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Health & Fitness

Vampires Arise: Bill Seeks to Broaden Coastal Commission Powers

A nightmare scenario that has been proposed over the years - and repeatedly rejected by the state Legislature - has arisen from the dead: to give the California Coastal Commission (CCC) more enforcement authority, including the right to levy fines. Kinda of like giving a vampire the keys to a blood bank.
 
AB 976, by Assemblywoman Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) would substantially expand the CCC’s powers, including most significantly, giving the CCC the ability to impose fines. The bill is scheduled for hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Interestingly AB 976 barely passed the Assembly by a 42-32 vote. Barely passed? Recall the vote was taken with seven Assembly members absent, abstaining or not voting and with one vacancy in the Assembly… so in reality it was a 42-40 decision. To no one’s surprise, most liberals supported the bill and most middle-of-the-road as well as conservatives did not back the proposal.

And get this: The bill was recommended by the supposedly nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst's Office. How expanding the scope of one of the state’s most reviled, devious and bureaucratic agencies is a “non-partisan” move is beyond the understanding of many.

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Supporters of AB 976 (the usual suspects) note the CCC has no authority to issue fines when people block access to public beaches (even if it’s on their own private property), build patios and decks on their coastal homes without permits or in situations of actual harm such as destroying wetlands. The bill is developing into one of the major environmental battles in Sacramento this year.

Under the 1976 law that established the CCC, the agency can collect money only by taking violators to court. Which means the CCC staff has to provide for due process (gasp!) and present evidence of wrong-doing (gaspx2!)… and yet some find this anethmatic?

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The claim is that with limited staffing and funds, the CCC has taken someone to court only four times in the past 10 years. (No report on how many times the CCC staff simply waited out private property owners and let them just drop matters out of exasperation and mounting costs, but I digress.)

The CCC claims there are now 1,837 backlogged cases with the cases ranging from wealthy Malibu residents putting up illegal "no parking" signs on their own private property, which the CCC asserts blocks families from public beaches (?) to owners dumping debris on the shoreline in rural Del Norte County (seems like a legitimate CCC undertaking for a change.(

The fact is, a majority of Californians have long distrusted and disliked the CCC, saying that its rules can be Byzantine and its bureaucracy difficult to deal with… no kidding, Sherlock. And some of that has to do with the most of the CCC staff having their own agendas when it comes to enforcing the labyrinth of regulations they can pick and choose from… so the last thing most want is for the CCC to have more power.

The bill’s author claims that more than 20 other state agencies, including the Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Air Resources Board, can issue fines on their own. Atkins said she’s changed her bill to allow the commission to collect no more than 75 percent of what a court could order for violations, and for it to take effect over a trial period that ends Jan. 1, 2017.

However, as succinctly noted by the California Chamber of Commerce, "Sometimes the violations stem from a phone call - one neighbor doesn't like something another neighbor has done - and they pick up the phone and call the Coastal Commission, and it’s something like a rose bush that is too high up, or your wall is not the proper dimension."

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