The California Coastal Commission, created by voters in 1972, has been a disaster from the start, with even Jerry Brown — a champion of its creation — once calling its members “bureaucratic thugs.” Unelected appointees continue to exert their now-permanent powers to regulate land use within five miles of California’s coastline.

It’s best known, as Reason’s Brian Doherty wrote in 2009, “overriding local decisions and slapping multi-million dollar fines on people building small houses on existing concrete pads that could only be seen from the coast by a Superman with telescopic and X-ray vision.” Property rights activists cheered in 2003 when the courts found its makeup unconstitutional based on separation-of-powers issues, but lawmakers and the state Supreme Court saved it.

The Pacific Legal Foundation has been successful in challenging some of its overreach, but there’s not much to cheer about. One notable commission idiocy in 2022: rejecting a desalination plant on an industrial site in Huntington Beach over concerns about plankton. So we were pleasantly surprised by some good news reported last week, as three new pro-development appointees are making their mark. Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed one and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas appointed the two others.

CalMatters reported last week that the commission approved a rule change to boost affordable housing production along the coast. In addition, the commission recently produced a report showing that “local governments were responsible for approving the vast majority of permits in coastal regions,” which signals a potential pullback of its overreach. It also “worked with housing activists” to ease the construction of student housing and did not oppose a major new housing-deregulation law.