2/13/16
The California Coastal Commission, born as a result of a state ballot measure and granted permanent life by an act of its Legislature, ought to do its business in public.
Regardless of your views on property rights or the environment, we should all agree on at least that much. That one of the most powerful public bodies in the state should conduct as much of its business in the open seemed a no-brainer.
Yet the commission’s choice to cast a 7-5 vote in closed session on Wednesday to oust its executive director — an unprecedented move in its history — failed to meet that standard. Hundreds of people traveled to Morro Bay to speak on Wednesday in Charles Lester’s defense during a meeting that spanned seven hours; 95 percent of the commission’s roughly 160-member staff signed a letter in favor of keeping him on board. He’s led the commission since 2011 and served on it for nearly 20 years. According to the commission’s own chief counsel, since Lester chose to defend himself in a public hearing, his performance reviews were fair game for public discussion. His fate should have been decided in public.
Yet the commission still chose to hide behind process. By shielding their decision to purge Lester behind the confidentiality of his performance reviews, the majority of commissioners have cast themselves as backroom villains in a cheap political melodrama.
And that, sadly, has overshadowed any questions about both Lester’s performance and the larger, far more important debate about the role of the California Coastal Commission itself. Is the commission a sclerotic bureaucracy? Could it do a far, far better job of balancing the rights of the many with the interests of the few? Thanks to the commissioners’ decision to duck out of public view, that’s no longer the conversation.
