The Attorney General’s office yesterday released the title and summary for Tim Draper’s initiative proposal to divide California into six states. Whether the Silicon Valley entrepreneur is serious about pursuing this idea we will soon find out.
However, it’s interesting to contemplate which current California laws these new states might adopt or abandon when officials in the new states write constitutions.
Would Proposition 13’s property tax protections be kept in tact by Silicon Valley and North California (two of the state names in the proposal?) These liberal leaning areas might try to make changes. However, the state of Jefferson, bordering Oregon, might be very comfortable with the property tax law.
Possibly, the six states might alter the property tax law in six different ways from keeping it all, to changing parts of it to dumping the whole thing. For some who have struggled over the years to undo Prop 13 and its status as the “third rail of California politics,” they may see the six state plan as their best chance.
Same is true with other provisions of the constitution. Proposition 98, the school funding law that dictates to the legislature how much money will go to the schools would be in for an overall in the new states.
Would the initiative process that brought us both Proposition 13 and Proposition 98 survive in the new states? The great debate over governing in a republican form of government or relying on direct democracy from the people might be hotly contested in constitutional conventions.
Beyond the constitution certain statutes are bound to change. Gun laws may be made tighter in some of the new states that have a more liberal bent while undoubtedly the current gun laws would be loosened considerably in other new states.
And then there is the question of water.
If you think the fight over getting northern water to the south is contentious now, wait until you have six states sitting around the table. Consider many northern Californians who fight the idea of releasing more water to the south and oppose the building of dams just might agree to one giant dam — to prohibit any water going south.
It’s fun for political junkies to consider the political and policy alternatives for the new states if the measure passes and all hurdles are cleared. For those enthusiasts, determining the governance of six new states would be as close as they get to starting from scratch with a clean slate to construct a new way of governing.
But getting to that point, you’d have better odds in betting that the Lakers will play the Celtics in this year’s NBA championship.
The key is in the first sentence of the initiative’s title and summary: Congress must approve. Even if the people vote for the split, Congress has to agree.
The initiative’s preamble itself notes that Californians once voted to split the state but Congress did not act. That was in 1859. Interestingly, one of the big issues that drove that referendum vote was that the property tax payers of southern California felt they were being treated unfairly by the legislature dominated by northern Californians that protected the mining industry over the southern landowners.
The Six States of California – fun to consider but nearly impossible to imagine as a reality.
The Six States as proposed by the initiative:
Jefferson, including the territory represented by the boundaries of the following counties: Butte, Colusa, Del Norte, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Lassen, Mendocino, Modoc, Plumas, Siskiyou, Shasta, Tehama, and Trinity.
North California, including the territory represented by the following counties:, Amador, El Dorado, Marin, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sierra, Solano, Sonoma, Sutter, Yolo, and Yuba.
Central California, including the territory represented by the boundaries of the following counties: Alpine, Calaveras, Fresno, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Mono, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Tulare, and Tuolumne.
Silicon Valley, including the territory represented by the following counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, San Benito, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Monterey.
West California, including the territory represented by the following counties: Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, and Ventura.
South California, including the territory of Imperial, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego.