New California plan would split state in three
sacbee.com
sacbee.com
Regional governments around cities would do more help governance. A big problem of the Bay Area is that political power is devolved too much to cities, which paralyzes any regional efforts on infrastructure, housing, crime, redevelopment. It would make more sense to create intermediate governments with power over metro areas. E.g. separate regional governments for the Bay Area, LA, Orange County, San Diego, Sacramento, and then larger ones for the central valley and Northern California.
That's basically a county. Perhaps we just need to reconsider those boundaries?
> Sacramento
As a native, it's not as homogeneous as anyone would presume; and I feel the surrounding counties and structure do more or less reasonably represent the geographical and societal divisions that are present in Sacramento and the surrounding areas. I'm not sure any of our neighbors would appreciate being lumped out of California and in with us.
There are 9 counties in the Bay Area.
Depends on the county. The Bay Area makes that problematic, but the Bay Area has extensive regional governance systems above the county level already. (Such systems aren't uncommon in California, but the Bay Area is heavy with them, probably specifically because it's a large economically integrated region with small counties compared to the size of the region.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Council
The seven counties in the Council's Twin Cities Metropolitan Area are Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, and Washington counties. The Metropolitan Council or Met Council is the regional governmental agency and metropolitan planning organization in Minnesota serving the Twin Cities seven-county metropolitan area. The Met Council is granted regional authority powers in state statutes by the Minnesota Legislature. These powers can supersede decisions and actions of local governments. The legislature entrusts the Council to maintain public services and oversee growth of the state's largest metro area. This agency is similar to Metro in Portland, Oregon in that both agencies administer an urban growth boundary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(Oregon_regional_governm...
Metro serves 25 cities in Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties (as well as unincorporated parts of those counties.) Metro is the regional government for the Oregon portion of the Portland metropolitan area. It is the only directly elected regional government and metropolitan planning organization in the United States. Metro is responsible for managing the Portland region's solid waste system, coordinating the growth of the cities in the region, managing a regional parks and natural areas system, and overseeing the Oregon Zoo, Oregon Convention Center, Portland's Centers for the Arts, and the Portland Expo Center.
California has both counties and regional Councils of Governments (ABAG in the Bay Area for example.) Many of the latter of which are also (federally mandated) regional Metropolitan Planning Organizations.
So regional governments already exist, though they aren't directly elected.
> Sacramento, and then larger ones for the central valley
Sacramento is not only part of the Central Valley, but if you take out Sacramento's metro area, the Central Valley isn't even a contiguous region.
Also weird that progressive SF ends up with the more conservative far-north counties.
Id say Orange County is more like San Diego than it is like LA. Clearly no matter how you draw these lines people’s commutes will be crossing states (which also happens elsewhere, for example NH and MA).
What's wrong with just a simple north/south division? Not that this is better than the current situation, but it makes more sense to me than this tripartite split.
Why? I've driven through the area a dozen times. It's all the same sprawl. The nice parts of OC don't seem that much different than say Pasadena.
Do people really think this? Seems like California is in pretty good shape to me.
Since the Democrats achieved a supermajority in both chambers, and with the seasoned and very effective Jerry Brown as governor, everything has been comparatively smooth.
I have been a Sili Valley engineer for years. But I grew up in rural America. I can speak both languages. The half of the USA that voted Trump is simply tired of the abuse, disdain, intolerance, and complete disregard for their interests. They are no less human than you.
I suspect you are surprised at my reaction. Think about what that means. Ignoring the seething anger of those who don't think things are going well now that there is a supermajority in both houses is not going to end well.
I'm not sure what Trump has to do with any of this or why literally anyone but his close family would think anything good would come from that conman no matter what your politics are.
That and some of them are unhappy about living in the same state with people who have different skin color or sexual orientation and having their government pay for schools that teach science, women’s reproductive health, social safety net programs, and so on.
The less populated parts of the state get dramatically disproportionate state and federal resources spent on them. Support for their schools, infrastructure, medical care, fire protection, etc.
Most counties in California should be very pleased to be thrown in with the coastal urban areas, because without them the state economy wouldn't amount to a hill of beans. All of the resource extraction industries (logging, oil, quarrying) and agriculture+fishing combined are worth about 5% of the state economy. The "State of Jefferson" counties wouldn't even be able to afford to pave their highways, much less fight their wildfires, and certainly not rebuild Oroville Dam.
If this is representative of rural California, I fear they will feel disenfranchised for a long time to come, because you cannot fool Mother Nature. When the water is gone, it will be gone, and no amount of politics will bring it back. Ditto for other natural resources.
Shall we count the trees and squirrels as part of the population in order to make it more fair?
We need the rural areas to be well run to survive...
No, they're tired of having their feelings hurt and tired of imaginary threats. Rural voters (nationally anyway) already have an outsized influence on State and Federal government. Without gerrymandering in favor of rural voters (and the 2-senators per state which also heavily favors rural voters) the cities - and by extension Democrats - would have a complete lock on a majority of states and Congress.
