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California has had a Coastal Commission for more than a half-century, beginning with a 1972 ballot measure whose advocates played on Californians’ fears about losing access to popular beaches and who cited the sprawling Sea Ranch development along the Sonoma County coast as an example.
The measure gave the commission a four-year tenure. A few years later, then-Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature made it a permanent fixture of state government, with 12 appointed members. The agency gained broad powers to oversee what happens in a legally defined “coastal zone” that often stretches several miles inland from the Pacific coast.
Its members, all political appointees, would come and go, but the real power was vested in one man, Peter M. Douglas, a former legislative staffer and the principal author of both the ballot measure and the subsequent legislation. He was the commission’s executive director for 26 years.
Douglas, who died in 2012, made no secret of his belief that the commission should expand its protective mission as broadly as the law and the courts would permit. He viewed the commission as superseding all other state and local land use regulations, thus having the last word on anything substantial in the 1,000-mile-long coastal zone.
That assumption had two consequences: bitter opposition from local governments and developers about having to bow to Douglas and a substratum of influence-peddling and corruption.
The commission’s decrees have immense financial impact. Parties with pending cases often hired specialized lobbyists who — given high enough fees — could steer their clients through the often tortuous approval process.
That subculture was exposed in the early 1990s when Commissioner Mark Nathanson admitted to soliciting bribes for building permits, including those of several well-known movie industry figures. Nathanson, a Beverly Hills real estate broker, was sentenced to four years and nine months in federal prison.
In recent years, the Coastal Commission’s bias against development in the coastal zone, even in sections far inland from the coast, clashed with efforts in the Capitol to remove barriers to new housing. Some housing streamlining legislation gingerly sought to make the commission more housing friendly, but the Coastal Commission clung to its assumption of being the final authority.
Last month, the state Supreme Court unanimously rejected that assumption, declaring that the commission could not intercede on a project that a local government had approved in compliance with its overall coastal development plan.
The commission had tried to block a three-house project near Los Osos in San Luis Obispo County.
The court’s decision, written by Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, declared that “both local and state goals are important, and neither the county nor the commission, as local and state entities respectively, should have greater deference.”
By happenstance, the Supreme Court ruling was issued just as the commission was also having its wings clipped in a lawsuit filed by electric car and space rocket tycoon Elon Musk.
In October 2024, the commission denied an application by Musk’s Space X to increase the number of Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg Space Base. Several commission members cited Musk’s close ties with Donald Trump, who was elected president for the second time a month later.
Caryl Hart, who chaired the commission at the time, said Musk “aggressively injected himself into the presidential race and made it clear what his point of view is.”
Musk sued, contending — accurately — that the rejection was political retaliation. Last month, the commission surrendered, apologized to Musk and promised that it “will not take into account the perceived political beliefs, political speech or labor practices of SpaceX or its officers in considering any regulatory action concerning SpaceX.”
The two cases bring the Coastal Commission’s half-century assumption of almost limitless power down to earth.
