The California Coastal Commission Has 47 Staff Members for Every Surfer Who Actually Uses the Coast
State Agency With $60 Million Annual Budget Controls Access to a Natural Resource That Belongs to Nobody and Everybody
Reported by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
SACRAMENTO, CA — The California Coastal Commission, established by Proposition 20 in 1972 and made permanent by the Coastal Act of 1976, employs approximately 180 staff members and operates with an annual budget exceeding $60 million to manage 1,100 miles of California coastline. Its mandate — to protect coastal resources, ensure public access, and regulate development — is genuine and important. Its execution is what surfers, coastal landowners, and libertarian-adjacent thinkers find worth examining.
The Commission’s permit process for any development within the coastal zone — which extends to 1,000 yards inland in some areas — requires environmental review, public comment periods, and Commission approval that can take years and cost tens of thousands of dollars for projects as minor as deck renovations on existing homes. The process exists for real reasons: California’s coast would have been substantially more developed by private interests without regulatory constraint, and the public access that surfers and beachgoers take for granted is protected by the same laws that constrain homeowners who would prefer to close off their beachfront.
The Access Contradiction
Surfers should be among the most enthusiastic defenders of the Coastal Commission because the Commission’s primary achievement — maintaining public access to beaches that private development would otherwise close — directly benefits them. The Malibu access battles of the 1970s and 1980s, in which wealthy homeowners attempted to block public beach access, were won through Coastal Act enforcement. Without the Commission, the surf breaks most prized by California’s surfing community would be less accessible, not more.
The contradiction that libertarian surfers must navigate is this: the freedom to access the wave requires the regulation that prevents private enclosure of the coast. The Coastal Commission is both the bureaucracy that makes permit approval a two-year ordeal and the institution that keeps Point Dume, Malibu, and Rincon accessible to everyone rather than to the residents of the adjacent estates. Both things are simultaneously true. The question is not whether regulation is needed — it is — but whether the current regulatory architecture is the most efficient means of achieving the access and environmental protection goals that justify it.
The Permit Backlog
The Commission’s permit backlog — applications pending review that exceed the agency’s processing capacity — creates costs for small property owners and businesses that large development interests can absorb and small ones cannot. A family that wants to build an accessory dwelling unit on a coastal property faces the same permit queue as a developer proposing a large commercial project, with the same timeline and similar professional fees for consultants and attorneys to navigate the process. The Commission has been aware of the efficiency problem and has implemented reforms that have reduced processing times in some categories. The backlog remains substantial.
The California Coastal Commission’s website provides permit information, public access data, and the agency’s own documentation of its caseload and processing times. The Surfrider Foundation, which works closely with the Commission on access and environmental issues, publishes assessments of coastal access threats and regulatory responses. Both provide the information needed to form a view of the Commission that is more nuanced than either “essential guardian of the coast” or “bureaucratic obstacle” alone captures, though both of those descriptions are also partially accurate.
For libertarian perspectives on coastal governance, see Reason.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
