Coastal Panel

I find it unconscionable that The Times would do as biased an editorial as it did on April 18 without doing the proper inquiry as to the validity of said editorial, which concerned location of Coastal Commission meetings.

The California Coastal Commission is made up of 12 bipartisan members who spend between four and eight days a month (May is four straight days in San Diego and three straight days in Los Angeles) plus untold hours in preparation to cover the voluminous paper work to help preserve the 1,100 miles of California Coast.

Seventy-three percent of the cases that come before the commission are located in Southern California. The 1976 California Coastal Act was designed to help the people of California by protecting and preserving its coast. My motion to have the majority of the meetings in Los Angeles and San Francisco was to make the meetings more accessible for the people for whom the act was designed to protect. The 9 to 3 vote, which was bipartisan and overwhelming in support of my motion, was based on convenience for the people, certainly not for the convenience (as you intimated in your editorial) of the commission members.

There would be no reason to give an advance notice on the motion I proposed nor any reason for staff consultation. The entire commission makes itself accessible to periodic field trips to areas that affect its decisions in the coastal zone of the state. I find it reprehensible that The Times would do an editorial without questioning the maker of the motion and/or any of the people who voted for it.

MARK NATHANSON

Beverly Hills