CBS Los Angeles (KCAL 9) reports that Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone made waves earlier this week “after proposing the county lead a campaign for as many as 13 Southern California counties to secede from the state.” Stone issued a statement Thursday saying,
Our taxes are too high, our schools don’t educate our children well enough, unions and other special interests have more in the Legislature than the general public.
In a video released Friday by Murrieta Patch, mayors of Murrieta, Wildomar and Menifee voice support for Stone’s proposal. The full video is available online here, things get especially interesting after the two-minute mark.
A move of this magnitude would be unprecedented in modern American history, however there is a budding secession renaissance among local governments across the country seeking autonomy from overbearing county and state governments. Earlier this decade five cities (Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, John’s Creek, Milton and Chattahoochee Hills) in the metropolitan Atlanta area seceded from their county governments and incorporated. Reason.tv recently visited Sandy Springs to document why they incorporated and how it’s working today in a video entitled Sandy Springs, Georgia: The City that Outsourced Everything:
For more on contract cities and the secession renaissance, see Reason Foundation’s Annual Privatization Report 2010: Local Government (Part 4: Georgia Contract Cities Continue to Evolve, pp. 14-17).