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seamusTX wrote:Proposition 9 effectively made the Texas Open Beaches Act part of the Constitution, so a future legislature cannot change it by a simple majority.

The TOBA has been law for 40 years and survived challenges in the Texas Supreme Court.

It is based on Spanish-Mexican common law, which made access to beaches a right.

People who own beachfront property can still own the beach (and pay taxes on it), but they cannot build a structure or limit public access to it.

I have mixed feelings about it myself, but if the majority of Texans accepted it for 25 years before I moved here, I can't complain.

- Jim

I'm not complaining. I just have an opinion about it because I've already seen how toxic that can become. Perhaps the fact that it is now part of the state's constitution will keep abuses of it from occuring. But like you, TOBA doesn't affect me personally. However, the California Coastal Commission does affect me personally, and I am most definitely complaining about that. That house and land represents the principal value of my mother's estate, and thus whatever insane rulings the CCC wants to inflict on that estate when my mother dies will affect me personally in a very measurable financial way. The CCC has assumed powers that were not within the original scope of its charter and which are extra-constitutional within the scope of the state's constitution. But the California state government, being run by a bunch of commie liberal spendthrifts as it is, is spiritually in lockstep with what the CCC does, so it will never be reformed.

Since TOBA passed 37 years before I moved here, I have no say in it, although I'm certainly entitled to my opinion about it. But as a current resident, I did have a say in Proposition 9, and I voted against it. My view is that if the state has a compelling interest in making sure that the public has access to beaches, then let the state designate already state-owned coastal land as public beach, or buy coastal land for that purpose. That then represents the public's right of access, and the state discharges its duty to service that compelling interest. In California, prior to the creation of the CCC, that is exactly what happened. It was a case of the state saying, "what's mine is mine, and what's yours is yours." But come the CCC (and in Texas, the TOBA), the state now says, "what's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine too."

That ain't right, no matter how you cut it.

But again, that's just my opinion.

I'm curious about what the rest of you thought about Proposition 4, the "national research university fund" amendment.

seamusTX wrote:Our legislative sessions are in odd-numbered years, so they are out of sync with the national elections.

- Jim

I wonder if that might not be for the best. Perhaps it forces voters to focus on state issues instead of dividing their attention between national and state issues?

Well this was an interesting event for me as a still relatively new (3.5 years now) Texas voter. I tended to vote conservatively wherever additional spending was involved, and as I best understood the issues. I hope I don't live to regret my votes.

In California, we had a "Proposition" process where citizens can get issues onto the ballot when the legislature simply won't consider them. Unfortunately, a lot of what has been passed by that means is crap. However, Californians seldom get a chance to vote on amendments to the state's constitution. Am I correct in assuming that doing so is fairly common place in Texas?

I had a visceral reaction to proposition 9 on this ballot and voted "No." Back in 1969, before the California Coastal Commission had begun to express its toxic nature and appointed itself the sole arbiter of who gets to do what (unless you're politically well-connected), when the state of California still made at least a show of respecting private property rights, my parents bought an undeveloped lot right on the coast — 1.2 acres on the clifftop at Point Dume, which included 108 feet of beach front.

Her house is in this picture, taken in 2006, the year I moved out here. It's the smaller snow-white house with a dome roof, 3rd from the end on the left along the cliff, nestled between two monstrosities that look like hotels. My wife and I were married at the edge of that cliff.

In any case, in order to get their permit to build this home, my parents had to pay a lobbyist to represent them in Sacramento for twelve years, before the Coastal Commission decreed that they had to cede 25 ft of lateral access to the state, measured from the mean high-tide line back to the cliff, in exchange for the permit. As you can see in this picture, the beach has pretty much washed away, so between what the state took from them and the weather, my mom owns no more beach now, but in the past when they bought that land, there was a substantial beach there. In future years, storms may replace that sand, and she may have a strip of beach she can call her own — after the state asserts its blackmailed "right" to their 25 feet of it. None of the other previously existing homes along that cliff had to cede their portions of the beach to the Coastal Commission.

Before the Coastal Commission commissariat extorted beach front land from the private land-owners, those beaches were kept pristine. Now that anyone can access them, what sand is left is littered with empty beer cans, used condoms, and dirty diapers... ...and they didn't just wash up there. When you stand at the top of the cliff on my mother's property and look over the edge, even in broad daylight, you can often see couples "engaged" fully in the open, with no shame whatsoever, in "extra curricular" activities, and they aren't always hetero couples. Children don't need to be seeing that stuff.

THAT is what happens when the proletariat insists on being able to take your land away from you by fiat under some kind of warm and fuzzy dictate of "right of access." They take what is private, and turn it over to scumbags who wreck it for everyone. So, I'm not sympathetic to the Proposition 9 that was on yesterday's ballot.

...just my 2¢.