Legislators Moving to Shore Up Coastal Commission : Environment: Two bills would increase the panel’s power to stop illegal development of California’s coast.

The Legislature is close to giving the California Coastal Commission broad new enforcement powers--including the authority to levy $10,000-per-day fines--to stop illegal development, a problem especially acute along the Orange and Los Angeles county coastline.

The commission is investigating 700 violations of state laws designed to protect environmentally sensitive coastal areas from being overrun by excessive development. State officials say more than half of those violations occurred in Los Angeles and Orange counties, with Malibu being a key trouble spot.

But commission members complain that when they do discover illegal building, their only recourse is to sue the offenders in court proceedings that are often costly and time-consuming. While the court battle proceeds, officials say, the developers often continue building, and by the time the commission gets a legal ruling it may be too late to stop the construction.

“Illegal development is commonplace because the commission lacks enforcement powers,” said Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles), author of two bills boosting the commission’s authority. “Violators are either not caught, or if they are caught, the fine is so low that they consider it the cost of doing business.”

One of Rosenthal’s bills would give the commission, for the first time, the power to impose fines where an ongoing violation occurs and issue cease-and-desist orders without going to court. The other bill requires the commission “to develop and implement a comprehensive enforcement program” to discover where the illegal activity is taking place.

Both bills would use the fines levied against violators to finance the enforcement program. The second measure would even allow the commission to charge violators an hourly rate for the cost of investigating their alleged wrong-doing.

“We hope that the bills will be so successful in deterring violators that we won’t raise money,” said commission enforcement officer Nancy Cave, adding that other state departments such as the Department of Fish and Game already have similar authority.

But critics charge that the commission’s new powers would infringe on civil liberties by bypassing the courts.

“You should not allow anyone to run roughshod over constitutional protections of due process,” said John R. Gamper, a lobbyist for the California Farm Bureau Federation. “The concept of allowing a state agency to finance its activities by levying fines is a very troubling precedent. There’s a great potential for abuse here.”

Rosenthal’s legislation has already passed the Senate and early this month was approved by the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. The bills will go before the Assembly Ways and Means Committee in August and are expected to pass when they reach the Assembly floor.

Supporters are, as one put it, “cautiously optimistic” that Gov. George Deukmejian will sign the bills, even though he vetoed a less punitive version of the legislation authored by Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia) last year.

“It’s an election year and next to offshore oil drilling, this is the most important issue with respect to the coast,” said the supporter, who did not want to be identified. “The question is, does (Republican gubernatorial candidate) Pete Wilson want to see a (Deukmejian) veto of major coastal protection legislation that won’t hurt anyone except illegal developers?”

Environmentalists believe the legislation is long overdue. Groups like the Sierra Club have been dismayed by speculators and developers who are illegally building houses and roads, flattening mountain ridges and filling stream beds in coastal areas. That kind of damage is virtually impossible to repair and leaves lasting damage to the environment, they say.

Illegal development has been an especially chronic problem in Malibu, which Coastal Commission members describe as the site of the most serious road-grading violations in the state. A man plunged to his death earlier this year from an unsafe private road that officials said was illegally constructed in Malibu’s Ramirez Canyon.

According to environmentalists and commission members, developers are so tempted by the soaring land values along the coast that they are rushing to build in the Santa Monica Mountains and elsewhere--often without bothering to obtain the necessary permits.

Officials cite one case where a builder in Sweetwater Mesa allegedly bulldozed five times more land than permitted in order to complete his development. Nearby, they say, a developer ignored work-stoppage orders and illegally paved a road leading to a $795,000 house. And another developer allegedly graded the slopes of landslide-plagued Las Pulgas Canyon in Pacific Palisades without getting a permit.

Theoretically, the 15-member California Coastal Commission is empowered to prevent that sort of activity. Under the 1976 Coastal Act, the board is charged with “managing California’s coastal resources” by regulating coastal recreation, the marine environment, land resources and development. The commission has ultimate authority over virtually all construction permits issued in coastal areas.

But members complain that they have been severly hampered in their efforts to enforce the law. Not only does the board lack the enforcement power to punish violators, but members say they have been hurt by years of budget austerity. The board can only afford one full-time enforcement officer to cover the entire state because the agency’s funding declined 31% during the last decade, officials said.

“We’ve been struggling to deal with the problem (of illegal development),”said Commissioner Madelyn Glickfeld. “But after a year and a half of concerted effort, we see no decline in illegal activity because the fines are so low and land values are skyrocketing. When developers are caught they step up the intensity of the work. And some violators then sell the property, making it impossible to stop.

“Many of these developments not only endanger lives,” she added, “but lead to the irretrievable loss of resources.”