Split Personality

Make no mistake: The current talk of splitting this state into three states is not just a creative rearrangement of California’s parts. It’s secession.

It’s spurred by the northern counties’ conviction that they don’t belong in California. This is rural, conservative, upstate country, and but for a minor trick of geography, they’d be Montana, Colorado, Idaho. So they’re backing legislation that would set them free.

This is potentially serious stuff, in spite of the jokes, most involving names. We could have (reading from the top down) Logland, Fogland and Smogland. Or Insolvent, Impoverished and Indigent. Or better, Insolvent, Indigent and Insane.

Secession is also an American tradition. The colonists seceded from the British Empire. The South seceded from the Union. Several states were created by splitting off from a parent--Vermont from New York, Maine from Massachusetts, West Virginia from Virginia. In California, people have talked secession for years--sometimes the south, sometimes the north.

Secession seems a particularly good idea when residents of “one section of a state feel overwhelmed by the other section--the one with a preponderance of legislative representation and power,” says historian Stan Mottaz, an administrator at Humboldt State University.

California’s rural north counties are unhappy under a Legislature dominated by urban interests. This is becoming a national malaise, from New York’s vast rural upstate counties, resentful about being outnumbered and outvoted by metropolitan New York, to Nebraska’s western Panhandle, for heaven’s sake, feeling beaten down by Omaha and Lincoln.

It doesn’t make sense “that L.A. should tell us how to manage and harvest our timber and (that) I get to decide whether the L.A. school district should be broken up,” says Shasta County Assemblyman Stan Statham (R-Oak Run). He’s the sponsor of the bill to put a measure on the November, 1994, ballot seeking voter opinion on a three-way split, with one boundary north of San Francisco and Sacramento and the other north of Los Angeles.

The vote could be surprising. Even people outside the north counties are frustrated by government in general and California’s in particular, given a Legislature so gridlocked by divergent interests that it’s almost dysfunctional. Why not just wipe the slate clean and start over?

The division takes into account not just feelings but practical concerns. Statham and his supporters have therefore estimated each region’s contribution to the state’s General Fund, added up the state subsidies and services used by each and reassured themselves that none would be in big trouble.

Given our lack of interstate tariffs, it wouldn’t matter that certain resources would suddenly be exclusive to one state or another. When dates are all grown in South California and nuts all in Central, there will still be granola.

But other resources can’t be split. Under Statham’s plan, none of the UCs or state universities would treat residents of the other two states as “out-of-state.” Professional licenses and credentials would be recognized by all three. The existing water-distribution system would remain intact: It may drain his turf dry, but Statham needs Southland support.

No one talks of how we’ll divide the state bird, the state flower, the state tree, the state motto. Maybe in each case, whoever can name it gets to keep it--the whole thing.

Nor has anyone really tried to visualize these new states. So we will.

North

The 28 north counties, often called “the extreme north counties” these days, would remain sparse and rural, with a population of 2.4 million spread over 55,422 square miles. “Big” cities would be Eureka, Redding and Santa Rosa; only the last has more than 100,000 people.

Given an area heavy on scenic resources, there’s logging, fishing, mining and, of course, recreational development. Residents would like to manage all as they alone see fit, free at least of state regulators and environmentalists. Greater local autonomy might spell the end for the spotted owl, but fish and game might increase with greater allocations of money and effort.

There are plenty of fruit orchards here (pears, apples, peaches, prune plums, grapes), various kinds of livestock and a good cash crop of marijuana. The new state would get a lot of Sacramento Valley farmland (grains and dairy products), though not Sacramento County itself. Humboldt Bay is a nice little port, if somewhat depressed since cutbacks in the timber industry.

Overnight, North California would be statistically homogenized. Its racial composition would be 93% white, less than 2% black and slightly more than 3% Asian. Only 9.4% of the overall population would be of Hispanic origin. According to the 1990 Census, the north would have the lowest average annual family income of the three new states--$40,547. It would have only one UC within its border--Davis--and only three of the 20 state universities.

But backwoods does not mean dumb. Of the three states, it would have the highest percentage of people (24.5) employed in health, educational and other professional services. Among adults 25 and older, it would have the highest percentage of high school graduates (25.7), the lowest percentage (6.5) with less than ninth-grade education.

It also would have its own Brie-and-Chablis population, thanks to the Sonoma and Napa County wine regions as well as the flight of Bay Area residents and retirees into Santa Rosa. But this would be more than balanced by all the live-free-or-die individualists, gun owners and hippies who have come up to live off the land.

Except in its beauty, this is not a rich region. According to the California Assembly’s Office of Research, if these counties had nothing but the estimated $3.6 billion they now contribute to the General Fund, they would have to raise taxes or cut services. No problem, says Statham: “We don’t need as much government, regulation or taxation. We don’t need a full-time Legislature; we don’t need an integrated waste management board . . . yet.”

What they do need is public assistance--not a service anyone mentions cutting. As a block, the 10 or 12 northernmost counties have one of the highest unemployment rates in the state, with one of the highest percentages of residents receiving Aid for Families With Dependent Children and Medi-Cal.

If they don’t raise more revenue, living free may not be so good for the health.

