In its latest effort to curtail the unending abuses of the California Coastal Commission, PLF is filing an amicus brief in Los Angeles Superior Court in support of the Venice Stakeholders Association.

For years, the streets of Venice Beach have been clogged with nonresident vehicles. Rental cars, trucks, RVs, campers, and vans blocked the roadways and prevented residents from parking near their homes. Worse, many of the vehicles were used as living quarters for transients, giving rise to crime, litter, public urination and defecation, and giving the neighborhood a cramped, unpleasant, even dangerous atmosphere. This not only damaged property values in Venice, but made residents feel unwelcome in their own neighborhood.

Streets of Venice Beach

The natural solution was to create an Overnight Parking District. These are used throughout the City of Los Angeles to regulate parking in residential neighborhoods and clear out overnight traffic during early morning hours -- in Venice's case, from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. Alas, it was not to be. The California Coastal Commission, in a typical grab for increased power, intercepted the ordinary workings of City governance and declared that its jurisdiction extended to parking regulations, which it remarkably characterized as "development." It forbade the residents of Venice from establishing an Overnight Parking District and taking back their neighborhood.

PLF will take a principled stance to defend Venice residents against this injustice. It will argue that the jurisdiction of the Coastal Commission is strictly limited to "development " that produces long-lasting, physical alterations to land and water--not parking regulations that have no such impact. Further, it will argue that jurisdictional laws are not elastic. They do not stretch to encompass whatever meaning the Coastal Commission would like to give them. Certainly, jurisdiction over coastal development does not give the Coastal Commission the authority to insert itself into the workings of city governance by elected city officials.

Wherever the Coastal Commission seeks to expand its reach, PLF is there to argue that its power must be corralled. In pursuit of this goal, PLF will follow the Venice Stakeholders case as far as it goes–if necessary, to the Supreme Court.

Rebecca K. Girn
PLF Law Clerk