California heads toward vote on dividing the state in three

SAN FRANCISCO -- California is moving closer to a landmark November vote that could chop the state in three, splitting San Francisco from Los Angeles, dividing the Cental Valley in half and creating mountain of questions about how the nation's biggest state would divvy its resources.

Tim Draper, a Bay Area venture capitalist seeking to blow up California as it now exists, says he'll soon submit more than 600,000 signatures to the secretary of state for a measure that would divide the state into what he's labeled Northern California, Southern California and California.

A total of 365,880 valid signatures are needed to put the statute before voters. Once the signatures are filed with the state's 58 counties, it will take more than a month to determine whether the initiative qualifies for the Nov. 6 ballot.

Draper and other proponents of the Cal 3 initiative already are looking ahead to a fall campaign and the possibilities a victory would bring.

``If you were going to start a new state today, it wouldn't look anything like what we have,'' Draper said Friday. ``This is a chance for three fresh new approaches to government.''

But there are no guarantees, as Draper found during a similar, but even more ambitious, state partition plan on which he spent $5.2 million in 2014. The effort to split California into six states collected 1.3 million signatures for the proposed constitutional amendment, only to see nearly half of them disqualified. He ended up about 100,000 short of the 807,615 valid signatures he needed.

``This time we're so far over what we need that even if there is a blip in the signature count, we've got enough to qualify,'' Draper said.

While the lower signature requirement for his new statute initiative may make it easier to qualify to the ballot, Draper will still face plenty of problems convincing voters that three Californias are better than one. Congress would also need to be convinced; lawmakers must approve any split.

``This just goes to show that a billionaire with a wacky idea can get about anything on the ballot,'' said Steve Maviglio, a Democratic consultant who was part of a bipartisan effort opposing the 2014 measure. ``This doesn't solve a single problem in the state or add a single job.''

That's not the way Draper sees it.

``People know the state provides the worst education and the highest taxes and that it's not doing anything to make it better,'' he said. ``Three new states could become models not only for the rest of the country but for the entire world.''

Smaller is better, Draper argues: The new states could tailor their regulations and spending priorities to their own local needs.

``The closer you get to government, the better it's going to be,'' he said. ``When you have all the power delegated to someone very distant, it creates a problem.''

What's small, though, is a matter of comparison.

Southern California would run south from Madera County and then hook through San Diego and Orange counties. It would be nation's fourth-largest state, with 13.9 million residents. Northern California, which would run north from Santa Cruz to the Oregon border,and include Sacramento, Stockton and the Bay Area, would be just behind in fifth place, at 13.3 million.

California, which would run along the coast from Monterey County and include the Los Angeles basin, would be eighth with 12.3 million people.

Not only the boundaries would change. Each state also would be able to vote on its own name if the ballot measure passes.

The nearly equal populations aren't an accident, Draper said, since disparities in size and wealth were a problem with his original six-state plan.

``This is easier for people to understand,'' he said. ``Six states was a mind-blowing number for people, and there were concerns about having big states, small states, rich states, poor states. Now they're as close as we can make them.''

Not all the new states will be created equal, however. Northern California, home to Silicon Valley and the rest of the Bay Area, would be the nation's second-richest state, with a per capita personal income of about $65,000, according to 2015 data. That compares to about $53,000 in California and around $45,000 in Southern California.

If Northern California becomes the first among equals, that's not a bad thing, Draper suggested.

``I think this is the time and Silicon Valley and the Bay Area can definitely be the thought leaders here,'' the venture capitalist said. ``The area has new technologies and is used to adapting to change.''

Slicing California into three pieces will bring a rash of technical problems, Mac Taylor, the state's legislative analyst, suggested in a report on the proposed ballot measure.

The state's water project, for example, would serve each of the three new states. Their leaders ``would have to consider how to divide California's water and related hydroelectric resources among the three proposed states,'' Taylor said in the report.

Similarly, the state's prisons and prisoners don't split comfortably among the states, nor do California's public universities.

Draper doesn't see a major problem, however.

``It's very straightforward,'' he said. ``Cut deals over water, cut deals over prisons, cut deals over higher education and everything else pretty much works itself out.''

Those problems, however, don't include the lingering costs of a campaign in which backers of the three-state plan would spend millions to paint California as a total disaster, Maviglio said.

``For six months, all they're going to be talking about is how horrible the state is,'' he said.

Draper, though, is convinced Californians are desperate for change and will happily embrace what would be the biggest change in the state's long history.

At the start, the polls and focus groups run by the Cal 3 effort went poorly, ``but as people learned more, they became excited,'' Draper said.

``I'm thrilled we got the signatures, since it means at least 600,000 people on our side,'' he added. ``I hope to get 30 million more.''