Central

The central state may be the most stable, losing nothing but borders with Oregon and Mexico. Basically, it would be most like the original California. Its 10.5 million people would be pretty evenly divided in rural and metropolitan areas, its 58,206-square-mile landscape a mix of old and new. It’s an all-American melting pot, with the highest percentage of Asians (13.3), along with 8.5% blacks and 20% of Hispanic origin.

It has its troubles, with unemployment rates in some counties as high as in Northern California, and an even higher percentage of the population on AFDC and General Assistance. But it also has an economy to cover the expense.

The Central Valley is California’s, maybe the nation’s, biggest food basket--its salad bowl, its fruit bowl, its feedlot. The San Joaquin Valley alone represents half the state’s total agricultural production, raising cotton, nuts, grapes, melons, tomatoes, lettuce, etc., etc., etc. There are chickens, pigs, sheep and cattle. To the west, in the Coastal Valley, is more of the same, plus flowers.

Atop this huge spread is San Francisco, playing as usual the part of the exquisite palate. This seems odd to those who have always considered San Francisco northern, but it’s not northern enough for the extreme northerners, who didn’t want it. So Central California would get a substantial port area, historic buildings and a big-city banking, finance and insurance center that it’s sure to find some use for.

Central also would get the benefit of a lot of tourism going back and forth from the Sierra to the coast without bothering anyone in between. It would even get Santa Barbara, which apparently had some choice and just didn’t feel as comfortable with the more urbanized south.

Sacramento would be the big problem: Even if it were made the capital, it would serve only a third of its former constituents, and winds would whistle through the corridors of power. Already people suggest turning the entire city into a housing complex, a mega-mall, a theme park.

Central California is now as much microchips as cow chips, thanks to Silicon Valley. This high-tech heaven may help account for the central counties’ educational level: Of the three potential states, its population has the highest percentage of college and graduate degrees (25.2). What’s more, with only a third of California’s current population, it has four of the nine UCs and eight of the 20 state universities.

With more than half the state prisons (14 of 26), the area is home to yesterday’s failures as well as tomorrow’s hopes. This expertise suggests another possible future for Sacramento’s vacant compounds--crown jewel in an archipelago housing criminals, for profit, from all three states.

South

The seven southern counties, now part of the nation’s most populous state, would become all by themselves second- or third-biggest, with 17.5 million people in an area of 42,346 square miles. Because most of this region is desert or overlapping cities, it would have two landscapes: empty and full.

Almost a third (31%) of the state population would be of Hispanic origin. Racially, the state would be almost 11% black and nearly 11% Asian.

Of the three states, South California would have the highest average annual household income--$47,434. But its population also would have the lowest percentage of high school graduates (21.9) among people 25 and older and the highest with less than a ninth-grade education (12.4).

It certainly has the thickest air and the thickest traffic. Almost 40% of its workers take more than a half-hour to get to work.

In many ways, the south state would be the richest. It’s often said that if California were a nation, its economy would be sixth- or seventh-largest in the world. Southern California by itself would be among the 15 or 20 largest.

Los Angeles County alone represents about half of California’s manufacturing employment. It has the garment industry, the entertainment industry, plants that make heavy goods, light goods, durables, non-durables. It has the busiest port area (Los Angeles-Long Beach), the busiest airport and, with its fellow southern counties, the most oil refineries. The region contains much of what’s left of the defense industry, and it has a significant military “presence”--boats on the coast, bullets and bombers inland. Beyond the overwhelming urban sprawl, the south counties have agriculture--citrus, cattle, poultry, dairy products, dates, avocados.

And let’s not forget raw money. The Los Angeles branch of the Federal Reserve system is now first in the country for cash surpluses--an indication of money-laundering and illegal activity, including as much as half the U.S. cocaine traffic. Unfortunately, this business contributes little in tax revenues for the commonweal.

Thanks to its legal commerce, the southern counties contribute $27 billion to California’s General Fund, which would more than cover current expenditures if the state became autonomous. Indeed, says Clyde MacDonald in the California Assembly’s Office of Research, “the south could lower taxes somewhat or raise services.”

Count on the latter: There are always unexpected costs--prisons, for instance. Lots of them. More than 61% of the 115,100 state prison inmates are Southern California criminals, but the seven state prisons in the southern counties house only 23% of the system’s population. This means a lot of bad guys would be coming home, and 44,000 would lack housing.

Fortunately, though walls do not a prison make, they certainly help, and we’ll have sites available. There’s the soon-to-be-closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, maybe the San Diego Naval Training Center.

Establishing a new capital is another expense, and though it’s tempting to build another Brasilia in an empty quarter (something, finally, for Palmdale?), a better plan would be to use Irvine. It’s central, so both Los Angeles and San Diego residents could easily march on the Capitol; it has nice homes, nice ocean breezes, a nice airport nearby and lots of hotel facilities.

Epilogue

The movement has a long road ahead. Statham’s Assembly bill, if passed, would only poll voter opinion. Given such “advisory” approval, the Legislature could then formulate a plan. Then the governor, Congress and the President would have to approve.

An act of God might be easier.

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Janet Lundblad in The Times Editorial Library contributed to this story.