Watch AB1991 committee hearing live TODAY at 1:30pm

On a 4-2 vote, AB 1991 moves to next hearing.

Ken Johnson

The List in Support tells one story. The Legislative Analysis tells it in one word - “unprecedented”!

BILL ANALYSIS - ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT
“While limited exemptions to the environmental statutes and regulations affected by AB 1991 have been granted before, it appears that exemptions of the scope set forth in this bill from so many different statutes are unprecedented. They will no longer be unprecedented if AB 1991 passes. “

“Support: 
City of Half Moon Bay [SPONSOR]
CA Association of Realtors
CA Building Industry Association
Californians for Property Rights
Coastside Community First
Half Moon Bay Coastside Chamber of Commerce & Visitors’ Bureau
Half Moon Bay Firefighters Association
Half Moon Bay Management Team
Half Moon Bay Police Management Association
Half Moon Bay Police Officers Association
San Mateo County Association of Realtors
Stationary Engineers, Local 39
Individual letters (77)”

Do you see a theme to the list? Can you tell why they support AB 1991?

Ken Johnson

Comment by Kevin Barron  on  Apr 30  at  3:41pm  •  All my comments • 

Same theme I saw with the environmentalists showing up.
Same reason why someone on Clean Air showed up, yeah… let’s send the would-be citizens to the East Bay, or better yet to the back of the LA Basin… that makes for much better air quality.

do all these hacks just rub each others backs to show numbers en force, like the plastering of logos on a posting here???

So far, so good on this bill.

Comment by Kevin Barron  on  Apr 30  at  3:45pm  •  All my comments • 

“exemptions of the scope set forth in this bill from so many different statutes are unprecedented.”

let’s provide disclosure on where this rhetoric came from…

anyone notice the mention of “waiver of affordable housing”.... me thinks the hypocrites of the coast would block this even more if this whole subdivision was allocated towards affordable housing. that’s what POST if for.. lock in, errr lock out any development that requires “affordable” housing…

also, i’m a bit validated on the mention of (and I think it was by two or three assemblypersons) that “this is why laywers find 100% employment”,… epic.

Kevin Barron,

Were you attempting to direct a question to me? I am sympathetic to the ELL challenged. I simply can not make any sense of your writing. Maybe you can attempt to rephrase your question or comment - which ever form of a sentence may apply. An ellipsis simply does not provide sufficient information as your only form of termination punctuation. Sorry!

Ken Johnson

Comment by Kevin Barron  on  May 01  at  9:09pm  •  All my comments • 

No Ken, I don’t think I was directing at you, given I have no clue whom you are. Or at least I didn’t have you personally in mind.

It was just not shocking to see a rep from the CCC, lay claim… like they do on EVERY measure that comes across their desk to say this would be unprecedented ... many of us think it’s about time to break the spell, so to speak.

Then it was good to see a bunch of lawyers “personally speaking” in a very jocular fashion about how this debate/bill keeps lawyers employed.

“I don’t think I was directing at you, given I have no clue whom you are.”

Ken Johnson,

Pardon me for asking about something that may be nothing more than a construct of a bad memory, but weren’t you involved in some of the first attempts to create an LCP for HMB? Can you offer a bit of perspective on the time and the several attempts to draft an LCP that were rejected? It’s a leading question, but was the city government of HMB of the time anxious to fulfill its obligations under the new Coastal Act?
HMB dragged its feet on creating an LCP and was years and years late in sending one to the Coastal Commissions and finally getting it certified. During this time, in the early 80’s through 1990 is when the initial mistakes (which determined much of what was to come) were made on Beachwood by the staff and City Council. But why HMB was recalcitrant, why it failed to behave as it was required to do in managing its coastal environment, is seldom heard. That “why” has a great deal to do with the City Council’s current attitude and would be well worth exposing to the many citizens of the city who were not here or were not paying attention at the time.

Kevin Barron,

I agree with your self characterization that you “have no clue”! Did you ignore or simply lacked the knowledge to understand that the quotation didn’t come from the California Coastal Commission?

