The Board of Supervisors has nominated two individuals, a Fairfax councilmember and the mayor of Larkspur, as candidates to replace former supervisor Steve Kinsey on the California Coastal Commission. The seat, which represents the North Central Coast, is reserved for an elected official—and it may be a longshot for a Marin resident to get it.

Over the past month, Sonoma and San Francisco, the other two counties that can make nominations for the seat, submitted three other candidates to the Senate Rules Committee, which will appoint the commissioner. Nominations are due Feb. 4. 

When the committee receives all nominations, it has 30 days to make an appointment or reject all candidates. In the latter case, the process would start over again.

At the supervisors’ regular meeting on Tuesday, the board affirmed the nominations, which were made last week by the Marin County Council of Mayors and Councilmembers. The council is the agency through which incorporated cities choose representatives. 

Supervisors were originally set to nominate only the Fairfax council member, Barbara Coler, but then received a letter from Larkspur Mayor Kevin Haroff, who had already been nominated by the council. Ms. Coler and Mr. Haroff were the only individuals to submit letters of interest.

On Tuesday, a supervisor and a member of the public said there was a perceived historical precedent that appointees to the North Central Coast seat rotated between the three counties. 

Mr. Kinsey most recently served for over five years. He replaced then-San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who himself replaced Mike Reilly, a Sonoma County supervisor.

Stinson Beach resident Scott Tye said it seemed time for the seat to go to a Sonoma County official, and Supervisor Katie Rice said the seat would probably go to someone else. 

“I don’t have a crystal ball, but I would suspect also the nomination, the appointment, will go to one of the other counties,” she said. She added that it behooves Marin residents to “keep our eye on the ball” on what’s happening at the commission with respect to Marin and reach out to whoever is chosen as their
representative.

Ms. Coler, an environmental consultant who has served on the Fairfax town council for four years, wrote in her letter of interest about her work creating California’s brownfields program, which dealt with contaminated areas, and her work on legislation for a state program to ensure that public schools are built on properties that are environmentally safe.

 Under the auspices of her consulting firm, she is the administrator of an exchange that aims to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. She previously worked for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.

“My background and experience make me particularly well suited for the appointment. I am a scientist with decades of experience creating and implementing environmental programs,” she wrote in her letter to county supervisors.

Mr. Haroff, a managing partner at the law firm Marten Law LLP, is the mayor of Larkspur who made an unsuccessful bid to unseat supervisor Katie Rice last year. He has represented public agencies like the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Guam International Airport Authority, according to his letter.

“California’s coastal regions are facing increasing pressures to accommodate development supporting a range of economic, transportation, and housing interests. Our representative to the commission needs to have the skill and expertise to represent communities in the North Central Coast region in a fair, responsible, and apolitical manner,” he wrote.

In addition to the two Marin nominations, the Sonoma County City Selection Committee nominated Sebastopol councilmember Sarah Glade Gurney and Santa Rosa councilmember Chris Rogers on Jan. 12. Ms. Gurney served as an alternate commissioner for both Mr. Mirkarimi and Mr. Kinsey. 

On Jan. 24, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors nominated one of their own, Aaron Peskin.

The coastal commission is made up of 12 voting commissioners, with four appointed by the Governor, four by the speaker of the State Assembly and four by the Senate Rules Committee. Six are members of the public and six are elected officials. 

The new member of the commission, which has significant land-use authority over hundreds of miles of coastline, will weigh in on significant issues in Marin. Last November the commission approved, with some modifications, most of Marin’s proposed updates to its Local Coastal Program. 

But the commission has yet declined to vote on the most contentious issues, which revolve around development in environmentally hazardous areas like shorelines and blufftops and which brought dozens of homeowners from Marshall, Stinson Beach and elsewhere to the recent meeting in Half Moon Bay. The new commissioner may also ultimately vote on a replacement for Charles Lester, the former executive director of the commission who was fired a year ago at a long, heated meeting. The ostensible reason for letting go of Mr. Lester had to do with a lack of communication with commissioners and other leadership issues, though many environmentalists worried that some on the commission wanted a more development-friendly leader. (Mr. Kinsey, along with four other commissioners, voted not to fire him.) 

The coastal commission will interview candidates for the position in a closed session on Feb. 10, and may make an appointment that day.