacing Long Beach attorney Melvin Nutter, who had chaired the panel for about three years. With the election of Wornum, the chairmanship moved toward the middle. A recent 10-issue “report card” compiled by the Natural Resources Defense Fund, a San Francisco-based environmental lobby, gave Wornum a 60% pro-environment rating. Nutter had an 80% rating.

Now, the Natural Resources Defense Fund is one of the groups leading the attack on Wornum. The others are the Sierra Club, the League for Coastal Protection and the California League of Conservation Voters.

Smarting under the Deukmejian Administration’s undisguised hostility toward the commission--the governor has unsuccessfully sought to abolish the panel--these groups think that this is no time for moderation on the coastal panel.

Vice Chairman Also a Target

They also are seeking to replace the new commission vice chairman, Baldwin Park City Councilman Leo King. The terms of Wornum and King expired Jan. 25, although they remain on the commission pending their reappointment or replacement by the Rules Committee.

In a recent letter to newspaper editors, the groups warned that Wornum and King, in combination with Gov. George Deukmejian’s four commission appointees, have the “power to destroy the coast. . . .”

Environmentalists also are suspicious of Wornum’s ties to local government, which they regard as too often ready to give in to developers. In addition to having served on the Marin County Board of Supervisors, Wornum, 60, is a former mayor of Larkspur and Mill Valley and served one term as a Democratic assemblyman.

“He’s a pretty consistent friend of local government regardless of what local government wants to do and that’s not why we have a Coastal Commission,” said Ann Notthoff, a strategist for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Dorill Wright of Port Hueneme, a commissioner appointed by Deukmejian and former president of the League of California Cities, said Wornum can be expected to be “more sensitive to the needs of local government” than former Chairman Nutter.

And Roger Osenbaugh, an Arcadia-based consultant who represents the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in its battles with the commission over how much development should be allowed in the coastal zone, noted: “(Wornum) is not a rubber-stamp environmental vote.”

Panel Shift Cited

Osenbaugh and Norbert Dall, a Sacramento lobbyist who represents a number of coastal cities and developers, said in separate interviews that the reason Wornum was elected chairman was because he represented a shift by the coastal panel toward a more moderate position on environmental issues.

“He represents the way the commission has been doing business for the last three years,” Dall said, “with high regard for coastal resource protection but with strong consideration” for the needs of local government.

For his part, Wornum bristles when asked about the debate over his environmental record. In a recent interview at his home in Larkspur, he asserted:

“I’m going to damn well go on voting the way I have the last four years, which is on a case-by-case basis with a strong overall belief in coastal protection. . . . I will not take second place to anyone who wants to attack my environmental record. . . . Environmentalists forget what you did for them. They’re a difficult group. . . . “I don’t think (environmentalists) would ever want a local (coastal) plan actually approved if the truth be known because that then puts it back to local control, and they have a profound mistrust of local government.”

As for reports that he dozes during meetings, Wornum admitted: “I may be known to fall asleep sometimes.” For example, he said, during long hearings over a new coastal plan for Mendocino, he may have drifted off. After all, he said, “I heard those arguments 500 times before.”

Sometimes, Wornum suggested, environmental activists exasperate him to the point where he just likes to get away for a time and go jogging on the trails behind his home and up nearby Mt. Tamalpais with Isolde, one of 14 Saluki hounds his wife, Sandra, raises and takes rabbit hunting.

Trained as an Architect

The British-born and bred new Coastal Commission chairman lives with his wife and hounds in a two-story contemporary frame house with its own dock on Corte Madera Creek, where he can pilot a sailboat into San Francisco Bay. He was an architect, as was his father, and taught urban planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his architecture degree.

His only current business enterprise, Wornum said, is a San Francisco insurance firm in partnership with Bert Diamond, the Democratic Party’s state finance chairman.

Wornum’s country gentleman life style has not gone unnoticed by his opponents. They have labeled him a “blue blood environmentalist.” He generally opposes offshore oil drilling and usually supports more public access to the coastline.

But on more local issues, such as pressures for more residential or commercial construction along the coast, he is an unpredictable vote.

Such independence has evoked apprehension among environmentalists, who see the Coastal Commission’s No. 1 task in the years ahead as one of a watchdog over developer inroads on the more than 130 local coastal plans that the agency, by legal mandate, must approve one by one. Each plan, some so controversial that they have taken months or years to resolve, limits commercial and residential development in cities and counties along California’s coastline.

Both Wornum and King must be reappointed by the Senate Rules Committee, and Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), the chairman, is expected to have a lot to say about the decision. Roberti, who appointed Wornum to the commission four years ago, would not discuss whether he will support Wornum for another term.

Decision a ‘Tossup’

One knowledgeable source in Sacramento declared it “a tossup.” Often, the source added, the Legislature does not act on a commission post until well after a term’s expiration date and that no action on Wornum’s seat is expected for at least a month.

In their criticism of Wornum’s record, environmentalists single out his vote last year against proposed amendments to the Mendocino County coastal plan that would have given additional protection to scenic areas, forest and agricultural property.

Additionally, they point to his 1984 vote permitting construction of a road through the the Ballona Wetlands area southeast of Marina del Rey and to his opposition to a commission staff proposal for protecting farmland in the city of Half Moon Bay in Northern California.

But Wornum also has defended issues dear to conservationists.

Immediately after assuming the commission chairmanship, for example, Wornum led a charge to reduce the number of hotel units that would be allowed in the Big Sur land-use plan.

Wornum also has usually voted against high levels of development along Malibu’s 26-mile coastline and recently turned thumbs down on construction of a hotel complex in Malibu’s Civic Center (but the commission approved the plan anyway).

Wornum said he also opposes Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s controversial stalled proposal to explore for oil in Pacific Palisades, which ultimately will have to be decided by the commission.