California has one of the world’s most spectacular coastlines, which meanders 1,100 miles from Imperial Beach to Crescent City.
And, of course, everyone wants to “Save Our Coast” and assure public access to beaches, which is why Californians voted 55 percent to 45 percent in 1972 for Proposition 20. It promised to protect open space and restore habitats within the Coastal Zone. In 1976, the Legislature turned the California Coastal Commission into a permanent agency that has tormented property owners and localities ever since.
This frustrating bureaucratic situation has been part of California’s landscape for 50-plus years and there’s been no hope to rein in the abuses, but the tide seems to be turning following a variety of court cases and legislative efforts to limit the commission’s powers.
But first the history. One key problem with California’s direct democracy is voters are easily swayed by broad promises, but then lose interest in real-world outcomes. Voters agreed “it is the policy of the state to preserve, protect, and where possible, restore the resources of the coastal zone for the enjoyment of the current and succeeding generations.” These measures accomplished these goals by granting this body extraordinary powers to restrain development.
Consider that 26.8 million of California’s 39.5 million residents live in coastal counties. The commission’s power can reach five miles inland. It only has direct authority over a small percentage of the state’s land, but it has vast authority over the development process in multiple beach cities. Its decisions reverberate throughout California’s most populated regions, even in areas that aren’t in the Coastal Zone. The commission adds yet another layer on top of these cities’ extensive review processes.
The result: Less construction and housing, along with the abuse of property owners as the commission constantly expands its powers. The commission shakes down property owners by, say, requiring them to remove structures or give up development rights. It imposes—or threatens—enormous fines that are used to pay for remediation or even directed to outside environmental organizations. It uses consent decrees to force private owners to pay for public infrastructure.
This is by design. The late Peter Douglas was the main author of the initiative and the commission’s executive director for many years. In a 1999 speech to the Surfrider Foundation, he cited as one of its significant accomplishments “the subdivisions not approved.” Yet efforts to control some of the commission’s well-documented excesses have always fallen flat. In the early 2000s, the courts declared the commission unconstitutional based on its appointment process, but the Legislature fixed that issue and it’s been business as usual for 20-plus years.
But now that the state is years into a grueling housing crisis, driven by a lack of housing construction in California’s most-populated coastal regions, lawmakers have at least chipped away at commission authority. Senate Bill 423, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, expanded expedited housing approvals in the once-sacrosanct Coastal Zone.
Now under consideration, Senate Bill 963 by Sen. John Laird (D–Santa Cruz) would, as his statement explained, “establish clear timelines to ensure that appealed projects move through the appeals process in a standardized manner to ensure timely compliance with local coastal plans.”
In an April article, The Orange County Register‘s Andre Mouchard reported the state may be “on a path to quietly weaken the California Coastal Commission.” He pointed to Newsom’s 2025 executive order exempting the Los Angeles wildfire-rebuilding process from commission review. And he also referenced Assembly Bill 1740 by Assemblyman Rick Chavez Zbur (D–Santa Monica) that “would do for beach-close business districts of Santa Monica what Newsom’s executive orders did after the fires—sideline the Coastal Commission.”
There’s one more piece of good news, thanks to a recent PLF legal victory. The California Supreme Court, in Shear Development Co. LLC v. the California Coastal Commission, unanimously ruled that the commission had improperly overturned a county building permit near Morro Bay. Per the court: “Consistent with these conclusions, we hold that the commission had no appellate jurisdiction over Shear’s permit application.”
As PLF attorney Jeremy Talcott told me, the case is significant because it restores the oversight role of courts and gives power back to local governments, which can no longer just hand development decisions to the commission. “For years, the commission has usurped the power given by the state Legislature to local coastal communities to approve homebuilding permits,” he said in a statement. It’s not the only recent case that has put limits on commission powers.
Most Californians are no doubt still rightly enthusiastic about protecting our coastline treasures. But the latest news is a reminder that even the noblest-sounding proposals can have severe unintended consequences. I can’t think of anything that’s been made better by handing ham-fisted powers to unelected commissars.
This column was first published in The Orange County Register.
