Politics & Government

Stone Launches 'California Rebellion' Websites, Prepares for Summit

"I am going down two parallel paths," Stone told Patch. "The other path is secession."

Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone's call to action to fix the dysfunction in California continues with the launch of a website and a Facebook page.

"I have come to the conclusion that the state of California is too big to govern, that the political priorities of Southern California and Northern California are completely different," he states on the introductory page to CaliforniaRebellion2010.com.

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors gave Stone the green light to pursue his proposal to call for a state wide local government summit to discuss remedies for what he calls the "broken legislative processes of a dysfunctional state government."

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Stone is collecting private donations to help fund the summit.

Stone told Patch that the California League of Cities and California Association of Counties are coordinating with Stone's office in arranging the summit.

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The proposed summit, to be held in September or October, would invite similarly frustrated counties from across the state to consider bold remedies to fix the dysfunction, or the possibility of splitting the state and establishing a new state with a balanced budget, effective schools, secure borders, and a vibrant business friendly economy, according to Verne Lauritzen, Stone's chief of staff. 

“In this budget cycle, the state again passed an unrealistic budget and continues to raid local city and county coffers while offering no reforms to its spending addiction," said Stone, who represents Murrieta on the Riverside County Board of Supervisors.

Stone’s proposed remedies for the summit discussions will include state wide initiatives to accomplish the following:

  1. The transformation of a full-time legislature to part-time.
  2. A true and legitimate balanced state budget requirement with no unfunded mandates to local governments and no access to local government revenues.
  3. Public employee pension reform.

The summit’s discussions will also consider a possible secession effort to split the state into two states should effective remedies to fix the dysfunction be infeasible, Lauritzen said.

"I am going down two parallel paths," Stone told Patch. "The other path is secession."

To participate in petitions or follow the progress, Stone's office invited parties to go to the Facebook page California Rebellion 2012 or the website. As of Wednesday, the Facebook page had 325 likes.


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