State Lands Commission Sues to Overturn San Francisco's Prop B

"The State Lands Commission filed suit Tuesday to overturn San Francisco's voter-approved limits on high-rise buildings along the city's waterfront, arguing that the lands belong to the state and are managed by the Port Commission, not the city and its voters," reports Bob Egelko.

A similar suit was filed in February by a developer-backed group hoping to remove Prop B from the ballot, but "Superior Court Judge Marla Miller allowed the vote to proceed, ruling in March that the developers had not clearly shown that Prop. B was invalid. She cited numerous past local ballot measures, some developer-sponsored, that sought to regulate San Francisco waterfront lands."

But the way the Lands Commission sees it, they transferred the waterfront land to the city back in 1968 with stipulations: "According to the Lands Commission suit, the shoreline consists of tidelands that California obtained as state property when it became a state in 1850. The state transferred the land to the city in a 1968 law that specified it would be managed by the autonomous Port Commission and not by city officials or voters, the suit said."