Why splitting California is a bad idea

Recently, Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who helped fund Tesla and Yahoo, proposed a plan to split California into six states. The six new states would be called Jefferson, North California, Central California, Silicon Valley, West California and South California. According to Draper, this division would be more beneficial to the government because it would be dealing with smaller states. 

The plan is full of holes ranging from issues of water distribution to the enormous gain in California senators that would occur.

First off, there is the issue of how this plan would affect the water distribution in California. Currently, Los Angeles gets the majority of its water from an aqueduct that contains water from rivers in Northern California. If this plan went through, nothing would stop, let’s say, the governors of North California or Central California from diverting water from this aqueduct to local farmers in their own state. 

Likewise, San Francisco gets the majority of its water from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite. Again, the governor of Central California could easily divert this water to local agriculture. Tensions over water — a resource that is certainly strained these days — would likely arise. 

Another problem with this proposal is that it would essentially give what used to be one state, 12 seats in the Senate instead of its current two. This new plan would cause a conflict in Congress as it would throw off the balance of votes from an even number to an odd number. Also, adding 10 presumably Democratic senators to the Senate would basically ensure that the Democrats have their way in every issue in the Senate, making the government one-sided and unbalanced.

With the breakup of California, the northernmost state, Jefferson, would not have a single university in the University of California (UC) system. This, in turn, would force residents of Jefferson to pay the costly $36,000 out-of-state tuition, which is over $20,000 more than the in-state tuition, to go to UC schools. 

Lastly, citizens would see an increase in taxes. The newly created states would have to create their own state systems, like the prison systems and the state police. This will all cost money, and lead to a raise in the already absurdly high taxes in California. 

Draper claims that California is currently “ungovernable” and that his plan would allow the state governments to be more focused. But, having a slightly more efficient government at the cost of less water for some areas, increased taxes, and increasing the UC tuition for many is not worth it. There is just too much risk and change in this proposal to take it into consideration.

Perhaps Draper should stick to venture capitalism.