Six Californias

Map of the Six Californias

  Jefferson

  North California

  Silicon Valley

  Central California

  West California

  South California

Six Californias is a proposed initiative to split the U.S. state of California into six states. It is proposed as a California ballot measure for the 2016 state elections. Venture capitalist Tim Draper launched the measure in December 2013. If the measure passes, it does not legally split California immediately; consent would eventually need to be given by both the California State Legislature and the U.S. Congress to admit the new states to the union per Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution. Rather, the measure establishes several procedures within the state government and its 58 counties that prepare California for the proposed split, and then instructs the Governor of California to submit the state-splitting proposal to Congress.

The proposed states would be named Jefferson, North California, Silicon Valley, Central California, West California, and South California.

Draper's stated reasoning for the proposal is that the state is too large and ungovernable, and thus wants to split California to produce six smaller and more efficient state governments. Opponents argue that it will be a waste of money and resources to split California and create these new governments. Critics also charge that this is a money and political power grab designed to separate California's wealthy areas from the poor, and to diminish the state's ability as a reliable "blue state" to influence national elections in favor of the Democratic Party.

Background

Main article: Partition and secession in California

Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution outlines the procedure for the admission of new U.S. States. It states:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

There are several precedents: Vermont, admitted in 1791, was created from territory claimed by New York and New Hampshire; Kentucky split from Virginia in 1792; North Carolina ceded territory to the Federal government which became Tennessee in 1792; Georgia ceded land that later became part of Alabama and Georgia. Two instances were a result of slavery: as Missouri was being admitted to the Union, the 1820 Missouri Compromise balanced the number of free and slave states by splitting Massachusetts into Maine and Massachusetts; and West Virginia was admitted to the U.S. as a separate state in 1863 when the Union-loyal Restored Government of Virginia broke from Virginia after Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in 1861.

California has been the subject of more than 220 proposals to divide it into multiple states, including at least 27 serious proposals. Several of these attempts proposed the creation of a State of Jefferson that would span the contiguous, mostly rural area of southern Oregon and northern California.

Ballot qualification process

Six Californias was introduced in December 2013 by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper. California Secretary of State Debra Bowen approved Draper to begin collecting petition signatures in February 2014. The petition needed to submit at least 807,615 signatures of registered California voters by July 18, 2014, to qualify as a November election ballot proposition. As the petition deadline drew closer, Draper suggested that the initiative would be postponed to 2016 (since the deadline to gather enough signatures to qualify for the 2014 ballot was in June 2014). On July 14, the petition organizer announced that the proposal received enough signatures, and submitted them to the California Secretary of State's office. Once the signatures are verified, per California law, it will qualify for the November 2016 state ballot.

Opponents of the initiative filed a complaint with Secretary of State Debra Bowen on July 17, 2014, asking her office to investigate allegations of voter fraud. The complaint, filed on behalf of the OneCalifornia committee formally opposing the Six Californias initiative, follows reports that signature gatherers for Six Californias claimed that those who signed "would be opposing the Attorney General of California’s intention to split the state into six states" – the exact opposite of the petitions intentions. Signature gathering for Six Californias was carried out by Arno Political Consultants, which has faced a number of previous fraud accusations around the country.

Measure details

The measure outlines the proposed new states, then establishes several procedures within the state government and all the counties to prepare California for the proposed split. The proposal would then need the approval of voters in California, the Congress of the United States (per Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution), and possibly the California State Legislature.

Proposed states

Six Californias would divide the state's 58 counties among six new states: Jefferson (based on the historic State of Jefferson proposal), North California, Silicon Valley, Central California, West California, and South California.

