Coastal Commission Halts Bid to Fire Director

In the face of criticism, the 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.

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

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

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

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

Fear of the potential political fallout for Republican candidates in the November 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 the executive director’s fate was not decided 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 move 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.”

Although Douglas survived the most serious threat of his 11 years as executive director, it was clear that the agency is moving to become a “more user-friendly commission,” sensitive to the rights of private property owners.

Douglas said 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.”

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.”

Backers of Douglas gave him a sustained standing ovation.

Commissioner Tim Staffel, a Santa Barbara County supervisor and appointee of Gov. Pete 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,” he said.

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 the 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 along the Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties coastline. Property owners have complained that the commission staff--led by Douglas--has delayed the issuance of permits for projects ranging from the installation of sea walls that protect houses from the ocean to the construction of new developments along the shoreline.

Paul Evaleth of Encinitas was among those Friday who demanded that the commission remove Douglas.

“My parents and thousands of neighbors up and down the California coast have continuously suffered with uncertainty” over the use of their property for the past decade, he said. “Folks, it’s time for a change.”

The overwhelming majority of speakers, however, supported Douglas. Mel Nutter, a Long Beach attorney and former chairman of the commission, hailed Douglas as a “coastal patriot.”

Since the special meeting was called last week, environmentalists and elected officials, primarily Democrats, have mounted a well-organized and vocal campaign to save Douglas. Both the Los Angeles City Council and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors called on the commission to keep him on the job.

From the moment the commission began three days of meetings Wednesday, sign-carrying demonstrators and dozens of speakers praised Douglas as a longtime proponent of keeping the coast free of unnecessary development and maintaining and expanding public access to the shoreline.

The suspense was heightened because Republican members refused to say what they intended to do about Douglas.

Sharp partisan exchanges between commissioners and occasional verbal confrontations between supporters and opponents of Douglas began as soon as the meeting got under way Friday afternoon.

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

“We need to be very watchful,” said Nancy Donaven of Huntington Beach, 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. “If you’re going to protect the coast, protect it--but in a sensible way. 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.”