I provided the citation to the document immediately before the quotation.

For your edification:
From ‘Glossary of Legislative Terms’, Prepared by: The Legislative Counsel, State of California:

“Bill Analysis:
A document prepared by committee and/or floor analysis staff prior to hearing the bill in that committee or on the floor of the Assembly or Senate. It explains how a bill would change current law and sometimes identifies major interest groups in support or opposition.”

Interesting, in that you presumed the source to be the CCC, demonstrates that actually know that the CCC is correct!

Ken Johnson

Carl May,

Recalling my part in “the first attempts to create an LCP for HMB” is like recalling a root canal and a prior marriage. I’ll try to give a ‘short’ response to a multi decade effort.

HMB at that time was an owned subsidiary of the Building Industry Association and SAMCAR. It operated as if it was an independent country approving anything presented for building residential housing so long as they were providing a face saving gift. Quite literally, once they received jerseys for a ball team - reminiscent of the scene in the movie Rocky, where Stallone was wearing a robe with advertising, when asked what he had received for the advertising, he replied, “the robe”.

When the Coastal Act was passed, the City Council did not get it that they had to comply with State law. They were ‘annoyed’ when Enforcement began, griping about the hotel being stopped at Ocean Colony. On another development proposal, I had to bring in a legal transcriptionist (they produced no record of meetings at the time) to a City Council meeting, to get their attention that we were going to court!

At the California Coastal Commission meetings, it probably appeared as a ‘head scratcher’ from the audience. Being asked by the Chair to resolve that my name appeared in the front of the document yet my ‘speaker sheet’ had the box opposed marked, it offered the opportunity to explain and exceed my five minutes allocated to delineate the conflicts between the submission from the city and the requirements. The City consistently tried to circumvent the law and had their submission sent back for revision.

During the time period leading up to the Measure A vote [May 1991] [an interesting coincidence in numbering - AB 1991] the City Council approved every development they could before Measure A would beat the opposing City Council Measure B measure by a 2 to 1 margin. As an author of Measure A, I brought a legal action [seeking a Writ of Mandamus] to overrule the delaying action of the City Council.

To provide an understanding of the contempt the City Council had / has for Federal and State environmental law, Dykstra Ranch, so named at the time, represents the most egregious where a habitat pond for two endangered species was approved by the City Council per the developers request to be replaced with a ‘concrete pond’ to be chlorinated and maintained with filtration - that is the definition of a people swimming pool!

The “why” is more difficult to explain. ‘They’ have little support beyond those most obligated to residential development and their campaign contributions. This is comparatively a cheap place to develop because of the minimal requests beyond the legal minimums. So we have a symbiotic relationship - only the residents loose. There is also an entertaining emotional component for them that I have observed. At various conferences where they were representing the City and I attended by other representation they looked so ‘cute and proud’ of their little name badges showing Mayor. I don’t think they ever knew they were the brunt of laughter upon leaving the room. As was put being the big fish in the bitty pond of HMB - in south Texas speak, a pond the size of a heal print after a morning shower.

Today CUSD and CCWD have joined HMB. The best example was their using an Administrative CDP to approve the Cunha Middle School project last year - absurd. CUSD didn’t want it publicized that their insistence on holding to Wavecrest squandered about as much money as the City in the Settlement Agreement. That the New Cunha School will look a lot like the Old Cunha School.

So you may ask how that relates now to development interests. For the past year, a group in the development business has been meeting with CUSD to decide what school properties they can sell off for development. [The only specific comment made last year in the recording of our new School Superintendent by Darin Boville referred to this activity.] The proceeds they hope will cover what was lost by their last land debacle! And the City Council will be requested to ‘expedite’ the project ‘for the children’. The irony is that the ‘for the children’ chant ends up to the detriment ‘to the children’ and their parents!

Not quite as short as I had hoped,
Ken Johnson

Comment by Kevin Barron  on  May 04  at  10:51am  •  All my comments • 

Ken I understand your passion, but indirectly offending me with that jibe is unwarranted. It’s sophomoric at best. Maybe the 2:32AM time stamp speaks volumes.

