Coastal permit processing at standstill; city attempting to hasten LCP lawsuit process Coastal Commission is standing firm in its position that it is not required to process coastal permits.
By Arnold G. York/Publisher
When a group of Malibu citizens arrived at the city clerk’s office in October carrying referendum petitions with 2,600 plus Malibu registered voter signatures, all coastal permit processing in Malibu came to a sudden halt. The referendum petition asks that the recently passed California Coastal Commission Local Coastal Program for Malibu (LCP) be placed on a special election ballot for the approval of Malibu voters.
After the filing, Malibu City Attorney Christi Hogin advised the City Council and the Coastal Commission, in her opinion, under California elections law, once that petition was filed the new Malibu LCP was suspended until the matter was decided at the polls. Therefore, the city had no authority to issue coastal development permits.
Shortly thereafter, Ralph Faust, chief counsel for the Coastal Commission, fired back a letter to the city countering the city’s position on the matter. Faust said, in his opinion, Malibu voters had no legal right to demand a referendum on the LCP. His advice to the city was that it should ignore the referendum petition and do as the commission had instructed it to do, to process coastal permits under the new Malibu LCP.
The scene was set for a classic legal confrontation and the City of Malibu struck first. On Oct. 29, the city filed a lawsuit in the Los Angles Superior Court in Santa Monica against the California Coastal Commission asking the court to direct the commission to continue processing permit applications. The city is making the request because, it says, the Coastal Commission has refused to process permits, and applicants are being shuttled back and forth between the city and the commission. Permit applicants are being, in effect, caught in what amounts to an unofficial moratorium unless the court gives both sides some direction about what to do while the principal case works its way through the courts, which could take up to a couple of years.
The city’s lawsuit, which was legally entitled to a priority setting, is officially set for a case management conference on March 28, 2003, which, by the glacial clock of the court system, is quick, but continues to leave permit applicants in limbo. However, Hogin is hopeful a hearing can take place as early as December.
The City Council has also authorized a second lawsuit, which will be the city’s principal legal thrust and will directly challenge AB 988, the bill that stripped the city of its power to write its own LCP and gave it, instead, to the Coastal Commission. Many other aspects of the newly passed Malibu LCP will also be challenged in the second filing. The city is charging that the Malibu LCP is a monumental overreaching by the Coastal Commission, that it regulates, in what has been characterized as “excruciating detail,” almost every aspect of Malibu civic life including zoning, development, and public works and recreation, to the extent it “nearly, completely replaces the city’s zoning ordinances, zoning map and much of its General Plan,” all of which took the city years to develop. The city also charges the Legislature never intended to give these kind of sweeping powers to the California Coastal Commission merely to expedite the certification of the Malibu LCP.
Some knowledgeable city hall insiders said they are expecting many other lawsuits will be filed shortly by property owners caught in the middle. The conservative legal opinion is that those lawsuits must be filed within 60 days of the approval of the Malibu LCP by the Coastal Commission, which was on Sept. 13, so some feel the time to act is quickly running out. There is also some speculation there is a reasonable chance someone else, either a private citizen or public entity, may go to court to try and block the referendum from being put on the ballot.
At the same time, the city is also proceeding on a political tack, and has set up a timetable for a group of hearings on the LCP so local citizenry will have some input on a revised plan. Once that process is complete, the city intends to go back to the Coastal Commission and ask it to amend the Malibu LCP to a form more acceptable to the Malibu citizenry.
In the interim, even though the city is not processing any application for anything that requires a coastal permit, the Planning Department is still open and doing business, and is processing Malibu permits.