OPINION/COMMENTARY

Tyranny on the left-coastal commission

Tommy Robinson, the owner of a 12-foot by 10-foot landlocked slice of empty land in Washington, D.C., has forced the developers of high-rise luxury apartments to build the complex around that tiny nondevelopable plot, according to a front-page story in the March 11-17 issue of Washington's alternative weekly, City Paper. The accompanying photographs are wonderful, as construction crews carefully build the project around Robinson's fenced- off parcel. The story of Robinson, whose family bought the land in a tax sale 22 years ago for $64, is a living expression of the radical notion of property rights embraced by the nation's founders, who created a government that allowed individuals, rather than government planners, to make decisions about their own lives and property. Robinson's situation might seem quaint in America these days. Here in California, an unaccountable, dictatorial and most probably unconstitutional politburo called the California Coastal Commission can decide - for any reason at all - what property owners can do within a few miles of the state's 1,000- mile coastline. We're talking paint colors, fencing, additions, anything. The commission's powers are measureless, its sympathy for the traditional rights of property owners nonexistent. Don't worry, though, this tyranny is exercised in thename of the "environment." The California Supreme Court is now considering whether the commission is constitutional. Since 2003, two state courts shocked the political establishment by ruling that the commission - founded by initiative in 1972 - violates the state Constitution's separation of powers doctrine. What took so long to notice?

===