The California Coastal Commission is infamous for being the most out-of-control governmental agency in the nation. This regulatory leviathan fancies itself the undisputed czar of land use and other activities in its fiefdom, the California coastal zone.
Created in 1976 as an agency with regulatory authority across California's 1,000+ miles of coast (and land in a defined shoreward zone), it has since expanded to its current role as a government-outside-the-government, whose main role it often seems is more about wielding an iron fist over anything that happens in the coastal area, than protecting coastal access and resources while also respecting property rights as its governing statutes require.
The Commission has been blessed with procedures that appear insanely unfair to anyone not familiar with how things work in California. For example, any two Commissioners may file an administrative appeal of a municipalilty granting a development permit to get it overturned; and to whom do the Commissioners appeal? To the very Commission on which they sit, of course! Yeah, that seems fair.
For decades, the Commission has enjoyed unprecedented power and a legislature and judiciary unwilling to place or enforce any realistic limits on its power. For example, the courts have interpreted a statute that bars the Commission from taking property without compensation to give the Commission the discretion to waive, overrule, or ignore any restrictive state or local coastal law, if the Commission believes to apply it would result in a taking (the Coastal Act are full of these type of restrictions on use). This is tantamount to the Commission exercising legislative power to rewrite the law ad hoc.
OK, enough editorializing. (Strong letter to follow!)
But of late, there may be cracks in the edifice. In large part because of the YIMBY movement, the Commission has become subject to public criticism for being an impediment to reasonable development, something it is not all that used to. Why should Bakersfield, Fresno, and non-coastal communities bear the burden of absorbing the new housing needed to address California's housing shortage, while the while I-got-mine elite coastal enclaves maintain their exclusivity?
A group called "Circulate San Diego" has studied this phenomenon and published this report ("A Better Coastal Commission"):
This report documents numerous examples where the Coastal Commission has resisted, opposed, and delayed the construction of deed-restricted affordable homes that use programs like Density Bonus Law. This is even true for projects on land that is already zoned for multi-family housing, in plans already approved by the Coastal Commission itself.Similarly, this report documents examples where the Coastal Commission opposes projects that the Legislature encourages as a part of California’s efforts to combat climate change. Crosswalks, bicycle lanes, and infill development near transit are all goals of recent statewide legislation, yet the Coastal Commission opposes or delays many of these projects. Their decisions to prioritize car travel above all other modes is inconsistent with modern climate goals, as adopted by the Legislature.
The report makes some modest recommendations for reform:
- Amend Density Bonus Law to require its implementation by the Coastal Commission, as proposed in AB 2560 (2024).
- Remove or narrow the special exemptions that keep housing reforms from applying to the coast.
- Mandate procedural reforms at the Coastal Commission.
- Apply transportation and climate policy to the Coastal Zone.
- Avoid creating, or narrowly draw, coastal exemptions to new housing legislation.
- Look skeptically on Coastal Commission requests for more authority.
Reacting as you might expect (with affront), the Commission is "offended at even the suggestion" it gets in the way of housing in the coastal zone. See this story from the San Diego Union-Tribune ("Has the Coastal Commission made housing and climate crises worse? It's offended at even the suggestion").
But this seems to be one of those "moments." After all, even the Commission's usual allies are asking questions and proposing reforms. When you've lost San Francisco democrats, and the California Supreme Court agrees to take up the first case in a decade which may call your power into question, Coastal Commission, you are missing the cultural zeitgeist.
Will anything come of this report, and the reform movement generally? Will there be a reckoning for the California Coastal Commission?
If one is in the cards it won't be easy because we know that when there's a threat to its power, it pulls out all the stops and fights like hell. Stay tuned.
