A Northern California activist wants her county to leave the Sunshine state and go independent.
El Dorado County, located just east of Sacramento and bounded by the border between California and Nevada, encompasses just under 1,800 square miles and has a population of about 191,000 residents, according to the 2020 Census.
At a community meeting earlier this month, resident Sharon Durst put forth her proposal for El Dorado to become the nation’s 51st state, which she dubbed, the “Republic for El Dorado State.”
Former county Supervisor Ray Nutting backed the idea, the Sacramento Bee reported.
Durst also laid out her case in a 7,000-word Substack newsletter, where she wrote that “El Dorado relies mostly on its income from tourism and on the unhappy people from Sacramento, the Bay Area and Los Angeles buying residential or second homes away from the crime-ridden metropolitan areas.”
Activist Sharon Durst proposed the formation of Republic for El Dorado State at a community meeting earlier this month.San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
“The people of El Dorado County want their former livelihoods restored and their rural way of life respected,” Durst continued. “Even without its geographical major economic drivers, the people of the county are economically resilient and self-sustaining.”
The secessionist, who opened her opus with dramatic language echoing the Declaration of Independence, noted in her newsletter she is merely arguing for the county to gain independent statehood, not abandon the nation wholesale.
Durst justified the legality of the move by pointing to Article 4, Section 3 of the Constitution, which says: “Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.”
El Dorado County is located just east of Sacramento and comprises parts of Lake Tahoe as well as the city of South Lake Tahoe. Getty Images
She argued that El Dorado County falls under “’other Property’ under the Power of Congress, not the California Legislature,” and therefore could jet from the Golden State.
But a subsequent paragraph in Article 4, Section 3, states: “No new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State” without consent of the involved state’s legislature and Congress.
This means that both the California Legislature and Congress would have to OK the El Dorado’s split from the state, a move the SacBee noted is highly unlikely.
Secession proposals aren’t a new idea, including in California, with San Bernardino County residents voting last year to have local officials study the possibility of seceding and forming their own state.
In Oregon, conservative voters in two counties also approved a ballot measure last year to explore ways to ditch their state, following nine other counties in Eastern and Central Oregon looking to become part of Idaho.
Source link: https://nypost.com/2023/06/17/north-californias-el-dorado-county-considering-forming-its-own-state-report/