> He does not need to live there to want to protect his property.
Did you read the article? It is not his property, it is public access to a public beach. He deserves compensation for losing in court and continue to break the law with which the court upheld? I'm confused, did we read the same article?
"So the coastal commission tried to broker a compromise, chief of enforcement Lisa Haage said. Officials offered to consider moving the access road, to find a nonprofit to operate the entry and to close on rainy days when the beach was muddy. But the talks went nowhere."
If it was clear cut, why is the Chief of Enforcement accommodating alternatives?
She's not trying to crush him. Her goal is to provide access to the beach--which these solutions would. It would obviously be great if he just went along with the legal requirements, but moving the road or getting a non-profit to operate a gate is better than a protracted court battle, and it wouldn't hurt if everyone ended up happy at the end.
Resolving the dispute in a way that everyone is happy with may reinforce bad behavior in that you can get away with closing the path for N years; but at the end of the day, if there is equivalent access to the beach with the old path and a new path that the landowner is happier with, the public still has the same access going forward as they did before, and it likely would have been allowed if he had gone through permits.
So it also shows that in the end, even billionaires need to follow the law; and that its probably a better use of their time to work with the commission to find a good solution, instead of to fight the law.
> If it was clear cut, why is the Chief of Enforcement accommodating alternatives?
Because the Commission has finite resources and devoting them to dealing with a billionaire that's devoted to tying up the legal system as long as possible isn't efficient use of them if a compromise can be reached at far less cost in litigation and the remaining resources directed to other priorities.
Did you read the article? It is not his property, it is public access to a public beach. He deserves compensation for losing in court and continue to break the law with which the court upheld? I'm confused, did we read the same article?