New Appointee Named Chairman of Coastal Panel : Politics: Some members allege back-room deal in choice of embattled Speaker Willie Brown’s ally. Board later OKs controversial Gaviota development.

Amid allegations of back-room dealing, an appointee of embattled Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) was seated on the California Coastal Commission and immediately named chairman Wednesday, only hours before the panel approved a controversial development on the Santa Barbara County coast.

San Francisco attorney Carl Williams was elected chairman over the objections of four appointees of the Senate Rules Committee, who said someone who has not served on the 12-member panel should not be elevated to the top post.

The panel, said Commissioner Garry Giacomini, was “horribly tainted” by the process.

The action was an opening battle in the post-election struggle that is expected to occur as Brown fights to retain his speakership and, with it, powers to appoint members to powerful state bodies, including the Coastal Commission, which oversees development along 1,100 miles of shoreline.

Wednesday’s session at times degenerated into prolonged and occasionally rancorous debate, even though Vice Chairman Louis Calcagno had cautioned his fellow commissioners against “washing our laundry in public.”

Williams won the chairmanship through an alliance of the four commissioners appointed by Brown and the four named by Gov. Pete Wilson.

A representative of the governor said the Wilson appointees were philosophically in tune with the Brown appointees in their approach to coastal development issues.

Wednesday evening, the commission voted 8 to 2 to approve two golf courses on Santa Barbara County’s Gaviota coastline, over the objection of the commission’s staff and representatives of environmental and surfing organizations.

Commission Executive Director Peter Douglas warned at the outset of a long discussion that conversion of the 200-acre coastal property, 10 miles west of Goleta, would set “a very adverse precedent.” The commission had rejected the project earlier this year.

“You don’t protect agricultural lands by putting a golf course on it,” Douglas said.

But representatives of Arco Oil and Gas Co., the land’s owner, said that development of the $10-million Dos Pueblos golf courses--one 18 holes, the other nine--would increase public use of the land and provide beach access for surfers and others.

Attorney Steven H. Kaufmann disputed the Coastal Commission staff’s position that the property is agricultural land. “It’s an existing oil field,” he said, that produced 3,000 barrels a month last year.

Bill Brennan, deputy secretary of the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, told commissioners that maintaining the agricultural zoning on land that had not been farmed for years was not fair to Arco. In supporting the project, the Wilson Administration representative said, “Golf courses are pretty nice pieces of property.”

However, environmentalists, some carrying “Save Our Coast” signs, said the project would hurt one of the last relatively undeveloped stretches of coastline in Southern California.

Linda Krop, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Center in Santa Barbara, said the Arco project would “only pave the way for further development of this rural coast” that extends from the edge of Santa Barbara to Gaviota.

Giacomini, whose family owned dairy farms in western Marin County for generations, argued against the Arco project, warning that it would mark the “beginning of the end of the Gaviota coast” by breaking down agricultural zoning and creating a domino effect for future development.

Earlier in the day, Giacomini accused Brown appointee David Malcolm of working aggressively Tuesday night to line up votes for Williams who, like his predecessor, is African American. Giacomini said Malcolm was making both direct and veiled threats that the Arco project would be defeated if Williams was not elected chairman.

Malcolm, who nominated Williams and pressed for his election, said Giacomini was “so far out of line” that he was not even going to rebut his allegation. Later, he said the suggestion of a linkage to the Arco project was “garbage.”

Giacomini and three other Senate Rules appointees sought to break up the Brown-Wilson alliance by trying to nominate three Wilson appointees as chairman.

Williams resigned as head of the San Francisco Housing Authority in 1985 after 6 1/2 years amid disclosures that the agency was almost $6 million in debt.

On the coastal panel, he replaces Thomas W. Gwyn, another Brown appointee who was elected chairman at his first commission meeting in February, 1990.