Voter-created commission to protect California's coast could be a planetary model.
This column was co-published with Zócalo Public Square. Photo credit: Guadalupe, California, Santa Barbara County coast, by Joe Mathews
“By the law of nature these things are common to mankind – the air, running water, the sea, and consequently the shores of the sea." --Justinian Code, Rome, 6th century C.E.
California, let’s go Coastal.
That is to say: Let’s expand the jurisdiction of the California Coastal Commission, currently limited to coastal communities, to cover the entire state.
Why? Because, in this land of weak governments and cowardly corporations, the Coastal Commission may be the only institution left in California with an actual spine.
The fact that the U.S. military and “Space Karen”—the cyber-villain better known as Elon Musk—are now blasting the commission is only the latest testament to its extraordinary effectiveness.
The California Coastal Commission was created not by politicians nor by rich philanthropists but by the people of California, as part of a 1972 ballot initiative. Four years later, the Coastal Act made the commission an independent, permanent, and quasi-judicial agency. Its primary purpose is to review just about any construction or destruction in the coastal zone, which extends the full length of California’s 840-mile shore, from high tide to as much as five miles inland.
No one entity controls the commission. The governor and leaders of the two state legislative houses split the power to appoint the 12 voting members: six from local government, and six representing the public at large. Three non-voting members represent three related state agencies. The commission has around 150 staffers and an annual budget of $33 million, which it uses to both safeguards fragile coastal ecosystems and guarantee human access to the coast.
Coastal commission staff often frame their work as protecting the rights of working-class Californians to be able to travel to the beach, to afford to stay there, and to go anywhere the sand is wet. The commission is not reflexively combative—it values compromise, and seeks to say yes to coastal projects while minimizing their impacts.
However, the wealthiest Californians, with resources to buy expensive coastal properties, can be relucant to compromise. They don’t want my truck-driving cousins from Apple Valley or Modesto traipsing around the sand in front of their beachfront estates. Told that they can’t use fences to create their own private beaches, the wealthy lash out.
Oligarchs and plutocrats are used to getting their way when they demand things from the government officials whose campaigns they fund.
The Coastal Commission is the rare—and often the only—state government agency that will say no to their demands.
The commission fought entertainment mogul (and major campaign donor) David Geffen for decades as he sought to keep the public away from the beach outside his Malibu property. The body engaged in a similarly long war waged against it by U2’s lead guitarist, The Edge, whose ambitions for a beachside compound threatened the coastal environment. Now the commission is fighting attempts by the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla to turn coastal San Mateo County into his personal kingdom.
So, it was probably inevitable that the commission would eventually do battle with the world’s richest and most arrogant person, Elon Musk. On October 10, commissioners voted to oppose an effort to expand the number of SpaceX rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base, on the Santa Barbara Coast.
Musk quickly sued the commission, claiming political bias.
In arguing that the commission overreached its authority by challenging the launches, Musk is doubly wrong. The commission was fulfilling its mission of protecting the coast. Rocket launches, and the sonic booms that follow, are tough on the coastal wildlife, like sea otters and snowy plovers, that the commission is supposed to protect.
And the commission was not blocking all launches. It has a longstanding agreement with SpaceX, via the U.S. Space Force, that permits a half-dozen launches annually. Musk, in an effort to launch more than 50 rockets a year, was breaching the agreement.
The commission has insisted that SpaceX recognize its authority and make an agreement to mitigate the impacts of the launches. But SpaceX has resisted the commission’s authority, saying all the company’s launches are a military, national-security necessity and thus exempt from California scrutiny. That’s false. The commission pointed out that more than 80 percent of the launches don’t carry government payloads.
In the process of voting against SpaceX, commissioners rightly pointed out that Musk is a liar and scofflaw whose representations cannot be trusted. They noted that Musk’s companies have violated California labor laws, and that he has been spreading misinformation about the government response to a destructive East Coast hurricane.
That’s not political bias. That’s fact. Unfortunately, international media boosted Musk’s falsehoods, suggesting that the Coastal Commission was just a group of progressive regulators playing politics. Foolishly, Gov. Gavin Newsom supported Musk’s criticism and had his commissioners vote for SpaceX—a position that was treated as news, but really is dog-bites-man. California governors frequently complain about the Coastal Commission precisely because they don’t control it—and because they must field complaints from rich donors who tangle with the body.
If only the Coastal Commission had similar powers in the rest of California to block our mini-Musks, the rich people and interests who dominate politics and land-use decisions. The coast is a wealthy and beautiful place, with far more accessible open space than anywhere else in California. The rest of the state should be so lucky.
Putting the Coastal Commission in charge statewide might even help solve the housing crisis.
This suggestion might seem crazy to pro-housing YIMBYs, who have tried—and failed—for years to roll back the Coastal Commission’s authority, claiming that it can get in the way of housing projects. But that criticism gets things backward. The commission is a very natural ally of housing advocates.
The Coastal Commission has never blocked an affordable housing project—unlike so many California cities. And commissioners have signaled their interest in doing more on housing, by asking the state to restore their power (taken away in the 1980s) to require developers to provide affordable units. A YIMBY-friendly Coastal Commission could become a powerful force for new housing, in ways that improve access to the beauty and promise of California.
Empowering such a commission, with its history of fighting the powerful, could give communities the reassurance they need to support affordable housing.
Plus, Californians could start bragging that we all live on the coast.
