SIX STATES? BALLOT INITIATIVE EFFORT SEEKS TO SPLIT CALIFORNIA

By Nadin Abbott

February 20, 2014 (San Diego) Tim Draper is a venture capitalist living in what would become the new state of Silicon Valley under his proposal to split the state of California into six states.

So how would San Diego's region fare under such a plan--and just how costly might it be?

“California, as it is, is ungovernable,” Draper's petition states; a point bound to stir contention. In an interview with ABC news, he added, “It is more and more difficult for Sacramento to keep up with the social issues from the various regions of California. With six Californians, people will be closer to their state governments, and states can get a refresh.”

Secretary of State Debra Bowen has authorized Draper to collect the 807,615 valid signatures needed by July 18 to qualify his ini9tiative for the November ballot.

What would the new state of Southern California include under  Draper’s plan? It would be composed of San Diego, Imperial, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. Chief industries in this new state would include agriculture, energy, and San Diego’s biotech corridor.

California imports nearly all of our water currently, much of it from Northern California. The new state to our north is  the Central Valley, already facing a water shortage to irrigate its agricultural land. This proposal, if approved, would no doubt open the way for a resumption of water wars in the southwest, with arid Southern California vying against other states such as Colorado and Wyomingas well as new states formerly part of California for scarce water resources amid a worsening drought.

Draper’s initiative would change the Constitution, so expect a legal challenge. Draper has that covered. In the last paragraph of his proposal, he reserves the right to defend this in court if in his sole opinion, the state’s Attorney General fails to adequately do so. This would be paid for by taxpayers.

Draper’s website, as of today, has only a map and doesn’t list his reasons for seeking to split California up into six states. No doubt he sees advantages for his own newly carved out wealthy enclave.

There are, however, many disadvantages for most Californians—and a lot of serious questions to be resolved.

If perchance this succeeded, do we have enough of a tax base to stand up a new state highway patrol? How about a new state department of health? Forestry? Firefighting? How about OSHA? State department of education? Universities and state colleges? A department of transportation to build and maintain highways? The list of services that the state provides is long, and agricultural economy based states tend to be impoverished, so our region would be competing for scarce resources with the poorest county in California, the Imperial Valley.

Oh and the proposal does contemplate the ability of a county to vote to become part of another state. So what happens if the residents of San Diego do not vote for this, but both Riverside and San Bernardino do?  This presents a potential nightmare scenario from a tax base perspective.

We also have an international border. So our state would have to deal single-handedly with those issues that also come from living by an international boundary, without help from taxpayers elsewhere in California. That includes costs of addressing issues related to undocumented immigrants.

We do have the Port of San Diego, which is by no means a large port. So Imperial would likely still have to export its goods though the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach. The added costs of interstate commerce could make exporting our goods costlier.

Under the plan, some of the wealthiest counties will form the core of a new state, where the proponent happens to live. That state will become one of the wealthiest states per capita in the nation—at the expense of poorer states carved out of the former California.

What would happen to federal representation?  The U.S. House of Representatives is capped at 432 representatives by law, so how many other states will have to give up representatives? Would ours be among those? Representation is based on population, so some of the new successor states might end up like Delaware or Wyoming. They each have only Congressional District.

With less representation in Washihngton D.C., Californians would have less power.  California is the eighth largest global economy and a vital source of funding for the nation, giving our representatives clout. Split the state and that power goes away.

The Senate would see eight more Senators, bringing the new total to 110.

So what are the odds of such a plan succeeding?  Slim, based on history.

This is at least the  tenth attempt to split the state. The first attempt came in 1854, soon after California won statehood; the Assembly actually voted on splitting the state into Shasta and Colorado states but it never went though.  A key issue was the difficulty of transporting goods over the Sierra mountains in an era of limited technology and communications.

The last of these attempts was voted on by the Board of Supervisors of Modoc and Siskiyou Counties, which are very rural, and want to form a new state along with a couple of very rural Oregon counties. Advocates feel that lawmakers in Sacramento and Salem, Oregon’s capital, are not paying attention to the needs of the people in these counties.

This latest attempt has been authorized to start gathering signatures in 2013 but the Six State Proposal withdrew the project, since they were not able to get enough signatures.

Now, however, proponents are back – so if approached by a signature gatherer, consider carefully the consequences of carving up California.