Coast Commission Battered but Alive on 14th Birthday

These are not peaceful times for the California Coastal Commission, 14 years after it was created by California voters and 10 years after the Legislature made it a fixture of state government.

Gov. George Deukmejian wants to get rid of the agency and has significantly reduced its staff; environmentalists are increasingly critical of commission decisions, and there is a sharp philosophical split on the panel. Some people worry that Deukmejian will use his veto power to cut off all commission funding if reelected.

“Right now it’s kind of treading water, trying to keep its head above water,” one commissioner, former Assemblyman Charles Warren, said of the panel. He was appointed by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco).

The commission’s original critics--developers, real estate brokers and some coastal property owners--still do not like the agency. When a resolution noting the 10th anniversary of the state Coastal Act came up earlier this year in the Assembly, one opponent likened the act to “Pearl Harbor Day or the sinking of the Maine.” The resolution passed by a bare majority.

But some critics have given up hope of eliminating the agency.

“It’s like the guy with a wart on his nose,” real estate lobbyist Jack Shelby said. “He doesn’t like it but after a couple of years he forgets it’s there.”

Despite the criticism, a number of environmentalists, commissioners and current and former commission staff members agree that the state’s massive effort in land-use planning has produced some positive results.

“There’s probably still been too much development on the coast, but we’re far better off with the commission than without it,” said Corey Brown, a spokesman for the Planning and Conservation League, an environmental group.

Commission staffers point to projects denied, beach access improvements, wetlands restored and protected, agricultural land preserved, and an improvement in the quality of development as evidence that the Coastal Act is working.

“You see a better class of (development) applications just because the Coastal Act exists,” agreed Ann Notthoff of the Natural Resources Defense Council, another environmental organization.

“Then there’s the classic line that the successes of the Coastal Commission are what you don’t see (built along the coast), and that’s true.”

Staffers say the commission has issued nearly 2,000 building permits that require property owners to provide public access to the beach, has virtually halted the disappearance of coastal wetlands, has protected key coastal views and has sought local plans that protect coastal agriculture.

But environmentalists complain that the commission has approved local coastal plans that allow for too much or inappropriately located development.

The commission has approved about 95% of the projects that have come before it--many with conditions attached--but its executive director, Peter Douglas, said there are “literally thousands of structures” that have not been built because of the Coastal Protection Act and the commission.

There are some environmentalists and at least one commissioner who worry that Deukmejian, who called for elimination of the commission when he ran for governor in 1982 and has repeated that desire since then, will try to kill the agency by cutting off its funding if he is reelected Nov. 4.

“If he’s reelected, I expect him to come after the commission with more than a meat ax,” said Commissioner Duane Garrett, an appointee of the Democrat-dominated Senate Rules Committee. “I expect him to come after it like Rambo.”

But Warren, who played a key role in drafting and enacting the 1976 Coastal Protection Act, doubts that Deukmejian would try to kill the commission.

“I don’t see this as a major objective for the governor, that he would put his prestige on the line to eliminate a popular program,” Warren said.

Shelby, a lobbyist for the California Assn. of Realtors, which opposed the coastal initiative as too much regulation, said the Legislature would probably override Deukmejian if the governor tried to veto the commission out of existance.

Kevin Brett, Deukmejian’s deputy press secretary, said the governor still wants to eliminate the panel, contending that coastal planning decision should be left in the hands of locally elected officials. He said it is premature to say what Deukmejian would do in a second term.

“The governor believes that the coast must be protected and resources have to be wisely managed, but he disagrees with this approach,” Brett said.

Under Deukmejian, the commission’s budget dropped from $10.1 million in 1982-83 to $7.7 million in 1985-86, while its staff shrank from 171 to 115 during the same period.

The current state budget, for the fiscal year that started July 1, includes $9.3 million for the commission. But, as in past years, that total includes federal money--$1.25 million in this case--headed for other agencies. The commission staff is up to 117.7 positions.

Critics say the budget cuts have cost the commission some of its most talented staff members and sharply curtailed staff work.