Rural America is over-represented and wields far too much control over the country. I grew up there too and they have a disregard for their own self-interest. It's mostly complete ignorance and a complete disregard for reality, followed by seething anger at imaginary wrongs. To Rural America all our problems are simple and can be solved with a soundbite. Rural America is the epitome of the interviews with Trump voters who claim "we are losing our country" and when asked to name how or why they draw a blank. When asked how Obama's presidency hurt them they hem and haw.
For this reason, I can't see this plan proceeding though congress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_...
Edit: I was curious so I ran the math. It's super close, but republicans barely win. In 2012, Republicans scored 1,786,934 votes in green counties. Democrats scored 1,774,135 votes. That places republicans winning by 12,799 votes or with 50.18% of the vote.
That makes the new "Southern California" a swing state.
But I agree with you that this plan has no chance.
also, southern california (green) isn't even south of california (purple)...
okay that's not the ridiculous part. the ridiculous part is the comment section thinking this is some liberal conspiracy. apparently they equate silicon valley as full of liberals... which i guess it is, but it's also full of non-liberals... you know the billionaires that can actually fund dumb stuff like this over and over again.
Tyranny of the majority can manifest itself in a lot of different ways. That's one of them.
That's really not that hard of a question to answer, if you're willing to have some empathy and look at things from someone else's point of view. I say that as someone who has always lived in a large city.
Clearly, it's the rights of small communities, with significant material and cultural differences from large cities, to have a degree of self-determination and a real say in how they are governed.
Your choice of words shows a view that it's somehow unjust for these communities not to be dominated by distant, populous, and likely unsympathetic overlords.
> Your choice of words shows a view that it's somehow unjust for these communities not to be dominated by distant, populous, and likely unsympathetic overlords.
Yes, like how small towns are dominating the politics of cities by being heavily favored in elections, oh those poor small towns. Tyranny of the minority indeed. Small communities aren't being trampled upon, they're the ones doing the trampling.
A fair system would be one where everyone's vote is equal, not one where people count less because they live too closely together. Rural voters currently have far far too much power given their numbers. A vote in Wyoming is worth 3.6 votes in California, and you're claiming small towns are the victims? Really?
lol. You have an hilariously parochial point of view.
>> What rights are being trampled on here?
> Clearly, it's the rights of small communities, with significant material and cultural differences from large cities, to have a degree of self-determination and a real say in how they are governed. Your choice of words shows a view that it's somehow unjust for these communities not to be dominated by distant, populous, and likely unsympathetic overlords.
That's rich and hilariously wrong. My choice of words reflected the original question.
> tyranny of the minority
If that's how you want to characterize having rights that are protected, go ahead, but it's embarrassingly simplistic.
That's an odd way to complain about not being utterly dominant.
> We have Trump because the system discriminates against urban voters, i.e. currently the majority is being damned.
That's a pretty myopic read of the situation, and not very valuable. The solution to something like Trump is not to create a permanently disenfranchised and forgotten hinterland, which really seems like your desired outcome.
Loss of privilege is not oppression, making the system more fair where all votes are equal does not make the system unfair to rural folk and does not disenfranchise them. You use words you don't seem to understand the meaning of, the only people disenfranchised right now are urban people. Treating every vote equally does not disenfranchise anyone.
But we're not talking about rights. We're talking about how voices are weighted within the democratic portion of our system. If a group is really into stepping on the rights of others, and that group includes rural voters, it's going to get further than a group that doesn't.
"Tyranny of the majority" is a problem, but weighting things so that we're making decisions based on a different arbitrary group is not the way to avert it.
Why do you simultaneously think that urbanites show disdain/hate as well as ignorance/apathy over rural parts of the state?
Why do you think this is an effort to disenfranchise rural parts of the state while also believing they are already disenfranchised? Why would three states be better at this than one state?
Some of the posts on this topic are representative of the "disdain/hate" accusation. (Samples from other discussion forums correlate well with the attitudes displayed in some of these posts.) The messaging from urban voters seems to be "We know the best way forward and if you don't agree with us you're an idiot." Disdain generally follows disagreement because that attitude precludes any rational discourse regardless if the disagreements are well-founded.
"Hate" probably stems from the use of terms such as "flyover states", "rednecks", "hillbillies", etc. These terms are quite often used in political discourse online, usually by urbanites referring to voters in the central US. Semantically and linguistically these terms are exactly equivalent to any racial slurs, so when the population of the central US hears urbanites utter these words while at the same time championing for racial equality it's no wonder that they assume hypocrisy and hate from those same urbanites.
I don't think governance will improve until all sides are willing to think that they might be wrong about their vision of the future and engage in constructive dialog with all or most of the affected parties to reach a compromise.
People continue to flock to cities; urban populations are already the majority and it gets more lopsided every day. That isn't disdain or hate, that's just math.
What you're actually asking for is extra power for rural people so they can override the majority. On behalf of the majority of citizens of California: we decline your offer.