Funding, for the Coast’s Sake

Villain to some, hero to others, the California Coastal Commission has passed the quarter-century mark--middle age by institutional standards. The agency that voters created in 1972 to protect the state’s fabulous 1,100-mile coastline has compiled a mixed record, as Times staff writer Eric Bailey detailed Monday. Some of its shortcomings can be traced to inadequate funding, failure of local governments to properly plan shoreline development and some nasty partisan games in Sacramento.

If the commission’s survival seems no longer in question, its effectiveness is. Will it fulfill its promise to the voters to control coastal growth, safeguard the most endangered shorelines and improve access to the publicly owned beaches? Even the agency’s defenders acknowledge that more must be done.

Money has been a perennial problem. The commission has never recovered from slashed budgets under Gov. George Deukmejian’s administration in the 1980s, a thinly veiled effort to kill the commission’s work. The panel now has half the staff it had during those years and employs no geologists, marine biologists or hydrologists. Its computer system is so antiquated that key planning and permit records are kept on index cards.

Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature can remedy these deficiencies and should do so immediately.

The commission has received offers to dedicate nearly 1,300 easements across private property to the sea, but only one in five of these paths is now open to public use, and the remaining offers will expire if not formally accepted on behalf of California citizens. Again, funding to nail down titles and clear away liability concerns would solve the problem, opening up inaccessible parts of the coast to all. That funding remains to be approved by the Legislature.

Creative solutions can protect the last precious parcels of open coastline while ensuring fair property use for owners. One approach is more public purchases--passage of the 1972 Coastal Initiative sparked a flurry of public land acquisitions. Another is restricting further development. The present commission’s actions will define the coast’s future well into the next century. Vigilance by the public and creativity in Sacramento are the keys.