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Words are powerful - Thoughts shape - Ideas have consequences

David Stirling

Pacific Legal Foundation
Posted January 12, 2004

PLF Takes on Coastal Horrors
www.coastalhorrors.org

Denouncing the California Coastal Commission for making home ownership impossible for many families in the state’s coastal region, PLF unveiled in August a comprehensive project designed to help coastal property owners fight back.

The new legal effort, The Coastal Land Rights Project, includes a special web site—www.coastalhorrors.org—where coastal landowners may report regulatory excesses and unfair treatment by the Coastal Commission or local coastal governments making decisions on their permits to build or make improvements on their properties within the state’s coastal zone. (The web site can also be accessed through PLF’s Homepage.)

PLF is a longtime opponent of the Coastal Commission’s unfair regulatory actions and policies. Among PLF’s most notable cases against the state agency is the 1987 landmark Supreme Court ruling in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission which held that government entities may not use their permitting authority as a means to extract property concessions from landowners. In that case, the High Court described the regulatory methods of the Coastal Commission as “an out-and-out plan of extortion.” Unfortunately, instead of being chastened, the Coastal Commission continues to enforce pre-1987 land thefts, and to this day tries to find ways to slide around the Nollan decision and demand land for permits.

The Coastal Commission is the same agency that recently derailed a small Catholic church’s plan to expand its parking lot by a modest 17 spaces, despite approval by the Santa Cruz city council and two scientific studies confirming the expansion will not harm Monarch butterfly habitat located 300 feet from the church’s property. The agency also exacts a “sand mitigation fee” from property owners who want to protect their land against erosion and the certain destruction of their homes from crashing waves. The Commission extorts this fee because public beaches are not receiving enough sand that would otherwise be provided from unprotected private property.

Through its Coastal Land Rights Project PLF is fighting to stop the gross violations of individual and economic liberties of coastal property owners and to rein in the unchecked misuse of government power. In addition to investigating the “coastal horrors” reported on its special web site, PLF attorneys are closely monitoring public hearings held by the Coastal Commission. If warranted, they will go to court to challenge unreasonable permit conditions having no basis in law; challenge regulatory actions not authorized by the California Coastal Act; challenge denials or unfair limitations on building permits; and defend property owners who have been unjustly accused of violating the state’s Coastal Act.

Reprinted by permission by David Stirling

David Stirling is Vice-President of Pacific Legal Foundation, a Sacramento-based public interest legal organization that defends balanced environmentalism in the nation’s courts. David is former California Chief Duputy Attorney General, a former Superior Court Judge, a three term Member of the California State Assembly, and served as General Counsel of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board for six years under Governor George Deukmejian. (www.pacificlegal.org; e- mail: mds@pacificlegal.org)