Proposed state	Estimated Population
Jefferson	949,409
North California	3,820,438
Silicon Valley	6,828,617
Central California	4,232,419
West California	11,563,717
South California	10,809,997

Jefferson

See also: Jefferson (proposed Pacific state)

The state of Jefferson would be created from the far north part of California, bordering Oregon, and would consist of fourteen counties: Butte, Colusa, Del Norte, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Lassen, Mendocino, Modoc, Plumas, Siskiyou, Shasta, Tehama, and Trinity. Unlike the historic State of Jefferson proposal, this new state would not include any territory from Oregon.

North California

The state of North California would be south of Jefferson spanning from the Pacific Ocean to Nevada. North California would consist of thirteen counties: Amador, El Dorado, Marin, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sierra, Solano, Sonoma, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba.

Silicon Valley

The state of Silicon Valley would span the coastline from San Francisco to Monterey. It would consist of eight counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, San Benito, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Monterey.

Central California

The state of Central California would be between Silicon Valley and Nevada. It would consist of the fourteen counties north of Los Angeles and south of Sacramento: Alpine, Calaveras, Fresno, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Mono, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Tulare and Tuolumne.

West California

The state of West California would be south of Silicon Valley and Central California, and west of the current San Bernardino County. It would consist of four counties: Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles and Ventura.

South California

The state of South California would be made up of the southernmost part of the state. It would consist of five counties: Imperial, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego.

State-splitting process and other procedures

The above division is not set in stone. The proposal allows a county along one of the proposed new state borders to join an adjacent state instead, subject to the approval of both that county's voters (via a county ballot measure) and its Boards of Supervisors by November 15, 2017.

A board of 24 commissioners would also be appointed to negotiate how to divide California's existing assets and liabilities among the new states. The initiative also explicitly states that the Governor of California will be required to submit the state-splitting proposal to Congress by January 1, 2018.

In addition, California's charter counties would be allowed more power over municipal affairs that currently may be controlled by city governments. This change is meant for the interim period between the passing of the initiative and congressional approval of the new states, but will remain in place even if Congress eventually does not pass the state-splitting proposal.

In final section of the initiative, "the official proponent of the initiative" (Draper) is appointed as an "Agent of the State of California" for the purpose of defending the proposal against legal challenges.

Analysis

The California Legislative Analyst's Office, in a report that covered a wide variety of impacts, noted a wide disparity of incomes and tax bases in the proposed states. The report estimated that the state of Silicon Valley would have the nation's highest per capita personal income (PCPI) whereas the state of Central California would have the nation's lowest PCPI. The Huffington Post further published a map detailing how splitting California would result in these separate rich states and poor states.

Vikram Amar wrote a preliminary analysis of the difficulties that the Six Californias measure would face. His piece, published by the law group Justia, raised several constitutional questions on the proposal, including whether the people of a U.S. state can authorize such a split by popular initiative, and whether several new states can be validly created under Article IV by splitting the territory of a single existing state. Furthermore, Draper, as the appointed "Agent of the State of California" for the purpose of defending the proposal in court, may not actually be able to do so because of both the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Hollingsworth v. Perry; and Article II, Section 12, of the California Constitution that prohibits any constitutional amendment that names a specific individual to hold a particular office. Amar also wrote that the measure might be blocked by the California courts on grounds that it is a revision to the California constitution instead of an amendment. A proposed revision to the California constitution, a change that substantially alters the state's basic governmental framework, must originate from either the Legislature or a constitutional convention, not from a ballot initiative.

A report identified a potential increase in tuition for current Californians who attend a University of California campus, particularly residents in California’s most northern state of Jefferson who would not have a single UC Campus in the state. Based on the report’s findings, Six Californias would result in over 60% of California students being classified as out-of-state, costing Californian families $2.5 Billion more per year. California's prison system is also unequally spread out. The new urban states of Silicon Valley and West California would each have to construct several new prisons since most of the current ones in California are located in the rural areas.

California's current water and water rights issues will also have to be resolved among the new states. The California, Hetch Hetchy, Los Angeles, Mokelumne, and other major aqueducts will cross the new state lines. This will result in the new states of Silicon Valley and West California having to heavily rely on importing water from the other states.

