As a native Californian who was born in Oakland, raised in the San Fernando Valley, summered in Fresno, schooled in Berkeley and is currently residing in Venice, I would like to say one thing to Timothy Draper, the Silicon Valley kajillionaire pushing the idiotic breakup of the Golden State: Please go away.
My colleague Patrick McGreevy reported on Thursday that Draper had announced he was on track to gather enough signatures to get his mindblowingly stupid measure on the November 2016 ballot. To that end, he has spent — well, wasted — $4.9 million (Dh18 million) of his own money — a sum that could certainly have been put to better use if he really cared about the welfare of Californians. Draper has proposed dividing California into six states: “Jefferson” (Redding, Eureka), “North California” (Sacramento, Marin County), “Silicon Valley” (San Jose, San Francisco), “Central California” (Fresno, Stockton, Bakersfield), “West California” (Los Angeles, Santa Barbara) and “South California” (Riverside, Anaheim, San Diego). At a press conference in Sacramento last Tuesday, reported McGreevy, Draper read from his iPad: “When the people and their state are no longer in sync and large populations feel that they are not being represented and when the state fails to provide the services that it promises to our citizens, then we lose our democracy.”
However, his plan would do just the opposite, creating winners and losers and inflicting decades of expensive litigation on a state that can ill afford a distraction catalysed by a venture capitalist goofball with more money than sense. On his website, Six Californias, Draper writes: “California needs a reboot. Our public schools have gone from the top in the nation to 47th. We are ranked 50th out of 50 for the worst business climate in the United States ... Our state needs a massive investment in infrastructure and a streamlined process to help grow and keep business. Our state needs our help.”
I cannot disagree. California’s schools have suffered terribly, especially after the 1978 Proposition 13 property tax revolt. Yes, the measure helped overtaxed Californians hang onto their homes, but it has been exploited by corporations and entrepreneurs like Michael Dell, who have found a way around ownership transfers that are supposed to trigger higher taxes. Breaking up the state will do little to fix that.
Draper’s Six Californias site has a TED-talk-style animated video with a pleasant-sounding lady narrator that does nothing to explain why breaking up the state will be good for residents, offering only vague bromides about how government would be “closer” and “more responsive”. Draper also seems unaware of the pride that Californians take in the fact that their state is large. The video mentions that it takes 14 hours to drive from one end of California to the other — as if this is something bad. But I almost choked on my coffee when I heard the pleasant lady narrator offer this tidbit about California: “It is a wealthy state with high-priced housing, but with more and more people living below the poverty line — almost 20 per cent — it is a disastrous combination that keeps getting worse.” What is the disastrous combination? Fancy houses and poor people? Huh?
If you want to get a little bit into the weeds about the nuts and bolts of a breakup, check out the analysis of Draper’s initiative by State Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor, which was delivered to the attorney general’s office on January 31. The report notes that this is nothing new. Calls to break up the state began in 1850, the year California achieved statehood. Some Northern California residents have been trying to break away for decades. Recently, the boards of supervisors in Modoc and Siskiyou counties have supported breaking away to form a new state called Jefferson. I would be tempted to let them go, as they are contiguous with Oregon and/or Nevada and do not bring much to the party. (Sorry, Jeffersonians, but you come in dead last in terms of personal income tax, the engine that powers our state’s fiscal health.)
Taylor’s report is pretty straightforward about what it would take to break up the state. The process is so complicated, I guarantee you it will never happen. Among the highlights:
— Congress will have to approve the breakup and the president will have to sign it into law. (Is it likely that Congress will give California 10 additional US Senators? Three words: Har har har.)
— A board of 24 commissioners would be appointed by the Legislature and county boards of supervisors to oversee the breakup. The board would have two years to do its work. If it failed to resolve financial and property issues within that time, each new state would keep all state assets in its borders, and all of the state’s debts would be divided among the states, based on their population.
— Counties not happy with their assigned states could appeal to be reassigned to other states, as long as they are contiguous.
— Disputes would have to be resolved in the courts. The analyst notes that disputes between Virginia and West Virginia — which declared independence from Virginia in 1861 — lasted 50 years and included several lawsuits that went as far as the Supreme Court.
— Then there is the small matter of whether this proposition is an initiative or a revision of the California Constitution. As the analyst points out, “A change that substantially alters the basic governmental framework of the state is a revision. Under the California Constitution, revisions may be proposed only by the Legislature or a constitutional convention.”
Doesn’t this sound like fun?
This plan will essentially create rich states and poor states and wreak havoc in areas like school funding, health and social service programmes. California’s current per capital personal income is $46,477, 12th among the 50 states. But the proposed “Silicon Valley” would have a per capita personal income of about $63,000, making its residents the richest of them all. (And by all, I mean it would be the richest state in the country. Only the District of Columbia would surpass it, the place where the very best public servants toil at low wages for the betterment of the country ... until they can cash out and become lobbyists. But I digress.)
America’s poorest state, Taylor said, would be “Central California” with a per capita personal income of $33,510, putting it dead last in the country, $150 below Mississippi.
Other thorny issues: What to do with the far-flung public universities and state colleges? How to handle the incredibly complex and divisive issue of water? What about the planned high-speed rail? How to address unfunded liabilities of the state’s existing public employee retirement plan? And last but not the least: What about prisons?
Some people have speculated that Draper, a venture capitalist who made news when he scooped up millions of dollars of Bitcoin seized from the Silk Road marketplace, is trying to vault himself to prominence in advance of a political career. Or that he is trying to goose Republican voter registration in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 43.1 per cent to 28.4 per cent.
I have no idea what his true motivations are, but I do know this: No one who truly loves California and understands the mythical pull it has on the American imagination will ever want to break it apart.
Tim Draper. Dude. You are totally uncool.
— Los Angeles Times
