California Bureaucrats Slap Down the Air Force and SpaceX over Politics

T here’s no better illustration of California’s decline to banana-republic status than this: The all-powerful California Coastal Commission has voted to deny Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the U.S. Air Force permission to increase the number of their rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara.

The rejection was clearly based on petty politics disguised by a fig leaf of regulatory concern. “We’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race,” Chairwoman Caryl Hart lamented. Her colleague Mike Wilson ranted about Musk’s wealth and his social-media platform, X. Former union official Gretchen Newsom (no relation to California’s governor) railed against Musk for “spewing and tweeting political falsehoods.”

The commission’s rejection is aimed at a cutting-edge company that has revitalized California’s aerospace industry, which was flattened by the end of the Cold War. In 20 years, Musk has turned his SpaceX start-up into a $210 billion behemoth that employs 13,000 people in the state. It will continue to employ thousands even after it moves its executive operations to Texas in a couple years.

To win approval for its plans to increase the number of rocket launches from Vandenberg, the Air Force agreed last month to meet seven demands the California Coastal Commission had made to reduce the environmental impact of the launches — including the closer monitoring of a local colony of snowy plovers. Despite having its demands met, the commission gave the Air Force the back of its hand last week.

The California Coastal Commission has abandoned any pretense that it primarily uses its power to protect California’s 840 miles of majestic coastline. Instead, it restricts everything from economic development to home expansions based on its partisan whims or what concessions it can wring from applicants. No wonder some of its excesses have been slapped down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the famous 1987 Nollan case, which found one of the commission’s regulations unconstitutional.

But the commission still acts as judge and jury in an astonishing array of cases involving anything that happens within five miles (as the crow flies) of the state’s coast. Since its creation in the 1970s, it has relentlessly expanded its power over local governments and property owners.

Take the case of David and Stephanie Tibbitts, who wanted to retire to their oceanfront property in San Luis Obispo County. They planned to tear down the 1930s-era house they owned there and replace it with a modern home that would accommodate the needs of David, who was wheelchair-bound after a stroke. They applied for a coastal-development permit in 2019, and it was approved by the county.

But the California Coastal Commission declared that it also had to give a green light. When the Tibbittses applied, the commission argued there was “no legal deadline” for it to hold a hearing and decide on the project. So their request was in limbo for two and a half years. The nonprofit Pacific Legal Foundation finally filed a lawsuit, and the commission eventually held a hearing and voted five to three to approve the permit.

The record is rife with such abuses. Arnie Steinberg, who was appointed to the commission in the 1990s by GOP governor Pete Wilson, says it is “riddled with a combination of corruption and arrogance on the part of an environmentally extreme staff.” He told me there are no limits to its desire to micromanage coastal matters, and it frequently collaborates with environmental groups and local-government bodies to stop development.

A perfect example involves current efforts to shut down the Skunk Train, officially known as the Mendocino Railway, north of San Francisco. For 100 years it has carried tourists, locals, and freight through redwood groves, servicing such blue-collar communities as Fort Bragg and Willits. But local environmentalists want to put the Skunk Train out of business and turn a nearby rail corridor into a 300-mile elite hiking trail. The Great Railroad Trail Agency has teamed up with the California Coastal Commission to run the Skunk Train off the rails in court.

It’s one thing for the commission’s bullies and their allies to try to shut down a railroad. But in the case of the Vandenberg Space Force Base, the commission is trifling with scientific and national-security issues. As one commentator on X put it, “SpaceX should be launching rockets, not facing the rocket fire of California’s petty autocrats.”

Elon Musk isn’t taking this lying down. He announced on Sunday that he would be suing the commission for violating his First Amendment right to express political opinions.