Last week, the California Coastal Commission gave a final vote of approval and passed the final draft of the Malibu Local Coastal Plan.
from the publisher/Arnold G. York
I walked out of the California Coastal Commission hearing last Friday feeling like I do after most coastal hearings-beaten up, cheated and ferociously angry.
I was not alone in that feeling. There were many from Malibu who expressed similar feelings to me, which got me thinking about what it is the Coastal Commission does that makes people feel that way. After all, most of us were old, experienced political hands. In the past, we’d lost political battles and won political battles, but few had left us with the bitter aftertaste of the Coastal Commission fight. So the question is, why?
I think, and I almost blush to say this, most of the local people engaged in Malibu political battles are idealists. They believe in government and a fair process with notice, and a fair opportunity to be heard. But when you deal with the Coastal Commission, you get no sense of fairness. In fact, quite to the contrary, you can’t help but feel the game is fixed. It’s rigged. It’s been corrupted by a group of people with an agenda, and although the process has the trappings of a democracy, it really isn’t. It is nothing more than government by a clique, and it always leaves you with the sense that you’ve been mugged-subtly mugged-but mugged nevertheless.
For one thing, the commissioners make it abundantly clear they really don’t care what you have to say. And it doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re a citizen of Malibu, the city government of Malibu, the County of Los Angeles, or even, much to my surprise, the secretary of the California Resources Agency, who is the governor’s No. 1 person on environment. It’s a closed system. If what’s proposed does not come from commission staff, its legal counsel, biologist, or a few handpicked supporters who are often dependent on the enviro movement for their sustenance, the commissioners generally ignore it. The entire group is as inbred as one of those West Virginia clans that lives way back in the hollow, and predictably does strange things.
Contrast that, for a moment, with the way the state Legislature would enact a major piece of legislation such as the Malibu Local Coastal Plan. The Legislature splits the tasks and has a system of checks and balances so no one can control the process, and everything has an opportunity to be vetted before being voted on. The idea is to really take a good hard look at something before it’s passed, or a great deal of time and money will be spent in the future trying to fix it.
The independent legislative counsel’s office drafts the legislation for the author, and then the legislative analyst’s office writes an impartial analysis of the bill-what it does and its fiscal impacts. It then has to go through two separate houses, the Senate and the Assembly, and then it goes through two committees in each house-a policy committee and a money committee-frequently accompanied with a committee report drafted by a knowledgeable committee consultant explaining the pros and cons. Ultimately, if it clears all the committees, it goes to the floor of each house for a vote. If the Senate and Assembly versions are different, as frequently is the case, it goes to a conference committee to iron out the differences. Since the governor ultimately has to sign every bill, and he has veto power, his office gets into the fray, usually somewhere in the legislative process. Also, because whatever the Legislature wants done, it’s ultimately the executive branch (the governor) that must get it done, so the governor has a strong interest in seeing what’s passed is legal, understandable and enforceable without having to go to court every other week to make it work.
Now, take a look at the Coastal Commission. No one but the coastal commissioners has the power to approve the Malibu Local Coastal Plan, change the plan, or block the plan. Everyone on the commission staff works for Executive Director Peter Douglas. No independent analysis, fiscal analysis, written legal opinions supporting the constitutionality of what the commission is proposing, and no opinions other than internally generated staff opinions are gathered. True, other government agencies get to comment, but no one says the commissioners have to listen because no one really has the power to stop them. Witness the Coastal Commission’s total disregard of the county’s objections to making nearly all of Malibu an environmentally sensitive habitat area (ESHA). In fact, even when Resources Secretary Mary Nichols, who is a non-voting member of the Coastal Commission, suggested a compromise on the ESHA issue, the commissioners simply turned her down. The silliness of it all is that, whatever the commission passes, the city will ultimately be called on to enforce the plan, and that’s hard to do when you’re furious.
These people simply answer to no one but themselves, but they get very upset with Malibu when the city has the effrontery to point out to them that the process doesn’t seem very fair.
But sometimes, even if the process is unbalanced or unfair, a good chairperson can smooth it out. And in that regard I’m truly sad to say that Coastal Commission Chair Sara Wan has failed abysmally. I never, in all the years of watching political meetings, have seen a chair so one-sided, so set on tilting the process to achieve a particular result, and disrespecting anyone else with a different opinion. She manipulates the order in which people are called to testify so the citizens of Malibu were invariably at the end of the agenda and forced to wait into the evening to be heard. She allowed those supporting the staff plan uninterrupted time in the beginning, with speakers and supporters being floor-managed by her close friend and confederate, Susan Jordan, who incidentally just happens to be the wife of Coastal Commissioner Pedro Nava, one of Malibu’s severest critics. Not only does one end up feeling the game is fixed, but also that the dealer is dealing from the bottom of the deck.
The foolishness of it all is that somehow they’re acting as if it’s all over now. They’re very wrong. This is merely the end of the beginning.