Wilson’s Plan for the Coast May Result in Higher Fees

Even before Gov. Pete Wilson officially unveils his much-heralded coastal protection proposal later this week, some environmentalists are complaining that it fails to address key conservation issues.

Others say the plan, if approved by the Legislature, could help the environment because it calls on local governments such as the city and county of Los Angeles to take control of their coastal areas. And then there are the skeptics who question whether the $13-million plan will do anything at all.

But there is one prediction many experts share: The real losers in the proposal--at least for the first few years--may be the people who seek to build, remodel or renovate homes and businesses along the coast, especially those in and around Los Angeles County who make up the lion’s share of business that goes before the California Coastal Commission.

The so-called “coastal initiative,” which Wilson plans to release as part of his budget Jan. 9, among others things would require city and county governments operating within the state’s vast coastal zone to take over much of the regulatory responsibility from the statewide commission.

Many already have, but 43 jurisdictions have not, including Los Angeles County, as well as the cities of Los Angeles, Malibu and Santa Monica. Wilson wants them to draw up their own Local Coastal Plans to regulate development along the coast, in keeping with broad guidelines set by the commission and the state Coastal Act of 1976.

And that could end up costing developers and homeowners, not to mention the municipalities themselves. If the local plans are enacted, those seeking permits might see significantly higher fees than the Coastal Commission now charges, and could also face longer waits as well, according to city and county officials and others familiar with the outlines of Wilson’s plan.

“Local governments should be taking first crack at implementing coastal zone policy,” said Peter M. Douglas of the Coastal Commission. “But it’s going to be more expensive and time-consuming.”

George Malone, a regional planner specializing in coastal issues for Los Angeles County, said the change from state to local control could end up costing residents big money. Now, for example, a homeowner near Malibu can get a permit from the Coastal Commission to add a front porch or building on a vacant lot for just $250, by presenting an application to the commission’s Ventura office.

If the county were to take over, Malone said, a public hearing might be required for each renovation in the coastal zone--at a cost of $3,700 to the homeowner.

Andy McLeod, the state’s deputy resources secretary, said Friday that he didn’t know whether the initiative would increase the time and expense of building within the coastal zone, which at some points stretches miles inland.

“I would say that fundamentally . . . the land-use decisions involving the coast are best made by those locally,” McLeod said. “If there are costs associated with that, it too is an issue that should be addressed locally.”

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While city officials in Malibu and Los Angeles said it would be hard to gauge whether Wilson’s plan would result in increased costs and delays, several consultants and developers familiar with doing business with Southern California municipalities are already groaning at the thought of such a transfer of power.

“It will be worse, for at least two years,” said Jaime Harnish, a land-use consultant who for 15 years has navigated through the potential minefield of coastal permitting on behalf of businesses and homeowners, including celebrities like Barbra Streisand.

“It will not only be more expensive and time-consuming, but they won’t know what they are doing,” Harnish said of the local agencies. “It will be very new for them. A lot of projects the state commission would have [approved without a hearing], the city will probably hold a hearing anyway.”

Douglas, executive director of the commission, said the panel usually turns around a permit request within 45 days. Both he and Harnish said those municipalities that have already established their own local permitting authority--including Ventura and Mendocino counties--take much longer to process permits.

Douglas also said the Coastal Commission does not seek to recover the costs of approving such permits, including the time and expense it takes to alert the community and hold public hearings. Although he’s supportive of the Wilson proposal in concept, Douglas said local governments will not be nearly as generous.

“We’d obviously have to charge for it,” agreed Vince Bertoni, Malibu’s interim planning director. “We can’t charge more than the cost, but we’d try to recover our cost.”

The cost to local governments is another unknown, but that could be enormous, both in drawing up the plans and then hiring and managing the staff to administer the program, officials say. Those costs could be passed along to taxpayers as well.

Technically, cities and counties were supposed to issue permits after the Coastal Act was passed, but many did not due to the cost, hassles and controversy that comes with balancing development and conservation along the shoreline.

Malone, of Los Angeles County, said the county spent more than $1 million in staff time over five years developing a coastal plan for just one of its four regional areas in and around Marina del Rey.

The city of Malibu last month agreed to pay a private firm as much as $140,000 for its coastal plan. Even with the City Council’s insistence that the plan be a top priority, it will still take at least 20 months to develop, said Bertoni and Paul Crawford of the San Luis Obispo-based consulting firm drawing up the plan.

Wilson has said he will provide $500,000 to the Coastal Commission for technical assistance to local entities preparing their coastal plans, which some local officials say is not nearly enough.

