LAKEPORT >> The secessionist state of Jefferson proposal consumed two hours of discussion time during the Lake County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday.
The state of Jefferson is a movement to carve a 51st state from northern California and southern Oregon. In addition to Lake, the counties involved include Siskyou, Modoc, Glenn, Sutter, Yuba and Tehama.
“The reason we want to do this, and the reason six counties have signed up to do this, is because California is ungovernable in its current form,” said Mark Baird, who led the presentation before the board. “We are governed by people who have no empathy for our lives,” Baird said. “They aren’t bad people, they just don’t know what it takes to live our lives.”
On the other hand, Lower Lake resident Victoria Brandon said during public comment the proposed separation was “the silliest thing I’ve heard in a while.”
Proposals urging the separation of one region from an existing state are not unprecedented. Voters in Colorado spurned such a movement, introduced by the state’s rural northeastern counties last year. People in the western panhandle of Nebraska occasionally refer to the notion of a “Wyo-braska,” largely due to the state’s eastern population centers. In the 1970s, voters in Illinois’ west-central farm country pushed for a new state called, somewhat pointedly, Forgotonia.
Even in Lake County the effort is not new. In April, the board held a similar discussion, following the six other county boards voting in favor of the separation. In August a group of supporters tried to advance the idea with a visit to the state capital.
The separation would be accomplished legally through an Article 4, Section 3 “state split,” according to Baird. This, he pointed out, has been accomplished four times in the history of the United States. Few such campaigns ever reach a statewide referendum, let alone a successful split. The last time was in 1820, when Maine broke from Massachusetts. The two states were geographically separate, and the political shift carried in the popular vote. West Virginia was carved out of Virginia during the Civil War.
As with many of the recent secession movements, Baird cited a lack of representation for rural counties on the state level.
“Los Angeles has 35 state legislators and the entirety of the northern third of California has six, depending on where you draw the boundary,” Baird continued.
Proportional representation, he explained, ensures that Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Francisco “enjoy a majority in the state legislatures.”
Opponents during the meeting pointed to several perceived flaws with the idea.
“We want to create the poorest state in the United States?” Brandon asked, adding that the movement was encouraged by those bent on “dismantling California’s excellent system of environmental protections … that we need here in Lake County.”
She also mentioned that, should the separation happen, Jefferson would be a state with no east-west interstate highways or railroad, as well as the only coastal state with no deep-water port.
“This is supposed to create economic viability?” She asked.
District 5 Supervisor Rob Brown said he “respectively disagree with a lot of what she had to say.”
Again drawing on the disproportionate population, he said “The representation in the county has been pathetic.”
Jim Comstock, county supervisor for District 1, said he does support the movement and “thinks we should move forward with this.”
“We do need to be able to be represented,” Comstock added. “We have been ignored by our local representatives and state government. They might pass through for a fundraiser … but we did not have their eye and we did not have their voice.”
District 2 Supervisor Jeff Smith said he would also support signing on to “see what the options are.”
“If it was before us to vote right now, I would do it,” Smith said.
Denise Rushing, District 2 supervisor, said she thought there would be “unintended consequences that we may not understand.”
One of those consequences was the transition itself, which would likely involve finding the funds to cover law enforcement, state regulatory agencies and other functions.
“For me I need to gather more information,” District 4 Supervisor Anthony Farrington said. “I do agree that the state of California is ungovernable.”
“The system is broken,” he added.
J.W. Burch IV can be reached at 900-2022
