California split into two states...how?

I don’t know how popular the idea is, but a bunch of my dad’s friends were sitting around this weekend discussion something they heard on Fox, so I figured I’d ask a few questions. A quick Google search didn’t turn up all that much, but I found this article by some California county supervisor discussing it.

My questions aren’t really about how popular or fringe this is or what the odds are on it every happening…if you want to discuss that, feel free as it would be interesting to know, especially from California 'dopers. My questions are more how it COULD be done, what would it take the change state lines or create two new states out of an existing state, what effect this would have on California, why someone might want to do this, and how it would change the makeup of the Congress and Senate (which I should think would be a major concern for some).

I’m pretty sure that the state would have to vote on doing this, but what would be needed? I’m also pretty sure that the Congress and Senate would have to get involved since this would mean new Congressional and Senate seats from the new second state. Would the President also have to be involved? Who else? Who would ultimately set the new state lines?

-XT

I believe that, according to the US Constitution, it would require the consent of the California legislature as well as the US Congress. If land is being donated to or taken from another state, then the legislature of that state would have to consent too.

Everybody would have to vote on it: Californians & Congress.

The major stumbling block is where to draw the line. California is two states combined, but neither is self-sufficient nor contiguous.

Plus, neither state would want Bakersfield.

But they’d both want SLO.:stuck_out_tongue:

Right, CA could vote to split, then Congress would have to approve.

Note that despite Snopes, the same is true of Texas.

What is this supposed to mean? What meaning of the word “state”'is implicated here? If you’re talking only about the fact that California includes multiple cultural groupings, then that’s not anything unique about California. How many states are self-sufficient? I’m thinking zero. A state boundary in the United States is little more than an arbitrary accident of history drawn for political and administrative purposes. It doesn’t implicate any particular economic, social, or cultural unity.

With apologies for the hijack I think this is the Snopes article to which you refer:

Link

If not, please inform.

Also, please inform as to what you mean by what you wrote, ie, “…despite Snopes, the same is true of Texas.”

Status “True” is the incorrect part. Yes, I know that the rumor is worded there in such a way that the status is “true”, but the myth is not the clause but that Texas can unilaterally divide itself into (up to) five states whenever it wants to.

Yes, there was such a clause, but the clause has no legal authority. Texas needs the approval of Congress to split just like Rhode Island or any other state would. The obsolete and worthless clause in a old document is not the “myth”. The myth is, and has always been that Texas can actually split.

It’s extremely misleading put like that and has lead to dudes saying “Texas can so split, Snopes sez so!”.

Two? Five or six, I should think! Metro LA and Metro SF are two states all by themselves!

People have been talking about this stupid shit for decades and it will never happen. At various times the split (at the coast) would be LA/Ventura Counties, Ventura/Santa Barbara Counties, San Louis Obispo/Monterey Counties and San Francisco/Marin Counties.

Pretty much no one North of L.A. wants to be associated with it and no one South of Santa Barbara wants to be considered SoCal. We in the tri-counties of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Louis Obispo can’t really claim to be NorCal so we call ourselves the Central Coast. The people North of the San Francisco Bay want nothing to do with San Francisco but the people of San Francisco/San Mateo/Santa Cruz are in deep denial over that fact. I love San Francisco but there is no city on Earth with a worse inferiority complex.

The people of my beloved State will never come to an agreement in the first place. Ever. The rest is moot.

Like Acsenray, i’m not sure what this is supposed to mean. Even splitting California in half would result in two states that would each still be among the largest states (by population and economy) in the union.

Anyway, this discussion about splitting the state goes all the way back to statehood. There was quite a bit of debate in the 1840s and 1850s over the issue, largely because of the sectional problem of slavery.

Can’t split it at the grapevine, NoCal will keep all the water and SoCal will be fucked.

Doesn’t implicate it any more for many of the ***existing ***states because of advances in transportation, communications and population mobility and urban spread happening after those borders were fixed (and in the case of many Western states, because they were just drawn along longitudes and latitudes on a map of sparsely populated lands with little regard for natural boundaries).

BUT if you were to seek to create new states by subdivision of an existing one, it would necessarily arise out of the wish to have a state government more responsive to a set of communities and regions that DO have a current degree of common economic, political, social and cultural characteristics and interests.

Then what would happen, though there’s absolutely no requirement for it, is there would be a desire to make such an entity be neatly contiguous, rather than a gerrymandered jumble of enclaves, exclaves, corridors and panhandles resembling something out of the Holy Roman German Empire. And you bet someone would start saying stuff like “Oh, but this Army post has to be within our state”, “Oh, but that Nuke plant ought to be in yours”, “Oh, but we need a navigable access to the sea”, “Oh, but I don’t want the superfund waste site”, “Your proposal leaves 65% of the tax base in YOUR state while mine has 60% of the low-income population!” etc…
I think Cali and Texas are staying put for the foreseeable future.

I don’t think a single person in this discussion has suggested otherwise. Hell, even the people in California who think it would be a good idea also know that there’s no realistic expectation of it ever happening.

This is what I meant by “self-sufficient.” LA can’t exist without NorCal’s water, and there is no way they would give control of the aqueduct to any other state. Orange County has more in common politically with Fresno than they do Angelinos. The Bay Area would implode within a month of separation when SF discovers that it is San Jose that is calling the shots, not them. The Central Valley has the food, but that’s it.

Nobody is going anywhere. We’re stuck with each other.

I’m sure that the new state of Northern California would be happy to sell water to Southern California at market rates. That should keep all the free-market conservatives in Orange and San Diego counties happy.

One thing that’s amazed me since moving to SoCal is the fairly widespread notion that a 20-million-person megalopolis plonked down on the edge of a desert, in defiance of all reasonable environmental and geographic logic, somehow has a moral claim to water from hundreds of miles away just because we want it.

Even if we could agree on everything else, the issue of water rights would kill us.

Spice: Universe:: Water: California

Morals? In California? :stuck_out_tongue:

FTR, Santa Barbara is water self-sufficient thanks to the Cachuma and Gibraltar dams. We also have a mothballed desal plant just in case.

I am pretty sure that the vast majority of NorCal water goes to agriculture and not Los Angeles. Also, most LA and San Diego water comes from the East.

The way water rights work, So Cal would still have the rights to what they currently get.

I would be okay drawing and east west line somewhere around Bakersfield. Yeah, it’s a shithole that makes Fresno look good by comparison, but it’s no Hemet or Perris.

The problem that I see is that the Central Valley is really different than the rest of “not Southern California”. So is behind the Redwood Curtain on the North Coast. San Francisco is really more central than Northern. Crescent City is the northern most city, and it is decidedly rural, with it’s big industry Pelican Bay super max prison.

I’m in favor of splitting the state just to stop the further efforts of SoCal to steal our water resources, destroying the environment, and making us pay for the privilege. There is no farm land in the world richer than the Sacramento River Delta. LA has it’s eyes on that water.

Sources of SoCal water.