Six Californias

[Lemonvariable72]

How is increasing the 'overhead' by 5 more sets of governors/state legislators/regulators/bureaucrats/administrators going to help anything ?

How about reorganizing the country around the 25 largest Nielsen DMAs ?

That would cut state governance overhead by up to half. That makes a whole lot more sense.

Its government we are taking about here, they can't do things that make sense

[vorlon13]

Another thing I find irksome is large metro areas with numerous mayors, fire departments, water departments, etc. Let's set up regional metro governance and SLASH overhead.

Do we really need to have and PAY FOR an entirely separate city government for Anaheim, Rancho Cucamonga and San Bernardino ??

Fuck 'em I say, fuck 'em all to Hell

Can't afford it, don't need it, and it is STOOOOOOPID!


Save a buck and move on, we got bigger problems and this one is a no brainer.

[c172]

One thing I wish I knew more about is fire protection. You have city fire departments, county departments, and special fire protection districts. But then you also have CalOES (or whatever it's called now)and CALFIRE (which I thought were somewhat redundant), and with CALFIRE, it seems that sometimes they supply apparatus, or personnel, or sometimes completely run fire services for a district. San Luis Obispo County brands its fire stations with both the county name and CALFIRE. Kind of longwinded.

[vorlon13]

If Rancho Cucamonga, for instance, wasn't pissing away millions on redundant city administrators, council men, supervisors, and thousands of other unnecessary make work positions, the LA region could afford more fire trucks.

Low overhead governance, otta be an easy sell, but it ain't.

[Minimalist]

Congress would have to approve any such application(s) for statehood. The odds that the republicunts would agree to allow 5 more potentially democratic states into the union are somewhere between "none" and "fucking none" at this point.

The Constitution merely declares that new states cannot be created by merging or splitting existing states without the approval of both the U.S. Congress and the states' legislatures.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress...odproc.htm

[vorlon13]

Area I live in is rural. County has less than 30,000 people total. And yet, the county has 5 school districts. Each with a $100,000+ annual salary superintendent. How different can it be schooling kids 12 miles from my house that an additional pissing away of another $100,000 is justified ??

One superintendent for the county, one principal and one secretary in each facility, and I could make a strong case for the rest of the payroll being all teachers, bus drivers, janitors, and school cooks. (school cafeteria food builds character, burnt bland crap is good for you!)

We need to just start sucking the money out of redundant municipal governments, redundant school districts, redundant everything, and give a serious look at reorganizing the country into 25 'states' and beginning with the 25 largest Nielsen DMAs, and annexing smaller DMA's onto them would give a good start.

And note, the feds have, just to highlight one outrage, 33 agencies regulating salmon. I think that could be cut to one, and I would entertain arguments on NONE, if we just had one for 'meat'.

I've heard pols talk of surgical cuts to budgeting, I see the need for doing it with dynamite and front end loaders.

[Minimalist]

And yet, the county has 5 school districts.

Wait. Wait. Let me guess. Whenever someone starts to talk about combining them some asshole or other starts whining about local "control" and "you're not taking away MY schoold district."

I lived on Long Island in NY which is far more populous but still had 128 separate school districts in two counties and it was always the same shit.

[JesusHChrist]

The secret is to pluck the most feathers from the goose with the least amount of squawking.

A particularly egregious example of plucking is the City of Bell scandal. Bell is IMHO, not-quite-a-shit-hole and yet the vaunted public servants were getting paid (for a time) the highest rate in the nation. Eventually, the geese squawked loudly.

The City of Bell scandal is a scandal involving misappropriation of public funds in Bell, California over a period of several years in the late 2000s. In July 2010, two Los Angeles Times reporters, Jeff Gottlieb and Ruben Vives, wrote an investigative journalism article on possible malfeasance in the neighboring city of Maywood, California. In their exposé, they revealed that the city officials of Bell (a small blue collar community) were receiving salaries that were reported as the highest in the nation.[5] Subsequent investigations found atypically high property tax rates, allegations of voter fraud in municipal elections and other irregularities which heightened the ensuing scandal.[6] These and other reports led to widespread criticism and a demand for city officials to resign.[7][8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Bell_scandal

[vorlon13]

Bell is an outrage.

A rational society would have taken the leaders out back and firing squaded away the problem. But maybe the real scandal is, why does Bell even exist? It is totally subsumed in the LA metro, along with hundred(s) of other petty and expensive fiefdoms. Noticing Bell, and ignoring all the rest is the greater outrage.


I have been asked a few times about running for county supervisor or school board. I always launch into my thoughts on consolidation and then speculate how long it would take till my house got burned down.

Sometimes I get someone to agree, but not often. Even ones that don't agree on county wide school districting generally agree it will be forced on us simply from the inevitably of there just not being enough money to make it work the old way. Well, why not save a buck and do it now?

[JesusHChrist]

Petty fiefdoms are exactly what all these governmental entities are.

I'm not sure which is worse though - many small money-grubbing fiefdoms or fewer, larger money-grubbing kingdoms.

Less overhead, but the corruption opportunities are that much larger.

I think it is astounding a city official in a tiny city like Bell could get away (for a while) making almost $500K per year.