The Los Angeles Times had an article about the City of Needles considering the idea of leaving California and joining either Nevada or Arizona. It brings up important questions about the organization of California government.
101 years ago Imperial County seperated from San Diego County. That is the last time we have created another county in California.
I believe in local government. It can be very effective for the people it serves.
One way it can be more effective is to take a serious look at the way it is organized in California.
As the demographics of California have changed over the last 100 years the political boundaries have not changed at all. We end up with Los Angeles County being the home to millions while some counties are hard to justify when they are the home to less than 30,000 people.
Los Angeles County is simply too large to govern with 10 million people. Several other counties are too small to make sense as a separate government entity.
This is similar to redistricting in that people can agree that changes need to be made but they just don’t want the lines drawn a certain way. They are all for it unless they might lose something.
California could create 50 or 60 county governments ranging in size from 75,000 in Northern California to up to almost 4 million for the City/County of Los Angeles. The reality is that we have local governments that could work far more efficiently if they were sized more appropriately to meet the needs of the people that they serve.
This process would lead to some serious pain in the short term in order to make a more manageable and more economically responsible structure in the long term.