California Democrats need to clean up the Coastal Commission

If Democrats are going to “save democracy,” as Vice President Kamala Harris’s lawn signs promise, they could start by cleaning their own backyard.

The California Coastal Commission, an unaccountable government agency tasked with “protecting and enhancing California’s coast,” has tremendous power. But its power is often used counterproductively, by blocking desperately needed housing, fighting desalination efforts, and, most recently, denying a request by SpaceX to increase its rocket launches.

While all of its decisions are infected with progressive politics, the commission’s SpaceX denial was overtly political. In the hearing where the denial was decided upon, commissioners made comments signaling the denial was a reaction to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s politics, including his support for former President Donald Trump.

“Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] while claiming his desire to help hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet,” said Commissioner Gretchen Newsom at a public meeting, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.

Commissioner Mike Wilson condemned Musk for “standing next to a candidate who ‘openly promotes and is working to normalize that language … and we have to push back against that,’” according to SF Gate.

Certainly, these commissioners are not the first politicians to give someone a hard time purely to nurse a political grudge, but usually politicians have enough sense to keep it to themselves. Instead, the commissioners gave Musk ammunition for a lawsuit, the defense of which taxpayers will be forced to fund.

For this alone, they should be removed from office.

But they won’t be.

Legally, there are complications with removing them from the commission, but those complications are a side issue. The main issue here is that it is a standard practice for the California Legislature to peel away its own power and hand it to the governor in the form of powerful commissions and boards that have no real accountability. They aren’t elected and they’re rarely challenged or given any oversight.

For example, over the weekend Gov. Gavin Newsom (no relation to commissioner Newsom), said “I’m with Elon” when asked about the conflict. The fact that he said that publicly speaks to just how absurd the commission’s comments were.

But Newsom also said he’s not helping Musk’s defense and gave no indication he’ll push for any changes on the board.

The fact is that Newsom and other lawmakers like these unaccountable bodies.

First, it’s a central feature of progressive ideology that they’ll solve society’s problems if they can just get a bunch of experts to make decisions for the general public.

Second, and most importantly, these unaccountable bodies save lawmakers from having to be accountable for unpopular decisions while maintaining a certain degree of deniability.

To look at this from another angle, the California Air Resources Board is considering tweaking the state’s gasoline blend which could add another $0.47 per gallon, and is refusing to answer questions or submit to oversight.

Democratic Assemblymember Wendy Carillo took to X to pan CARB’s lack of transparency as one of her “biggest frustrations,” saying the whole mess was a “direct result of laws ceding legislative oversight to Administration.”

And yet, they keep ceding.

When Democrats in the Legislature got concerned there were too many Republicans on the South Coast Air Quality Management District, they fought to add seats to the board and seize power from it.

And when they didn’t like decisions made by the Orange County Board of Education, Democrats in the legislature added seats and changed the election process to favor Democrats.

At a rally for Harris this week in Detroit, rapper Eminem said: “I also think that people shouldn’t be afraid to express their opinions, and I don’t think anyone wants an America where people are worried about retribution of what people will do if you make your opinion known.”

Eminem was talking about Harris’s opponent, Trump. But neither Eminem nor Harris seemed to appreciate the irony that what they were campaigning against was precisely what was happening in Harris’s backyard.

If Harris is serious about protecting Americans from an oppressive government that retaliates against its political opponents and if Newsom and Democrats in the Legislature want to back her up, then they should all start by cleaning up the California Coastal Commission.

Matt Fleming is an opinion columnist for the Southern California News Group. Follow him on X @FlemingWords