Shoreline rights key as S.F., state face off
Waterfront limits city voters set in ’14 issue in court battle
When lawyers for San Francisco and the state square off Wednesday over a 2014 waterfront ballot measure, more will be at stake than the power of the city’s voters to set height limits on new buildings alongside the bay.
If the case reaches higher courts, it could decide whether the authority to regulate shoreline development of any kind can be wielded by a local government and its voters or belongs entirely to the state.
“This has implications for every coastal community in California,” said attorney Jon Golinger, whose organization, No Wall on the Waterfront, ran the 2014 initiative campaign. He said a final ruling could apply to coastal oil drilling bans passed by voters in Santa Barbara, Santa Monica and Hermosa Beach (Los Angeles County).
The case could also affect the political fortunes of Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the current front-runner to become the state’s next governor. Newsom, a self-described environmentalist who is campaigning for support from the Democratic Party’s liberal base, finds himself in a different camp in this dispute.
As part of his job, Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco, is a member of the State Lands Commission, which voted in 2014 to sue the city over the voters’ passage of Proposition B. The measure, backed by the Sierra Club and approved by a 59 percent majority, restricts the height of new
waterfront construction to limits previously set by the city unless voters approve an exception for a specific project.
San Francisco voters have approved two such exemptions since then, for a residential project at Pier 70 in the Dogpatch neighborhood and for the Mission Rock residential and commercial development at Pier 48. But the state’s lawsuit contends California law gives local voters no authority to set or waive height limits, or any other limits, on shoreline development.
“The Legislature has repeatedly declared that the administration of the San Francisco waterfront is a matter of statewide importance, interest and benefit,” Deputy Attorney General Joel Jacobs, representing the State Lands Commission, said in a Superior Court filing.
That doesn’t rule out all local involvement, Jacobs said — a 1968 state law delegated San Francisco waterfront regulation to the city Port Commission, appointed by the mayor. But Jacobs said the Port Commission must manage the lands for the benefit of the state, “without interference from local initiatives.”
The city’s lawyers responded that only the Board of Supervisors and the voters, and not the Port Commission, have the power to set local zoning and height limits. And Prop. B also serves the goals of state law, Deputy City Attorney Christine Van Aken argued, by protecting “a value that is at the very heart of the public trust: public access to the waterfront.”
The two sides clash over whether local voters are well-suited to make such decisions.
In contrast to the Port Commission, which holds hearings and relies on “trained professionals,” voters cast their ballots for a variety of undisclosed reasons, and take actions that may make projects more time-consuming and expensive, Jacobs said. Van Aken countered that San Francisco voters received ample information on Prop. B and have no legal obligation to maximize builders’ profits.
The opposing sides will appear before Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos, who could decide to uphold Prop. B, strike it down, or defer disputed issues for a trial scheduled for Sept. 11.
The case, meanwhile, has provided fodder for Newsom’s critics.
Golinger, the Prop. B sponsor, said Newsom’s support of the Lands Commission lawsuit revealed the gap between “his good rhetoric on climate change and other environmental matters and, where the rubber meets the road: money.”
Newsom issued a statement Tuesday saying the Lands Commission “strikes the right balance, where we support and protect local communities from bad projects while upholding the environmental interests of all Californians, and that’s what I intend to push for as we settle this matter.”
Such a settlement would preserve Prop. B while protecting the Lands Commission’s “broader statewide concerns,” said Rhys Williams, a spokesman for Newsom. He did not say how both goals could be accomplished.