I am not sure if Juice readers noticed the story in today’s Register entitled “Atlanta divided over plan to split county.” My initial reaction was to look back to the most recent efforts by those living in the “valley,” also known as the San Fernando Valley, where they failed to break away from LA.
There may be a parallel in that today’s report includes a minor headline reading “foes say breaking off affluent, mostly white area is racially motivated.” The article says that the predominantly white affluent suburbs would remain in Fulton County with the new County to include the “metropolitan area’s poorest, black neighborhoods.”
The new “Milton County would have a population of 300,000” They want their legislature to amend the GA Constitution to approve this pending action.
Perhaps we should split up the state of CA. For years I have heard rumors for breaking up our state into north and south. Why not! Our local Legislative representatives can’t seem to get anything for us while those living up “north” get the lion’s share of our mutual revenues. This would also give us the opportunity to replace “our” governor with someone who really represents the Republican or Democratic party. We could build our capital in the heart of Anaheim’s Platinum Triangle that would be easily accessible by air, freeways and rail.What’s your thoughts?
Note: Having the Capitol in Orange County would be beneficial to our legislators who would not have to live in Sacramento coming home on weekends to see their families.
We could also go to the Capitol and watch them in action as they debate and vote on key issues. They would be more accessible to their constituents.
We might have some fun with this off-the-wall post.
Rather than thinking North and South, it’s better to envision California as several separate states, each with its own legislature, capitol, Senators and representatives, and with the elimination of counties as political units. This could give us much stronger planning and control for transportation, watersheds, housing, land use planning, schools, et cetera. It also might help to break the influence that public employees unions have on state legislation.
Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to imagine the circumstances where such a division might be approved. Smaller states like the Dakotas would not welcome additional Senators from California to diminish their power. State parties, and their supporters, would
We can’t even get any consensus on districts that are gerrymandered to guarantee safe seats.
Larry:
There’s a lot of merit to the general idea of splitting CA up. I agree with commenter 1’s point that splitting it into 3 or 4 states makes more sense than a North-South split.
You may recall then-Assemblyman Stan Statham qualified an initiative to split California into three states. It was on the 1992 or 1994 ballot — and lost.
Correction.
An off-line reader reminded me that I should have stated it as the Republican or Democrat (political)Party and not the Democratic party.
Stan. Thanks for the clarification.
yes, split the state and get government out of the way with a part time legislature. cathy schlicht
In my haste to have some fun with this post I overlooked the fact that there are more than two political parties in CA.
No offense to the honorable Art Olivier, Libertarian for Governor 2006, who ran for office stating that he wanted to “make California better, without bonds or higher taxes.”
I think this portion of the post is what leads people to consider this: Why not! Our local Legislative representatives can’t seem to get anything for us while those living up “north” get the lion’s share of our mutual revenues.”
I agree that Republican regions get the shaft. However, I still think the better solution is to start electing Libertarians. Libertarians can draw votes from both parties and if we started winning, Democrats would be at risk of loosing power and just might become better legislators.
Isn’t the object of this split to allow S Cal to merge into Mexico in return for building the wall on S Cal’s border and not current Mexican terriotry. Also, it would bottle up the illegals here already and get us out of Iraq.
Anonymous #8
Wow!!!!!!!!
Great input! Did you think this up all by yourself?
Back to my post.
As much as we probably have merit with the concept, and the ability to pick up two or four new US Senators would be nice, the other 49 states also have a say in the addition of any new states to join the union.
Unless we get fed up and move out of CA we will just have to go about our daily lives as a donor County providing for all of Arnold’s plans.
It’s been a while since I have seen any intellectual discussions on whether Southern California and metro New York should form their own urban states. Both have unique sets of challenges and have little in common with the rest of the respective states.
I believe Southern California is further from its state capitol than any other metro center in the nation except El Paso TX and Anchorage and Fairbanks AK. There is talk of moving the state capitol of Alaska to Anchorage from isolated Juneau.
At least NY metro (including Long Island) is relatively close to Albany, but like SoCAL it sends five dollars to the capitol and gets four back in services roughly.
In California, the problem is water rights of the Sierras.
Allan Pilger