“Staff work is almost strictly limited to processing the crisis of the moment--any particular month’s agenda,” Paula Carrell, a Sierra Club lobbyist, told an Assembly committee earlier this year.

Douglas told the committee that the budget cuts had, among other things, eliminated staff inspections of building sites, delayed some planning and building-permit work, reduced data gathering and cut public information services.

“We have been able to live with the reductions but clearly not without considerable costs,” he told the committee.

Steve MacElvaine, a commissioner appointed by Deukmejian, denied that the budget cuts were severe or that they hurt the commission.

“Where have they hurt? The staff has a heavy load on them but let’s look at the streamlining that has taken place in the last three years,” MacElvaine said.

“We no longer deal with a single-family residence in an existing subdivision four miles from the ocean. Now they are given administrative permits. If Caltrans wants to put an off-ramp sign in Arcata, that probably would get a waiver nowadays. We’re finding that this kind of administrative change does save staff time and is not hurting our job protecting the coast.”

The commission was created by a 1972 ballot measure prompted by concern that local governments were failing to protect vital wetlands and scenic views and that more and more of the coastline was being sealed off by wall-to-wall development and private communities.

The initiative, passed with 55% of the vote after the Legislature refused to approve a similar measure, set up a 12-member state commission and six regional commissions to draft a coastal protection plan and rule on development proposals within 1,000 yards of the shore.

The protection plan recommended such steps as concentrating development in existing urban areas, allowing only limited development on prime agricultural land and making it tougher to develop other agricultural property, protecting public access to the beach and preserving highly scenic, historic and open areas.

In 1976, after a temporary setback in the state Senate, the Legislature approved a Coastal Protection Act that extended the life of the commission system and set out a series of policies modeled after the coastal protection plan’s goals.

The new law required coastal cities and counties to prepare local coastal protection programs and gave the Coastal Commission and the regional commissions the power to reject local plans that failed to meet the act’s requirements. The regional commissions went out of existence in 1981.

Once the commission approves an LCP, as the local coastal programs are called, most permit powers revert to coastal cities and counties, although the commission retains permit power along the immediate shoreline and in coastal waters and acts as an appeals board for certain local government decisions. Local governments can apply to issue permits after the land-use portions of their local programs are approved.

Lois Ewen, president of the League for Coastal Protection and a former coastal commissioner, said the 1976 law “was a compromise over the 1975 plan but it retained all the strongest points we wanted to see.”

Douglas, the commission’s executive director, called the act “a remarkable piece of environmental legislation” but said there is “no question” it could have been stronger.

For example, lawmakers failed to give commissioners the power to issue cease-and-desist orders, forcing the commission to follow the more cumbersome process of going to court to punish lawbreakers, Douglas says.

There are also areas where the coastal zone--the area covered by the 1976 act--should have been broader, Douglas added. The zone extends up to five miles inland in significant estuarine, habitat and recreational areas but less than 1,000 yards in heavily developed urban areas.

Douglas also complains that there is no effective sanction for the commission to use against cities and counties that fail to produce local coastal plans on time. The plans were supposed to be approved by 1981, according to commission spokesman Jack Liebster.

But as of last July, the commission had approved only 48 complete Local Coastal Programs, which consist of land-use plans and zoning components. Ninety of the 126 land-use plans had been approved and 19 others had been rejected, some with suggested modifications.

It had acted on 78 zoning components, approving 49 and rejecting 27, some with proposed changes.

One of Deukmejian’s chief complaints about the commission is the length of time it takes to review local plans.

But Douglas’ predecessor as executive director, Michael Fisher, said the act created “unrealistically short deadlines” for submission of the programs.

Dorill Wright, a Deukmejian appointee and former commission chairman, agreed that the commission has become more conservative since the governor took office. But he denies that the Deukmejian appointees vote as a pro-development bloc and he disputes an environmental group’s rating that gave the Deukmejian commissioners low marks.

“I think one has to be careful when looking at that type of rating because with selective choice of the issues rather than overall voting record you can identify any one commissioner with the other side of the fence,” Wright said.

“There have been issues in which I have not supported the hard-line Administration position,” he added.