When I heard this, I filed it under “impossibly dumb rumor”. But no, the plan to split California into 6 more easily governable regions might actually come before the voters this year. I just can’t see it.
California has reached the breaking point, says Tim Draper. The Silicon Valley venture capitalist is pushing a proposal to crack the nation’s most populous state into smaller pieces — six of them.
California has grown so big, so inefficient, it’s essentially ungovernable, according to a ballot initiative that could reach voters as early as November.
Tim Draper is the Founding Partner of VC Draper-Fisher-Jurvetson and better known as one of the people behind Skype.
“Vast parts of our state are poorly served by a representative government,” according to Draper’s plan, which cleared a key government hurdle this week, part of the process to qualify for the ballot. California residents “would be better served by six smaller state governments.”
I can’t imagine the possibility.
Even if it were to be approved by voters, Congress would have to endorse the idea of creating six new states — and adding 10 senators to the chamber’s political mix (as with all states, California currently has two). Congress, under the U.S. Constitution, must approve the creation or division of any states.
Crazy, right?
Draper, in documents he submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office, recommends dividing California regionally, including establishing a state called Silicon Valley, which would include San Francisco and nearby counties that are home to technology giants like Facebook and Apple.
Los Angeles would become part of the new state of West California, which also would include the coastal cities of Santa Barbara and Ventura. The state’s farming heartland would become Central California. San Diego would be the largest city in the new South California.
Oh, California, what will you think of next?
It’s going to happen. Start buying land in the right places.
Not governable or just not according to the desires of certain venture capitalists? Not going to happen.
Actually there is some logic to it. Dividing up the state means tax money states more local. State government would have less factors to deal with when coming up with budgets etc.
The rich folks will love the idea that their tax money isn’t paying for poorer areas. They will all vote for this division. Pity there are more ‘poor’ folks that will vote against it.
Logistics are mind-numbing. Think Montreal would have an easier time separating from Quebec!
I live in a city on the edge of Silicon Valley, which might greatly benefit from the local mega-economy this could create, but even we think this is an exasperating waste of time. For starters, it would put San Francisco’s own water supply out-of-$tate.
And what would Tim Draper know about “vast parts” of California? Does he really have that much free time?
Republican players running a fantasy scenario to Gerrymander the Senate the way they’ve Gerrymandered the House. The GOP is trying this in Texas too.
Never going to happen.
Well, common sense would suggest that if a limited genius like Schwarzenegger could govern that state, it can’t be all that hard to govern.
Anyhow, the idea of going to bed in a somewhat free state and waking up in Utah is even more scary 🙂
Uh, yeah, bullshit, that GOP gerrymandering whine has been totally debunked.
I’d be for it is Orange County could secede. So tired of being raped on taxes to pay for illegals.
This is the stupidest idea in the world. California has been one thing since before it joined the United States. We already struggle with the US/Mexico border which splits up families, cultures, and the harvest, which moves north as the season progresses.
Is Canada ungovernable because it has 30 million people like California? No. Sure, Canada is divided into 10 provinces and 3 territories, but California is already divided into 58 counties (which Canada does not have.) So California is already more divided than Canada.
Luckily, this split will never happen, because not only do the people here in California not want this, but the logistics are impossible. If I owe $10,000 in taxes to California right now, am I going to have to owe $1500 each to 6 separate Californias? Who is going to pay for all the paperwork to change, including driver’s licenses and every single insurance contract in California? And when one of the new mini-Californias is totally on fire because of a dry summer or a massive earthquake are the other mini-Californias going to turn their backs because some artificial border has been created?
Also, more than one of the 6 mini-Californias will call itself “California” and there is going to be no way to work that out.
The one good argument is that 6 mini-Californias would have 12 Senators instead of 2, which would offset the too much power that the flyover states have over California. But what is needed is the opposite: for tiny states like Montana and Wisconsin to join up with other tiny states so that they have a critical mass of infrastructure that can enable them to move out of the 19th century. They lose Senators, but they become better places to do business, save a ton of money in administrative costs, and they can survive droughts and hurricanes better.
In other words, California is not the problem.
Rich people not paying taxes for poorer areas means starvation and collapse. Not sure why you are cheering that. A new state border won’t keep desperate people from invading your home to feed themselves.
Source please.
Sounds like a (desperate) Republican plot to break up the country’s largest blue state. With its 55 Electoral College votes, all for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Lulz.
Vastly easier to simply teach the rest of Canada to speak French. It could happen.
Seriously, if we want to start fixing “broken” states there are many other places that should be much higher up the list than CA. How about TX, AL, KS, AZ and all the others that promote bigotry and hatered.
If this succeeds, and it won’t Draper is in for a rude awakening when the new state of Central California jacks up the price of water. He probably didn’t want to include them in the Silicon Valley state because he’d have to subsidize the poor farmers inland, but they have the west by the short and curlies due to controlling Hetch Hetchy and Mokelumne.
California long ago voted to split in two, but Congress never took the matter up because the Civil War broke out. Breaking into 6 makes some sense, though I personally would have tweaked the borders a bit differently.
This will add 10 more senators. (Favoring Dems)
This will force a massive redistribution in representatives come the census that follows this spilt. (Likely favoring Dems slightly)
As ANYONE who lives in California will tell you, the likelihood of something this idiotically rethuglucon WILL NEVER HAPPEN on this coast. Being a rethuglicon that tries to further ideas of this type in California has either had too much garlic jammed in every orifice of their bodies, DOESN’T live in CaIifornia, or lives in a walled compound in Riverside with the rest of the chained servants the party sent out from DC.
Been a slow news weekend hey?? Otherwise, go buy a bag in Denver and enjoy the rest of snowseason.
This isn’t crazy at all. California is way too big, with too many people that disagree. Its best to let the people govern themselves.
Why stop with six states? Break it down to neighborhoods, too. Gated compounds for everyone! Except for… you know… those people.
So glad a VC felt empowered to weigh in on this. So glad. /s
You’re probably right about the motives, but note that California isn’t entirely blue. So opposing this move is saying, we don’t want the red sections of the state to have a voice.
No question, California can be a source of nutty legislation (competing with New York City to see who will ban what next, for instance), but I don’t see why this is such a “crazy” or “impossibly dumb” idea. Mr. Mark, would you care to explain why you think so? Maybe you’re onto something, but you haven’t made your case at all.
If you don’t see why this is such a “‘crazy’ or ‘impossibly dumb’ idea” then you don’t know much about public administration. Creating 6 brand new state governments isn’t just a matter of cloning and dividing the current California government. First of all, a lot of the resources aren’t dividable at all (e.g. the UC and CSU systems), and even if they are, it may be prohibitively expensive (e.g. disbursing the CalPERS employee benefit system could eat up a sizable fraction of it’s value). Lots of agencies, like the Franchise Tax Board and DMV, are, functionally concentrated into one or two locations, usually Sacramento and someplace in Southern California. Even the more distributed agency resources (e.g. CalTrans) aren’t EVENLY distributed.
Yeah, all the potential problems/obstacles/challenges could be resolved with enough time, money, and effort, but why bother? Wouldn’t it be better to put all those resources into resolving the real problems we already have?
A plurality of Americans voted for the President and a Democratic House in 2012. Additionally the GOP is working hard to disenfranchise minorities, women, and all poor and lower middle class voters.
I think I need to disagree here. This plan to break up California into six states vastly favors Republicans. If you take a look at California’s 2012 House of Representatives map, you should get a better idea of what the state’s demographics look like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CA2012House.svg
I think it would be fair to say, if California were broken up, we would end up with two blue states, four red states. You should also take a look at the people that are backing this plan.