Coastal Panel Halts Bid to Fire Director

In the face of criticism, Republican members of the California Coastal Commission backed away Friday from a move to fire the powerful agency’s longtime executive director, Peter Douglas.

As hundreds of environmentalists and supporters of Douglas packed a Huntington Beach hotel ballroom for an emotionally charged showdown, Commission Chairman Louis Calcagno suddenly announced that he would not proceed with consideration of Douglas’ future as chief of the coastal agency.

“I find it regrettable that a personnel matter that is clearly within the purview of the Coastal Commission . . . has been turned into a circus by some in the media and by vocal special interest groups,” Calcagno said.

The debate occurred just a few minutes’ drive south of the Bolsa Chica wetlands, site of a hard-fought development plan that helped ignite the controversy over Douglas. Opponents of that development plan by the Koll Real Estate Group showed up en masse at the meeting, toting anti-Koll signs.

A move by Calcagno to table the issue of Douglas’ future for the time being was approved on a straight party-line 8-to-4 vote over the vehement objections of Democrats on the commission, who demanded that the controversy be resolved.

After taking control of the commission last month for the first time in its 24-year history, the Republican majority immediately took aim at Douglas and called the special meeting to consider dumping him.

The abrupt decision to avoid even considering the ouster on Friday came about because there apparently were not enough votes to fire him.

Republican Commissioner Ray Belgard, a Santa Cruz County supervisor considered a swing vote, said he was not prepared to fire Douglas. “I’m not here to decimate the Coastal Commission,” Belgard said.

Fear of the potential political fallout for Republican candidates in November’s election sparked at least three GOP lawmakers representing coastal districts from Santa Cruz to Santa Barbara to oppose the move against Douglas in recent days.

Although Douglas’ fate was not decided on Friday, Calcagno said in an interview later that he thinks Douglas and the commission’s new Republican majority can learn to work together.

Commissioner Rusty Areias, a former Democratic assemblyman, demanded that the panel affirm Douglas’ status as chief of the agency, but that countermove was blocked by the Republicans.

Areias said “hardball politics”--not policy differences over the commission’s control of the state’s 1,100-mile coastline--were responsible for the extraordinary meeting. He branded the effort to remove Douglas “a naked power grab by the [Wilson] administration.”

While Douglas survived the most serious threat of his 11 years as executive director, it was clear that the agency, dominated by Republicans for the first time in its history, is moving to become more sensitive to interests of private property owners.

Douglas said Friday that he was humbled by the “overwhelming outpouring of public support for effective coastal protection. I think it is an affirmation of public support for a high quality, professional staff that is politically nonpartisan and can do its work free from inappropriate outside pressures,” he said.

Douglas, a 53-year-old attorney, insisted that protection of the coast cannot be a partisan political issue. “Our job is not to make friends, but to carry out legal determinations in a fair and objective manner,” he said.

Backers of Douglas gave him a sustained standing ovation.

Commissioner Tim Staffel, a Santa Barbara County Supervisor and appointee of Gov. Wilson, said the commission has the right to review its staff’s performance. “We want to make sure that policymakers run the staff, not the staff run the policymakers,”

The call for a special meeting to consider the future employment of Douglas came barely a month after Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) named four Republican commissioners to the panel, including two who had long running battles with the agency over development of homes in the Santa Monica mountains.

Douglas co-wrote the 1972 initiative that created the coastal commission and was a principal drafter of the 1976 Coastal Act, the state’s coastal protection law. He has been an ardent defender of providing greater public access to the coastline; protecting wetlands, coastal agricultural lands and scenic vistas; and restricting offshore oil drilling.

But in recent years, he has offended powerful coastal interests, particularly on the coastline of Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties. Property owners complained that the commission staff--led by Douglas--has delayed the issuance of permits needed for projects that range from the installation of sea walls that protect houses from the ocean to the construction of new developments along the shoreline.

The immediate source of Douglas’ troubles appears to be the Bolsa Chica wetlands, home to a number of rare species of birds. Koll plans to build 900 homes on the wetlands and 2,400 more homes on a coastal mesa to the north, but environmentalists have vociferously opposed the plan.

Douglas last fall opposed building the 900 homes on the wetlands, but was overturned by the commission, which voted 8 to 3 in January to approve the entire 3,300-home Koll project.

Douglas has traced his current problems to the staff disapproval of the Koll project as well as staff opposition to efforts by Southern California Edison Co. to roll back its requirements to mitigate damage caused by the San Onofre nuclear plants in northern San Diego County.

Environmentalists reacted to the commission’s inaction against Douglas with both subdued relief and wariness.

“We need to be very watchful,” said Nancy Donaven of Huntington Beach, who is president of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust, a group opposed to any development in and around the Bolsa Chica wetlands. “This was an attempt to harm the Coastal Commission by intimidating the staff.”

Others were disappointed that Douglas kept his job.

“I think someone got through to Wilson,” said Dixie Moore of Malibu, who criticized the commission staff for being too stringent and interfering with property owners’ rights. “If you’re going to protect the coast, protect it--but in a sensible way,” she said. “And don’t get in the way of property rights.

But Ann Notthoff of the Natural Resources Defense Council offered the commission a different view.

“You try to mess with the coast and the public will rise up,” she said.