image: http://www.surfermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/la-me-image-kinsey-20160511.jpg
Steve Kinsey, during the CCC meeting that sacked Charles Lester. Photo: LA Times
Steve Kinsey, during the CCC meeting that sacked Charles Lester. Photo: LA Times
Remember a couple months back when members of the California Coastal Commission (CCC), in a thinly-veiled power grab by influential developers (allegedly), voted to oust their longtime executive director and champion of the environment, Charles Lester? If you watched the live feed of the hearings that day, you may remember a Larry Bird lookalike running the meeting. Funny-ish, but with a penchant for harshing the protesting crowd’s mellow. That was Steve Kinsey, chairman of the CCC.
It turns out that Kinsey has held private, unreported (until now) meetings with — and this should shock nobody — the heads of big development groups. Specifically with the Banning Ranch developers, a group that wants to put more condos, more shops, more parking lots — because Orange County needs more of all that — on Newport Beach’s Banning Ranch, the largest bit of undeveloped private coastal land left in Southern California
Kinsey will now likely sit out a vote on the Banning Ranch project after the L.A. Times discovered that he failed to report his meetings with the Banning Ranch folks, which is against the CCC’s rules. Kinsey’s excuse: I forgot I had the meeting.
Kinsey has met with Banning Ranch developers twice in the past year — both meetings went unreported — and spent hours touring the site, during which he came to the conclusion that the CCC’s environmental scientists, who had recommended against okaying development in order to protect environmentally sensitive land, were totally wrong and that development wouldn’t hurt a thing.

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Newport Beach's Banning Ranch, the biggest piece of private, undeveloped land left in Southern California.
Newport Beach’s Banning Ranch, the biggest piece of private, undeveloped land left in Southern California.
These sorts of hush-hush meetings between often deep-pocketed development interests and the regulators who are supposed to protect the coastal environment from ruinous building are called “ex parte” meetings, and, not coincidentally, a bill is currently before the California State Senate this week that will make those meetings illegal.
Theoretically, if developers aren’t allowed to cozy up to CCC regulators in private meetings (No doubt over pricey, expense-account-fueled lunchtime bacchanals), they can’t wield undue influence in decision-making.
It remains to be seen whether or not the CCC’s sacking of Lester will open the door for greater and more destructive development of California’s coastline, but these little clandestine meetings sure aren’t making the CCC, as least as currently constructed, look particularly impartial.