The Battle for California's Coast

Though it’s 15,000 to 3 in his favor, the odds may not be good enough for California Coastal Commission Executive Director Charles Lester to keep his job.

On Wednesday, the 12-member board will hold a public meeting in Morro Bay on whether to fire the man at the helm of the agency tasked with protecting sensitive coastal habitat and public access to the beach. It’s not a position the board members wanted to be in. They gave Lester the option of quietly resigning rather than face a public vote to terminate him.

Lester chose the public showdown.

In his corner are more than 15,000 supporters who wrote letters to the commission demanding he keep his job. They are primarily from coastal communities and environmentalists who allege that increasingly pro-development commissioners are trying to weaken the coastal protections.

Only three letter-writers sought to have Lester fired, but his opponents claim the vote isn’t about being pro-development or pro-environment. For them, it’s about improving the management and efficiency at a department notorious among bureaucracies for its slow pace and red tape.

“Running the commission more efficiently is not pro-environment or pro-developer: it’s good management. The commission is well known as a very difficult bureaucracy to deal with,” said Fred Gaines, a San Fernando Valley attorney who has represented several property owners seeking project approval from the commission. “The Coastal Commission is an infamous, mind-boggling bureaucracy, and even the commissioners have gotten frustrated by the slowness of the process and lack of attention of staff to commissioners’ questions and inquiries.”

The Coastal Commission is governed by 12 voting and three non-voting members, each appointed by either the governor, the speaker of the Assembly or the Senate Rules Committee. The average person likely has no awareness of the Coastal Commision, but it’s a major reason California’s coastline isn’t crowded with highrises, resorts and gated communities. It ensures that beach cities allot public parking spaces and why most coastal homeowners aren’t allowed to block public access to the water.

It’s also famous for tying up controversial building projects for years on end or shutting them down completely.

But recent decisions where the board members overruled the commission’s staff by approving controversial developments such as the five-house compound proposed by U2 guitarist David “The Edge” Evans in Malibu, a 32-home housing project in Seal Beach, and the 400-acre Banning Ranch resort and housing project on undeveloped land in Newport Beach.

“Commercial developers are attempting to weaken the role of the commission,” said Sierra Club Chapter Director George Watland. “It appears to us that the recent commission have tilted the balance toward development on these protected lands.”

Commissioner Chair Steve Kinsey, in comments to the The Point Reyes Light, said the move followed a performance review in December and was not motivated by development issues.

“There is understandable fear that this is being driven by developers wanting to undermine the Coastal Act, but the reality is more complicated,” Kinsey told the coastal community newspaper.

But the commission’s detractors don’t buy it.

“This move is widely seen by those concerned with protecting California’s coastline as part of a larger attempt on the part of some members of the commission to weaken enforcement of the Coastal Act,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl.

Saying the commission has increasingly allowed development out of conformance with its mandate, Kuehl urged her colleagues to send a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown, state legislative leaders and each Coastal Commissioner asking them to retain Lester and to “recommit themselves to protecting California’s coastline and beaches for the public.”

City News Service contributed to this report; Photo: Wikimedia Commons