Splitting Up California Would Make Us All Poorer

By Bryan Kim

Much noise has been made in the last few days over the announcement that Tim Draper’s plan to split California into six states has reached the required number of petition signatures. He claims that having six smaller states will allow for greater representation and localized government with faster response times. He cites statistics about low education quality and claims California is simply too big for two senators. He calls it simply “ungovernable.”

With a bigger economy than India’s and a population half the size of Germany’s, California’s size and economic power has made it not just a major player, but the leader in American culture, technology and ideology. The idea of splitting California into six states is not only impractical, but unpatriotic. It runs counter to a hundred years of American traditions of unity, cultural diversity, and entrepreneurship in the realm of technology that have been fulfilled in their highest expression by the best of California.

Let us first note what Tim Draper’s plan really is: a ploy to split Silicon Valley and its tax-dollars off from the rest of California, abandoning the Central Valley to its poverty. The new proposed Silicon Valley would be the wealthiest state in the nation, with a per capita income of $63,288. Their neighbors in new Central California would be poorer per person than Mississippi. For the very wealthy and very liberal in the Bay Area, it may seem like a dream situation until one realizes that their water supply would depend on the continued goodwill of residents near the Hetch-Hetchy Reservoir who have long supported stopping its flow to quench the Silicon Valley’s thirst in the name of the environment.

Without a state Water  Resources Control Board to enforce the effective sharing of resources, areas like San Francisco and San Diego would be at the mercy of what would become other states for their very survival. The effective distribution of water across one unified state — as critical for Napa wine, San Diego craft beer, and Humboldt marijuana as they are for our acres of oranges and avocados — is a both a necessity and a testament to the productive power of a people who choose to cooperate and embrace regional diversity.

Gone too would be the benefits of sharing our world-renowned university system. Can we really ask kids from Los Angeles to pay out-of-state tuition at UC San Diego? Conveniently, Draper’s new home state of Silicon Valley would be home to seven public universities including UCs Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Far northern Jefferson would get only CSUs Chico and Humboldt. Limiting the options of students across California by dividing the state hurts the economy of EVERY region: aspiring dolphin trainers from San Diego who can’t afford to attend the Moorpark College Teaching Zoo or ranchers from Central California who can’t afford agricultural science degrees from UC Davis. One key factor in our economic strength is our thriving university system — one that should not be destroyed on a Bay Area billionaire’s whim.

Any notion that California is “failing” or “ungovernable” exists only in Tim Draper’s mind. California has balanced its budget since the recession, swinging from a $26.1 billion deficit small surplus of $21.6 million in what the New York Times called “a dramatic turnaround” in just the last four years.

California is in the process of paying down its debt: a pipe dream for our national government, which continues to deficit spend its way onward and upward toward the $20 trillion mark. Do we really want to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars it would take to set up six new states’ worth of bureaucracies, DMVs, and public records like tax and real estate documents? How about on the construction of dozens of new prisons to accommodate the returning prisoners from what is now “out of state?” How about the drafting of six new state constitutions and the election of hundreds of new government officials? From a pragmatic standpoint, the arguments against dividing California are obvious, and innumerable.

But just as important is the moral argument. California’s diversity of economy, population, and ideology make it the embodiment of the best of the American melting pot. Interstate 5 and Yosemite epitomize the best of the highway and National Park projects. The growth of Silicon Valley, that marriage of entrepreneurial spirit and public investment that made internet technology possible, represents the fulfillment of the American Dream where the best ideas have a chance to thrive and to grow. For the last hundred years thanks to cinema and the Internet, California has been on the forefront of technology — Hollywood films and Silicon Valley aplications are the best in the world. Our universities are home to Marines on the GI Bill and long-haired war protesters, immigrants and foreign exchange students, and the sons of movie stars and illegals alike, because a diversity of ideas can only come from a diversity of experiences. It is to our credit that both Ronald Reagan and Harvey Milk are home state sons.

If the last century was the American Century, California’s wealth and spirit were the engine that drove it all. Today, we are the culmination of all its currents, for better or worse. Unified, we have the power to continue to sculpt the model of culture, technology, and ideology not just for America, but for the world. Let’s live up to that role as One California.

Bryan Kim is CEO of the Moderate Majority, an independent grassroots coalition based in San Diego that is working to put an end to political partisanship.