Musk’s battle with Coastal Commission shows its effectiveness

Let’s put the California Coastal Commission in charge of the entire state.

Why? Because, in this land of weak governments and cowardly corporations, the Coastal Commission is the rare California institution with a spine.

Elon Musk’s new fight against the commission is merely the latest testament to its extraordinary effectiveness.

The California Coastal Commission was created not by politicians but by the people of California, via a 1972 ballot initiative. Four years later, the Coastal Act established the commission as an independent and permanent agency with the power to review construction and other activities in the coastal zone, which extends from high tide to as much as five miles inland.

No one entity controls the commission. The governor and leaders of the two state legislative houses split the power to appoint the 12 voting members, who are charged with safeguarding coastal ecosystems and enforcing the public’s right to access the coast.

The commission is not reflexively combative — it values compromise and seeks to say yes to coastal projects while minimizing their impacts. But oligarchs and plutocrats, who can afford coastal properties, are used to getting whatever they want from government officials.

What distinguishes the Coastal Commissions is its willingness to say no to the powerful.

The commission fought entertainment mogul (and campaign donor) David Geffen for decades as he sought to keep the public away from the beach outside his Malibu property. It had a long war with U2 guitarist The Edge, whose ambitions for a beachside compound threatened the coastal environment. Now the commission seeks to stop venture capitalist Vinod Khosla from turning coastal San Mateo County into his personal kingdom.

So, it was inevitable that the commission would battle the world’s richest and most arrogant person, Elon Musk. On October 10, commissioners voted to oppose an expansion of the number of SpaceX rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base, on the Santa Barbara coast.

Musk quickly sued the commission, accusing it of political bias and exceeding its authority. In this, Musk was doubly wrong.

The commission was fulfilling its mission of protecting the coast. (Rocket launches are tough on the coastal wildlife). And it was responding to Musk’s decision to breach an agreement that limited it to six launches a year (Musk wants to launch 50 or more annually).  SpaceX claims all the company’s launches are a military, national-security necessity and thus exempt from California scrutiny. That’s false. More than 80 percent of the launches don’t carry government payloads.

In the process of voting against SpaceX, commissioners rightly suggested that Musk is a liar and scofflaw whose representations cannot be trusted. They noted that Musk’s companies have violated California labor laws, and that he has been spreading misinformation about the government response to a destructive East Coast hurricane.

That’s not political bias. That’s fact.

Here’s another fact: the coast is a wealthy and beautiful place, with far more accessible open space than other parts of the state. Considerable credit goes to the commission. If only the commission had similar power to protect all of the state’s communities.

Putting the Coastal Commission in charge statewide might even help solve the housing crisis.

This suggestion might seem crazy to pro-housing YIMBYs, who have tried to roll back the Coastal Commission’s authority, claiming that it can get in the way of housing projects. But that criticism gets things backward.