Venture Capitalist Tim Draper’s Initiative Proposal Won’t Work

by Brian Leubitz

There is really no hedging necessary in that above statement. California clearly has regionalism, in government and in culture, to break into six states as Draper proposes in his potential ballot measure. Not only would the breakup cause huge water issues, but the finances would simply break down. Fortunately for us, the LAO broke it all down in a nice easy report.

At times, some conservative Central Valley legislators talk about how coastal California legislators are just too spend-y, and if they had their way, they would run a lean ship. Turns out they would need to, as the potential Central Valley state envisioned by Draper’s plan would be among the nation’s poorest states, with the state of Jefferson not too far behind.

There is also the troubling issues the lines in this new state raise serious questions. Why, for example, is Marin County part of “Northern” California rather than the Bay Area state of Silicon Valley? If you do switch Marin to Silicon Valley, income levels of Silicon Valley would go up further, and North California would fall back substantially.

The bigger question is how each state would be able to produce a budget. Central California would have the highest need for social services, but the lowest revenue. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley would be flush with income and property tax revenues. Hey, looks like the children of Silicon Valley will be getting iPads in the classroom.

Beyond that, there is the fact that the distribution of facilities is far from equal. There are more prisons in the Central Valley, but the UC/CSU campuses are spread all over the state. This proposal would mean more administration costs for those systems, hardly what they need right now.

In the end, why bother with this? Yes, there is occasionally tension because of water, or spending or what not, but this is simply rash to break up the state. Yes, we are headed to 50 million people, and Sacramento can be distant. But surely there is something between doing nothing and breaking up the state. We can do more to empower the counties to bring government closer, expand “realignment” beyond the criminal justice system.

As a thought exercise, though, this was a valuable report. It gives us a lot of information about how wealth and resources are divided and implies that we can do more to bring government close. I’m not sure the LAO would have done this sort of exercise without this sort of impetus. So, at least something valuable came out of this, and one suspects that we aren’t likely to see this measure on the ballot anytime soon.