County supervisors urged to secede from California and form new state, ‘Empire’

A real estate developer is asking a California county to consider seceding from the state.

Jeff Burum, a Rancho Cucamonga businessman, asked the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors to put an advisory measure on this November’s ballot during the board’s meeting Tuesday, July 26.

“I promise you, you will get an affirmative vote. The people of San Bernardino County have had enough,” he said during public comment.

Burum’s proposed measure asks residents if they “support having the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and all federal and state elected officials representing citizens within San Bernardino County to seek the approval of Congress and the State Legislature to form a State Separate from California,” the San Bernardino Sun reported. The new state would “possibly be called Empire.”

Burum said San Bernardino County consistently suffers from the state’s allocation of resources, adding that the county’s courts and sheriff’s department are tasked with too much without enough resources.

“The state of California continues to allocate resources to the high cost areas to our detriment and other Inland Valley communities,” Burum added.

In an emailed statement to McClatchy News, Janice Rutherford, the county’s Second District supervisor, said that while she appreciates “the desire to dump California policies that have hampered housing development and created a revolving-door justice system, I don’t see any logic in a quixotic crusade to create a new state.”

Rutherford went on to say that she does not think the board should use its power for such an initiative. Instead, she encouraged those who want to pursue secession to do so via “the signature-gathering process to get the advisory measure on the ballot.”

This is not the first attempt to break up the state, with at least 220 documented attempts previously, according to the California State Library.

“There have been more attempts to divide California than anniversaries of its statehood in 1850,” the library says.

If successful, it would be the country’s first new state since Hawaii, which was admitted more than 60 years ago.

Daniella Segura

McClatchy DC

Daniella Segura is a national real-time reporter with McClatchy. Previously, she’s worked as a multimedia journalist for weekly and daily newspapers in the Los Angeles area. Her work has been recognized by the California News Publishers Association. She is also an alumnus of the University of Southern California and UC Berkeley.