David L Malcolm

Despite a hardball political move designed to block Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s plans to sink exploratory wells in the Pacific Palisades, the California Coastal Commission on Thursday approved the controversial drilling plan on a 7 to 5 vote. The approval came at the close of a dramatic meeting marked by the abrupt dismissal of a coastal commissioner and the appointment of a replacement.

David L. Malcolm, a Chula Vista city councilman and a state Coastal Commission member, was wired for sound by district attorney's investigators earlier this year to secretly record conversations with a man he claims was trying to extort money from him in connection with the possible arson of a Mission Hills house, Malcolm's attorney said Monday. But the tapes Malcolm made failed to turn up sufficient evidence of any extortion plot by William M.

Citing a need to stimulate the economy and create jobs, the California Coastal Commission on Wednesday voted to allow construction of the San Joaquin Hills toll road even though it will damage rare coastal wetlands near Upper Newport Bay. By approving the toll road, commissioners defied a staff recommendation that they stop the plan because its bridges across San Diego Creek would violate a state ban on new highways in coastal wetlands.

The political corruption investigation that led to the resignation of Sen. Alan Robbins last month is now focused on one of the most influential non-elected public officials in the state, Mark L. Nathanson, a tough, combative member of the California Coastal Commission with strong ties to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

The San Diego County district attorney's office is investigating tape recordings of two conversations during which David L. Malcolm, a Chula Vista city councilman and state coastal commissioner, discussed blowing up an expensive Mission Hills house to collect more than $1 million in insurance, The Times has learned.

If there were any messages emanating Wednesday from the many propositions on the San Diego ballot, it would appear that voters are more concerned than ever about their environment and quality of life, the need to harness runaway growth and--perhaps most important--are now willing to remove the shackles on local government spending.

Fifteen years after it was created to turn back a storm tide of development along the state's 1,100-mile oceanfront, the California Coastal Commission is no longer an impartial, independent, high court of the coast. Instead, decisions governing projects worth billions of dollars have become tangled in a thicket of legislative politics and back-room maneuvering that the commission's creators had sought to avoid.

When he was a kid growing up poor in Chula Vista, David L. Malcolm vowed someday to be rich. The bravado behind such a promise was not unusual. Poor kids in small, working-class towns across the nation make similar vows every day. But, while most others have faltered, Malcolm became a boy wonder and kept his promise. Today, at age 32, David Malcolm has used this hunger for success and a hard-charging--some say arrogant--style to lead him from the valley to the mountaintop.

Despite reforms intended to take the politics out of the appointment of probate referees, state Controller Gray Davis has named political cronies, personal friends, and relatives of campaign contributors and politicians to the lucrative part-time posts, The Times has found.