Last week the Assembly Natural Resources Committee passed AB 947. On May 7, the Assembly Appropriations Committee will decide if it should be passed on to the Legislature for vote. This bill is a blatant land and power grab. Land and Power grabs are thousands of years old. In days of yore, and some not so of yore, having land meant you had been granted land by the tyrant or monarch. And your land grant could be as easily rescinded as it was given. It paid to be loyal to the master. Fail to support the tyrant and there went your property.
Small wonder that the constitutional founders put such a premium on the right of a citizen to own property no matter what the owner’s view and support were of the prevailing government. A free vote, the core of democracy, was very much tied in with free ownership of property. Now the law recognizes that on occasion the government may need to possess land for the common good. And a procedure of condemnation has been set up to enable that. The land that is condemned must be bought by the State and its owner must be compensated at the present going value of the property.
This bill, AB947, is an out and out taking of land without compensation. It is designed to get rid of private ownership without paying for it – just as in days of yore. It is out to forbid the owner’s construction of a seawall or other such coastal protections which guard existing structures. This will supposedly bring back the receding sand. The bill’s theory is that the cause of receding sand is human interference in the form of human protective structures.
AB947’s premise rests on science that is as sound as the sand that is receding.
This bill appears to have constructed one picture of what the whole coast of California should look like, without ever consulting the local constituency. Then, in that case. let the State use the law available to it by condemning the property and paying the owner in full for that property. What AB 947 is proposing is to make it illegal for owners to protect their property. Thus. in the course of time, the property will be destroyed by the sea and be valueless, so the State under this bill can take it over for little or nothing.
AB947 and the California Coastal Commission’s plan for Malibu are but products of the same power mentality that seek to take local rights away from citizens. Make no mistake. AB947 is a land grab and a power grab.
Georgianna McBurney