THE VOTE was overwhelming: The people of Carmel-by-the-Sea want to sell Flanders Mansion. This fact was already obvious, since the issue had been extensively debated in numerous municipal elections, with the pro-sale candidates always triumphing over those who wanted to keep the old place.

But now that voters have directly stated their will to free up the money invested in the mansion and use it for some other worthy purpose, there should be no further delay in putting Flanders Mansion on the market.

The sale would come, of course, with all the necessary restrictions on the mansion's use, along with requirements that it be preserved; the controversy was never about whether it was an historic building and deserved protection. The only question was whether the city should continue to own it.

Unfortunately for the people of Carmel, the principal of majority rule doesn't apply in the State of California anymore. At least, where local issues are concerned, it barely matters. And that's because a variety of state laws strip duly elected city councils and boards of supervisors of much of their authority and, as in the case of Flanders Mansion, can even negate ballot measures. Instead, the power to decide critical local issues is handed to activists, who can exert influence far beyond their numbers by invoking laws such as the California Environmental Quality Act. And, of course, that's how the Flanders Mansion ballot measure will be challenged. When they voted for Measure I the people of Carmel violated CEQA, and a judge therefore has to stop them from putting the measure into effect. Don't you see?

We have regularly called for CEQA reform, to limit the scope of this bizarre law to truly significant projects, and to stop it from being used to thwart majority rule. But this state's controlling special interests -- especially lawyers and environmental groups -- love CEQA and the power it gives them. So CEQA remains.

But wait. This week we learned that the California Legislature and the governor have finally awakened to the problems CEQA can cause. Yes! They stepped in and passed a special law to prevent CEQA from getting in the way of something one of California's cities wants to do.

The City of Industry plans to build a 75,000-seat, $800 million NFL stadium. An adjacent city sued, claiming the stadium's environmental impact report wasn't detailed enough. As with thousands of other cases each year throughout the state, this CEQA-based lawsuit threatened to stop the stadium project in its tracks. But the governor and Legislature like the stadium and don't want CEQA being used to prevent it from being built. So they passed a special law exempting the monster project from CEQA, and the governor signed it Oct. 22. We kid you not.

It is truly nauseating to think that phony, trumped-up concern for the environment and the mighty power of the State of California can be invoked to stand in the way of converting a small, historic home in the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea from public ownership to private, but a huge stadium can be built in Southern California, environment be damned.