And Wilson so far has not put any “teeth” into the proposed initiative to force local governments to develop their own coastal plans.

Some, like Malone, said that without such pressure, “I don’t think anyone’s going to change their minds and get busy doing it.”

Malone said the county drafted a plan for the Los Cerritos area near Long Beach a decade ago but never implemented it. Officials figured that Long Beach would have to annex the area before it could be developed, he said, so the plan seemed almost irrelevant. “It has more or less sat on the shelf since that time,” he said.

A plan for the Malibu area was also developed, but the Coastal Commission rejected it in the late 1980s. After that setback, Malone said, the effort fizzled. “We sort of ran out of funding,” he said. “Our priorities changed and our staffing got cut, and this is one of the projects that became dormant.”

“[Writing a coastal plan] is a nice thing we all ought to do,” Malone said, “but I don’t know if it’s going to radically change either what’s going to get developed or how it’s done.”

When it comes to the coastline, Douglas stressed, the cost of transferring authority to local jurisdictions may seem inordinately high, especially for small businesses and homeowners. But, he said, the higher price tag may mean better outcomes for developers and municipalities alike.

In Long Beach, officials say they have found their coastal plan helpful in setting out a vision for the development of their waterfront. Approved by the Coastal Commission in 1980, after a series of public hearings and community meetings, Long Beach’s plan was one of the first in the state implemented under the Coastal Act.

“It works very well,” said city planner Greg Carpenter. “It’s been a benefit to developers to deal with the city directly instead of having to get a second layer of approval from the state.

“[And] to the extent local decision-makers can play a part in local decisions, that’s important,” Carpenter said. “Their decision-making reflects local concerns maybe a little more than this group of people appointed by the Legislature [on the Coastal Commission].”

That would be good in the long run for local residents and developers alike, because they would have a clearly spelled-out set of rules, guidelines and expectations to follow instead of just doing what they want and hoping the Coastal Commission approves it, Douglas said.

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Yet even with a plan in place, some projects still end up before the Coastal Commission. The state has jurisdiction over properties right along the waterfront, so the commission must review projects there, including a pending renovation of the outdoor dining area of the Belmont Brewery. Even Long Beach’s proposal to raise parking meter rates to 50 cents an hour along the beach requires state approval.

And many decisions made by local governments could be appealed to the commission as well.

The issue of who should regulate development in the coastal zone dates back to before the establishment of the Coastal Act. That law called on all cities and counties to create their own coastal plans and begin determining who should get permits to build or remodel. Because so many municipalities failed to do so, the Coastal Commission ended up deciding the requests instead of acting as a sort of statewide overseer of the local programs.

Wilson’s aides say the governor wants to force the local governments to complete those plans so the commission can deal with the larger issues of balancing development and conservation along the state’s 1,100 miles of coastline.

In recent years, the issue of coastal development has become increasingly politicized. In August, some Republican commissioners on the 12-member panel moved to fire longtime director Douglas, saying the agency’s staff under his leadership had grown overly obstructionist and insensitive to the role of coastal landowners and developers.

Although that effort failed, the commission is now moving ahead with an audit that aims to determine how effective it is, and how to improve its operations, perhaps to make it more “user-friendly,” in the words of one commissioner.

Also, the federal government is gearing up once again to condemn the state’s efforts to manage its coastline. John King, of the Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says a soon-to-be released report will echo many of his agency’s findings in past reports, when it found significant problems with statewide oversight of California’s federally approved coastal management program.

A 1993 report specifically criticized the state for not providing enough funding and staff resources necessary for the Coastal Commission to do its job. It noted that in 1993, the commission and a related agency, the State Coastal Conservancy, had the lowest level of funding and staff resources since the coastal management plan was enacted in 1976. That resulted in “serious adverse effects” on the commission’s most important functions, including the issuance of permits and monitoring and acting against illegal development.

Douglas acknowledged that the Coastal Commission needs to spend its time and resources on bigger and more important responsibilities.

Some skeptics already have warned that the proposal is Wilson’s way of easing restrictions on developers by giving more authority to local governments that are far more dependent on financial support from those developers than are the appointees of the Coastal Commission. Others, such as Malibu’s Bertoni, say local officials probably would be justifiably protective of their coastal zone. In Malibu’s case, that includes the entire city.

“The issue is . . . local control,” Bertoni said. “People here just feel comfortable having their own control over such land-use issues.”

Times staff writers Frank Clifford and Jenifer Warren contributed to this report.