Coastal Commission and "the development community"

Michael Owen Baker

From the L.A. Times:

It's becoming harder and harder for me to describe in believable terms what goes on at a California Coastal Commission hearing. But I'm going to give it my best shot.

In the past week the circus came to Santa Monica, where demonstrators, still angry about last month's firing of the agency's Executive Director Charles Lester, booed commissioners and called on them to resign. "Our Coast is Not for Sale," said one sign...

The commissioners who fired the world's leading authority on the Coastal Act claimed he wasn't a good leader. But as they struggled in Santa Monica to figure out how to find a replacement, it became more evident that the leadership problem was with the commission. 

And who'd want the job now, after Lester's observation that the commission "seems to be more interested in and receptive to the concerns of the development community as a general rule"....?

See also this.