The report by the California Legislative Analyst's Office specifically names several other major issues that could be affected by the decisions made by the leaders of each new state: crime, public safety and gun control/ownership; economic development; the environment; public employee pensions; laws related to marriage and family; taxes; and transportation and other infrastructure. Each new state could adopt different laws, either stricter or more lenient, on those issues than what California currently has on the books. These differing policies would in turn eventually result in long-term demographic and economic changes, as various groups of people will want to migrate to those new states with laws more favorable to them.

Splitting California will also change the make up of both Congress and the Electoral College. Currently, both of California's U.S. Senate seats are held by Democrats. And because California is currently the most populous state in the union, it has the largest number of seats in the House of Representatives with 53. California, using a "winner takes all" approach, has also been a solid "blue state" for the past few decades; Republicans have not won California's electoral votes since 1988. If the state is split, 12 Senators would then come from the six Californias, as well as a division of both California's current 53 House seats and their electoral votes. In fact, with California's population being split up, congressional re-apportionment may redistribute some of those House seats and electoral votes to the other most populous states like Texas, New York, and Florida. According to Vikram Amar, based on current voting patterns, "we could expect four [Senators] (from Silicon Valley and West California) to consistently be Democrats, and four (from Jefferson and Central California) to lean Republican, with the other four (from Northern California and South California) harder to predict".

Stances on the proposal

Support

Tim Draper indicated that the initiative was motivated by the belief that California is ungovernable as is with legislature unable to keep up on issues in all the state's regions, especially in areas such as job creation, education, affordable housing, and water and transportation infrastructure. Furthermore, he believes that the current state government is getting out of touch with the people of California. According to Draper, splitting up the state would allow the resulting new state governments to be closer to their people than the current California state government.

Opposition

OneCalifornia, a bi-partisan committee to oppose the Six Californias ballot proposal, was formed in April 2014. It is co-chaired by Joe Rodota, former Cabinet Secretary for Governor Pete Wilson; and Steven Maviglio, former Press Secretary to Governor Gray Davis. The committee has suggested that the initiative is damaging the state's image in the world economy. Rodota stated: "Every day this measure marches its way toward the ballot it damages the California brand as the nation's economic powerhouse. It has negative implications that could cost California's businesses and taxpayers tens of billions of dollars." In an opinion piece in the U-T San Diego, Maviglio and Rodota wrote that if the measure passes, it "will set in motion the most bureaucratic, costly, paper-pushing process in our history ... we'd spend years doing nothing more than rewriting laws, duplicating government offices, and spending billions of dollars unnecessarily." Furthermore, that it could increase the lobbying industry six fold in California "to deal with the flood of open questions", and would be a burden on California businesses due to the increase of federal regulations regarding interstate commerce.

The segregation of the incomes and tax bases has led to criticism that the proposal is merely a money and political power grab for Silicon Valley and California's other wealthy areas. Phillip Bump of the Washington Post wrote that "this entire plan is really about creating Silicon Valley as its own state. Therefore Silicon Valley gets to be a state called 'Silicon Valley,' and it gets to make its politics and its money more dense, and everyone in the idyllic dream of Silicon Valley gets to be happy."

Brendan Nyhan said that the idea would be unlikely to pass Congress due to disruption it would cause in the political balance of the U.S. Senate, as well as other sticking points. Opponents say that the initiative is a thinly disguised Republican power play aimed at diminishing the electoral votes that have historically gone to Democrats in California. In a survey of the California congressional delegation, The Hill found that the Democrats oppose the proposition, while the Republicans are generally divided.

Thus, a couple of political experts counter that not all parties needed to finalize the measure would approve: the voters as they would not necessarily wish to break up the state with the cost of setting up six new state governments and five new capitals, and Congress as they may not want five more states in the mix.

External links

• sixcalifornias.info — Measure website
• Initiative text
• Ballotpedia page on the initiative