A disturbing fact emerged after wildfires ravaged Southern California in January this year.  The California Coastal Commission (CCC) had thwarted the fire-safety efforts of the Los Angeles Department of Power and Water’s (LADPW) in the Pacific Palisades, one of the worst-affected neighborhoods.  The CCC even fined the department $2 million for its initiative.

The Palisades was said to be at “elevated fire risk.”  So, in 2019, the LADPW started replacing wooden utility poles, which were about a hundred years old, with stormproof, fireproof steel poles.  But an amateur botanist complained that the work would harm some 200 shrubs of endangered Braunton’s milkvetch. So, the CCC ordered a halt to the upgrade.

The shrubs were saved, thanks to the CCC prioritizing the environment over people.  But eventually, several more were destroyed in the wildfires, the worst California has seen.  Thirty people were killed, 18,000 homes gutted, and over 57,000 acres scorched.  The Palisades fire alone killed eight people, razed 6,800 buildings, and burned 23,400 acres.

Autonomous, quasi-judicial agencies like the CCC are meant to remain apolitical and humane rather than punitive in their duties. But across the U.S., many such agencies are anything but. The CCC could well qualify as one of the worst.

A lawsuit by Elon Musk’s SpaceX accused the CCC of “naked political discrimination” and of “egregiously and unlawfully overreaching its authority.”  But more on the SpaceX lawsuit later. After all, Musk’s corporation has the clout to put up a strong fight.  First, though, a look at how the CCC became so powerful and agenda-driven and how it has tyrannized the more helpless.

The commission was created in 1972 in response to complaints that private development blocked beach access and hampered the protection of the coast for the public’s enjoyment. Proposition 20, an activist initiative to create the commission, was approved by 55% of voters, which paved the way for the California Coastal Act of 1976.

The legislation gave the CCC jurisdiction over 1,100 miles of California’s combined coastline and shoreline, stretching three miles into the Pacific and several hundred feet to five miles inland.  The San Francisco Bay area, under its own commission, is excluded.  Effectively, the CCC’s writ also runs over 1.5 million acres of land, on which 50% of Californians live.

The CCC has quasi-legislative, quasi-judicial, and quasi-administrative powers. It can frame rules and regulations, veto permits issued by local governments, order government agencies and citizens to follow its orders, cite property owners for violations, and fine citizens and state agencies alike. It operates without time constraints. These vast powers are vested in 12 voting members with four-year terms (all political appointments) and three ex-officio non-voting members.

The 2014 decision of the California legislature to let the CCC impose fines of up to $11,250 per day made it a power unto itself. Now, instead of going to court to enforce orders, the commission started holding its own hearings. Property owners were denied the opportunity to rebut evidence against them or summon and cross-examine witnesses.

Since the commission operated without time constraints, the fear of mounting daily fines kept property owners, especially private citizens, in tight check. The CCC’s overriding powers also forced them to suffer unfair, even nonsensical, rulings. Rather than sue the CCC when due process was denied, they sold their properties, often at a loss.

In the Warren and Henny Lent case, the CCC imposed an arbitrary fine of a whopping $4.185 million.  In 2002, the Lents bought a home along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.  Five years later, the CCC pulled out 25-year-old blueprints used by the original owners to build the house in the early 1980s and claimed that a staircase and a gate violated easement terms.

The Lents said they were unaware of any violations by the previous owners and couldn’t be held responsible for any violations. In fact, they were able to show that there were no violations. The staircase was for emergency egress from the upper story, and the gate kept passers-by trying to reach the easement to the beach, safe from a six- to seven-foot fall to a wooden landing.

However, faced with the fine, the Lents removed the gate — only to find it reinstalled to protect the public from the drop.  The Court of Appeals upheld the CCC’s power to fine for “blocking public beach access.”  The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, and the fines remain in place.  As a Cato Institute brief points out, the Lents’ case is no outlier.  Unbridled, the CCC will continue to go after citizens with the threat of massive fines.

When David and Stephanie Tibbitts wanted to retrofit their oceanfront house in San Luis Obispo County to make it accessible for wheelchair-bound David, the CCC stepped in despite having no jurisdiction.  The local authority had granted permission for the changes, but the CCC said the Tibbittses must remove a seawall that predates the Coastal Act and is not bound by it.

After nearly three years of fighting, the Tibbittses were allowed to make the changes to their home. The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), the pro bono law firm that appeared in both cases, says the CCC’s interference tactic in the Tibbitts’ case is part of its long-term plan to expand its “power over local government” and have the “final say over everything that happens near the coast.”

The CCC’s action against Musk’s SpaceX lends credence to that allegation. Last year, it rejected SpaceX’s plan to increase Falcon 9 rocket launches to 50 annually, claiming they would affect wildlife. However, statements by three commissioners affirm that the action is related not to any wildlife concerns but to Musk’s politics.

Indeed, politics is in the very DNA of the CCC. Peter M. Douglas, the principal author of Proposition 20 and the Coastal Act of 1976, which created the CCC, was an early social justice activist and environmentalist who abhorred capitalism. He described it as “dehumanizing, amoral corporate capitalism and imperialism.”

In his 26 years as executive director of the CCC, Douglas reoriented the agency and the state away from development toward his own brand of environmentalism. Although he opposed private property and development, he owned a house in ecologically sensitive Point Reyes, right on the coast.

That holier-than-thou hunger for control and hubristic belief that activists know what’s best for the world thrives in the CCC. It has now insinuated itself into the rebuilding of the Pacific Palisades. Governor Gavin Newsom said in February, “You can’t rebuild the same.  We have to rebuild with science, with climate reality in mind.”

Acting in concert, the CCC will likely make things difficult for fire victims by blocking rebuilding with time-consuming requirements.  In addition, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors has asked the legislature to repeal fast-track building laws, claiming this would speed up reconstruction.  Of course, this is just a tactic to make rebuilding more difficult.

However, at least one state representative, Kevin Kiley, is fighting back — both against the interference in the Palisades reconstruction and to cut the CCC down to size.  In March, he introduced the Coastal Commission Accountability Act to strip the CCC of its powers.  “The California Coastal Commission is simply out of control and has veered far from its purpose of protecting the coast,” he said.  “The need to rein in the commission has become urgent as we face the challenge of rebuilding Los Angeles following the fires.”

It’s high time this body of unelected bureaucrats, who put politics and junk science above property rights and citizens’ welfare, and even extract bribes, is disbanded.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.

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