The Idea Locker doesn’t like my proposal to break California into three states:
California doesn’t need to be broken up. If you were to give each of the de novo states that same comically bad constitution that California has now, each mini-state would have the same problems. It’s not that California has such an unwieldy mix of people that it needs to be divided geographically; it’s the governance structure that virtually mandates the dysfunction.
Unfortunately, the governance structure does not exist independently of the governed. The governance structure is a direct result of the need to accommodate the population of California.
As Lincoln supposedly said, “every man over forty is responsible for his face” (variants attributed to Napoleon and Camus). The specific details of California’s method of governance are peculiarities of history. The Locker points out that Prop 13 was approved in a 1978 election that saw fewer than 50% of eligible voters turn out. It’s a somewhat shaky metric – California had not crossed 50% of eligible voter turnout since the first Eisenhower election, 69% of eligible voters turned out, and Prop 13 won 65-35 while carrying all but Kern, San Francisco, and Yolo counties – but let’s suppose the overall point is that the ballot initiative process is one that gives extraordinary respect to the passions of the masses that might not fully consider the consequences of their actions.
Why is this system in place? For that matter, how come California essentially allows 1/3 of the legislature to function as a blocking minority? Why not hold a Constitutional Convention and redraw the document to create a more effective state?
My answer is that the current population of California wants it this way. It is the only way that Republicans in the state believe they can stem the Democratic tide. It is the only way that inland California believes it can put the brakes on the Bolshevik hordes by the Bay. It is a confused system for a confused state where voters combine low information with high activism. For example, “community activists” take the time to protest against changes to rent control despite lacking the basic economic knowledge to see that rent control increases rents.
The population of California is not evenly distributed across its geography. Creating three states would not yield three mini-Californias; it would lauch three distinct states. The voters of Redwood would gladly redraft the Constitution to eliminate restrictions on tax increases, and while they were at it, they would probably include a host of pro-civil rights and pro-labor provisions. Yosemite might go all the way to a Texas-style weak governorship as the state on the whole changed to be more of a typical Western low-tax low-benefit place. Paradise…well, it’s unclear what Paradise would do. My guess is that it becomes a fiscally conservative, socially liberal place, a bit like the NY or DC suburbs, but it’s a wildcard.
More broadly, I think that if there is any justification for having states at all it has to be that the states are more than just geographic or historic oddities (America’s appendix); states should represent some unifying set of interests. To take an East Coast example, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have New York City and Buffalo in the same state. But the five counties of New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland counties of NY, Bergen, Passaic, Essex, Hudson, Union, Mercer and Middlesex counties of NJ, and Fairfield county of CT should probably be united. Well, maybe not Nassau…maybe that should be a bit like the Delmarva peninsula.
California is blessedly free of the administrative challenge of recombining with outside states. Simple subdivision will get sufficiently unified bodies that the successor states will be able to govern themselves. Toll roads optional.
