Under public pressure, AB 1740 has shed almost everything that alarmed Santa Monica — and the Coastal Commission has dropped its opposition. But two things survived the retreat, and one of them is statewide.
The first part of this story showed that Santa Monica’s permitting delay was self-inflicted, and that the honest cure was always to finish the city’s coastal plan. Since then the bill meant to address that delay, AB 1740, has changed almost beyond recognition — and the change is worth setting down plainly, because it cuts against most of what was first said about the bill, including in these columns.
What came out
As introduced, AB 1740 was sweeping. It would have let more than a dozen dense coastal cities skip Coastal Commission permits for a wide range of projects — housing, building renovations, outdoor dining, temporary events, and parking changes — with the arrangement running to 2037. Over the spring, it was cut to Santa Monica alone. Then, in the latest amendments, the permit exemptions were taken out altogether: the housing carve-out near Wilshire and Pico, the parking provisions, and the deadline that would have switched exemptions on if no plan was certified by 2029. With them went the prospect of a decade with the state’s coastal review lifted from the city.
The clearest measure of how far the bill has moved is who is no longer fighting it. The California Coastal Commission, which opposed the earlier versions, has been said to withdraw its opposition, and some expect it to weigh a support position at its July meeting. If you opposed AB 1740 because it stripped the coast of independent oversight — as many residents and conservation groups did, and as these columns did — that version of the bill no longer exists. It is fair to say so, and fair to credit the public pressure that forced the change. Yet we still need the Commission’s official response.
What the bill is now
Two things remain. The first applies only to Santa Monica, and it is close to what reformers and residents alike had been asking for. The city must submit a complete coastal plan to the Commission by January 2029, and the Commission is put on a six-month clock to act, with a duty to flag its concerns within forty-five days and to report quarterly to the Legislature — and to reimburse the city’s costs — if it drags. In plain terms, the bill now pushes the city to finish the very plan it left undone for thirty years, and pushes the Commission to rule on it promptly. That is hard to be against.
The second thing is quieter, and almost no one is watching it, because it has nothing to do with Santa Monica. It is a change to a statewide law.
The provision that survived
Beneath the local fight, AB 1740 amends a statewide complete-streets statute and adds a new power to it. For a project that converts part of a road — a travel lane, a stretch of curb — into a bike lane, transit lane, or walkway, the bill lets the Commission’s Executive Director waive the coastal development permit outright, on his or her own finding that the project, on balance, maintains or improves public access to the coast. It bars requiring replacement parking when other public parking sits within half a mile, and it provides that a project cannot be turned away merely because it removes public parking. The annual reporting on all this ends in 2032; the powers themselves do not, and that aspect needs to be monitored.
Complete streets are good policy, and safe walking, cycling, and transit to the shore are themselves forms of coastal access. The concern is narrower, and real. A judgment about coastal access that once required a public permit before the Commission can now be made by one official, on an “on balance” finding, in every coastal city in the state — and on-street parking near the beach can be removed without replacement. Whether a given trade improves access or quietly reduces it is exactly the sort of question independent, public review exists to weigh. For these street conversions, that review is the thing being streamlined away — not in Santa Monica alone, but everywhere the Coastal Act reaches.
The precedent that didn’t leave
The Santa Monica half of the bill looks benign — a city finishing its plan on a schedule. The thing to watch is the shape of it. The author has been candid that limiting the bill to one city was meant to let others be added “in another year,” and the city’s own staff identified eighteen cities that might one day qualify. A special statute that puts the Commission on a clock for a single city is a modest precedent today. It is also a template, and templates can travel, often reappearing in the strangest ways.
And there is a lesson that outlasts the bill’s text. A sweeping proposal was carried to Sacramento without a public vote, and narrowed only after residents and conservation groups forced it into daylight — ending as something far smaller, and far more defensible, than it began. That is what public scrutiny is for. It is also a reminder of how much was nearly settled before anyone local was asked. The bill that emerges may be one most residents can live with. How it got here is the part worth remembering. Despite all the work on the bill and its amendments, the point stands that the bill is not necessary if the City manages to keep their word to complete the LCP with review and approval by Coastal Commission, and that they remain arbiter for appeals on any proposed amendments to the LCP.
Next: Part Three — the bluff, and the plan that will guard it as the sea returns.
Jack Hillbrand, Architect
For S.M.a.r.t.: Santa Monica Architects for a Responsible Tomorrow.
Jack Hillbrand AIA, Landmarks Commission Architect; Dan Jansenson, Architect (former Building & Fire-Life Safety Commissioner); Robert H. Taylor, Architect AIA; Mario Fonda-Bonardi, Architect AIA (former Planning Commissioner); Sam Tolkin, Architect (former Planning Commissioner); Michael Jolly ARE-CRE; Phil Brock (SM Mayor, ret.); Matt Hoefler, Architect NCARB; Heather Thomason, community organizer; Charles Andrews, columnist. journalist, Bruce Leddy, Human Services Commissioner and NOMA Co-Chair.
