"Skin in the game" and "entitlement" are just the new buzz phrases introduced by the faux grass roots corporatists propagandists, and flogged in every forum and media outlet they can repeat the devisive and elitist mantra.
Adam, while I agree these are regulations gone too far, and applied in such an obvious arbitrary and capricious way after the fact and so many years down the road from where zoning should have been enforced; I hardly think this is about skin in the game or entitlement. 'Skin in the game' is about the anger button propagandists are using to make those that pay taxes because they have enough financial ability and income to do so, channel anger at those that don't. 'Entitlement' is code for benefits, minimum benefits conferred to people by their government as basic minimum security.
You and I may not like it that the CCC has become a commission that has gone too far, but it isn't entitlement, and it isn't skin in the game, it is merely the test of the CCCs existence and application of the authority given to them by the government of the people, whether that body still has the consensus of the people to ply its rules. There is a process to change the commission's authority, and it could be that even some of the neighbors of this property in question have complained, either because of 'me too' wanting variances, or just don't like the mini-course, knowing it is currently and has been in the past, prohibited and slipped through. Those that pray the mantra of skin in the game and entitlement, are also often the first ones to rely on things like zoning prohibitions and lobbying their powerful commissions to apply NIMBY in property rights and values, and place barriers to entry competition in business to protect cartel monopolies by lobbying government commissions.
Administrative law, regulation and permitting are a tangled web, but we can't seem to live with it, or without it. So we fight over where the boundaries of public good should be.
I can't wait until next year, and the new buzz words and phrases come out, I'm sick to the point of puking over 'skin in the game' and 'entitlements' to interject in every dispute and public policy question, even if it doesn't apply.