After more than a year of study, San Bernardino County is preparing to release a report on whether those who feel the state government overlooks the county – the basis for a November 2022 measure to potentially secede from California – have a point.
The report is expected to be presented to the Board of Supervisors in coming weeks, officials say.
In 2022, the question was posed to voters this way:
“Do the people of San Bernardino County want San Bernardino County elected representatives to study and advocate for all options to obtain the county’s fair share of State funding up to and including secession from the State of California?”
A narrow majority – 50.62% of voters – said they did, supporting Measure EE.
Is San Bernardino County getting its fair share?
The general public first heard about the secession proposal when real estate developer Jeff Burum addressed the county Board of Supervisors on July 26, 2022.
“With the way things are in California right now, I don’t know if there’s any hope for California,” Burum told the board at the time.
He believed then – and still believes, he said – that the Inland Empire, one of the fastest growing parts of the state, is consistently short-changed by Sacramento. The region isn’t getting its “fair share” of resources, he said, whether it’s investment in infrastructure or state judges.
The answer, he said, might lie in forming a new state, to be called Empire. San Bernardino County, the largest in the United States, is larger than nine states, including Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and Rhode Island combined. It has a population roughly equal to that of New Mexico and more residents than 14 other states.
An internal analysis by San Bernardino County in fall 2022 suggested it was near the middle of the pack in terms of state and federal funding, per capita. At that time, county officials estimated the county received a total of $1,071 per person from the state and federal government, combined….
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