I was talking about the CCC rep whom spoke at the meeting as I watched the video Barry so graciously gave us the heads up on. Thusly my verbiage clearly stated as:

[shocking to see a rep from the CCC, lay claim]

See, not read.

Regardless, driving by again this AM, I realize this land is not overlooking the bluff on Fitzgerald Reserve (truly the type of parcels that the CCC/Act were designed for). It’s pretty much farm land, with converted farm land on each side, on the east side of a major arterial. Bite the bullet, save the millions, take the lesson learned. This is a small concession, although that seems sacrilege to many here… I’ve yet to see a coherent fiscally sound solution.

The passing of the bill will not be a slippery slope that will end up turning the midcoast into the San Clemente hillsides, I have complete confidence in the deft and unrelenting no-growthers here on the Coast coming in on the next project and sealing a development’s fate for failure.

/Clueless in Montara

“ Comment by Ken Johnson on May 03 at 2:32am • All my comments •

Kevin Barron,

I agree with your self characterization that you “have no clue”! Did you ignore or simply lacked the knowledge to understand that the quotation didn’t come from the California Coastal Commission? “

“I realize this land is not overlooking the bluff on Fitzgerald Reserve (truly the type of parcels that the CCC/Act were designed for). It’s pretty much farm land, with converted farm land on each side, on the east side of a major arterial.”

A reading of Proposition 20 and the weaker Coastal Act of 1976 it spawned will show the above quote to be grossly false on a number of fronts. All kinds of coastal property and enterprise in the coastal zone are involved. Trying to create revisionist history won’t cut it until all of us who can read, who know the locations and issues that inspired Prop. 20, and who know some of those who drafted Prop. 20 are gone.

AB 1991 is just the latest in a long series of assaults on the Coastal Act. But it achieves a higher rank on the disgust scale than most of the others because it also tries to trash almost all other areas of regulation and environmental laws in the state in the sweeping exemptions it requests. (Nope, not falling for the crudely contrived spin that implies the bill is not a model for getting around environmental laws. Asking people to be naive, gullible, and ignorant of how the game is played in Sacramento and the rest of California only shows disrespect.)

What the AB 1991 dustup shows, once again, is the need for a new set of strong, clear, objective environmental regulations in California, including a new Coastal Act. The old ones had too many compromising weaknesses to begin with, are out of date for the current California and with its much reduced natural environment and its bloated population, are too full of the legal loopholes that have been blown in them, and (as AB 1991 demonstrates with a local situation) are too subject to capricious political gameplaying and the influence of big money.

Carl May

Kevin Barron,

A fact check and a veracity Check:

Let’s look at your full quotes:

You wrote above on May 01 at 9:09pm
“It was just not shocking to see a rep from the CCC, lay claim… like they do on EVERY measure that comes across their desk to say this would be unprecedented ... many of us think it’s about time to break the spell, so to speak.”

Then you wrote: on May 04 at 10:51am
“I was talking about the CCC rep whom spoke at the meeting as I watched the video Barry so graciously gave us the heads up on. Thusly my verbiage clearly stated as:
(shocking to see a rep from the CCC, lay claim)
See, not read. “

Let’s see if you can REALLY find what you claimed, by giving a time reference on:
Local Government Committee passes AB1991-next stop: Appropriations Committee since you claimed you vividly remembered it 6 hours after the fact - this should be a snap for you to pass the veracity test. [I just don’t think so - prove me wrong.]

Oh, and can you name ANY other, that, in your words: “like they do on EVERY measure that comes across their desk to say this would be unprecedented “.

BILL ANALYSIS - ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT
I think it is important, because I believe it will be useful for the opponent of any State Assembly Member who votes for AB 1991.

I would expect their opponent to identify the incumbent as voting for unprecedented exemptions to environmental statutes and regulations.

“exemptions to the environmental statutes and regulations ...of the scope set forth in this bill from so many different statutes are unprecedented.”

A vote for AB 1991 will provide the basis to defeat the Anti-Environmentalists in the State Assembly!

Ken Johnson