The Orange County Sunday’s Register sits between the Sunday LA Times and NY Times on my kitchen table. If my daughter sees me reading the Opinion pages, she asks me if I’ve taken my blood pressure medicine first. The Register opinion pages each Sunday are consistent in two ways — columns shill for Republicans or tear down Democrats. Troy Senik’s column laments the Californian Republican Party’s lack of progress on anything, suggesting that voters will turn to them…eventually. But what caught my eye was a back page column by Eric Spitz, Freedom Communication’s chairman, suggesting that Orange County simply become one large metropolitan city.
He writes:
“Orange County should consolidate its 34 cities into a single city that is divided into wards or boroughs. We can lead the nation by innovating a 21st century model of regional government and create, from scratch, the third-largest American city.”
….
In addition to attracting great talent to the role of mayor of Orange City (not the name), consolidation would have two primary benefits, the first being significance. With over 3.1 million people, Orange City would become the third most-populous city in the U.S., after New York and Los Angeles. With this size comes relevance in the national debate and the ability to attract private and public capital. Today, Orange County politicians struggle mightily to attract even our fair share of money from both Sacramento and Washington.
Anaheim’s Mayor Tom Tait complained to me recently that no one notices him at the U.S. Council of Mayors’ events, but, when Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti goes to Washington, he brings home megabucks for local projects like cleaning up the Los Angeles River. Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer, a former state assemblyman, pointed out that California returns to our community a far lower percentage of the property tax collected in Orange County that the state returns to Oakland or Los Angeles.
The second main reason to unite Orange City is efficiency. Today, we have 34 cities with 34 mayors and city councils. We have redundant fire departments, police departments and water districts. Orange County politics feels like a tribal system where everyone protects his turf and makes local decisions without much regard for the greater good. Big ideas are subsumed to small ones that can survive. Most importantly, we are wasting millions of dollars paying for bureaucracies instead of creating effective programs to grow our communities and provide value for our citizens…..”
Spitz does note OC’s diversity, but a single government model seems to lack a certain practicality. The needs of Santa Ana are very different from the needs of Laguna Beach. And while we’re talking about redundant police and fire departments, Spitz makes no mention of school districts. Given the Register’s long held position that public schools are “government schools,” is it practical to unite all the school districts as well.
And why stop at counties? Perhaps we should eliminate all city and county government entirely and let the state run everything? Why stop at state governments, perhaps the feds can manage all manner of road repairs, count on a national police force, and a federally run public school system.
The goal by Spitz seems to be more rooted into re-classifying Orange County into “Orange City” so that perhaps the Orange City Register could have the clout of say, the New York Times or the LA Times. Tom Tait complains no one notices him at a US Council of Mayors event? Tom Tait doesn’t have the dynamic personality of Eric Garcetti or Rahm Emmanuel. With the county’s voter registration still favoring Republicans and the paper’s inclination to support the right wing, we’re skeptical that the real reason Spitz wants a large metropolitan unified government is to further solidify a conservative Republican base to thwart Democratic party gains in key cities throughout OC.
Frankly, the best forms of government are usually local. Drill down even further from cities into neighborhood groups and homeowner’s associations that are sometimes even more responsive than cities.
It’s our opinion the metropolitan Orange City concept is far more about marketing than merit.
I couldn’t imagine being lumped in with the city of irvine.
Jose, don’t you want a beige house with a red tile roof? No chickens allowed.
Probably more likely that South County splits off.
Its a dumbed idea because even San Diego has several suburbs. The better idea would combine for funding purposes at the state level-Anaheim,Santa Ana, Irvine, California demographics shows Anaheim at about 350,000, Santa Ana at 335,000 and Irvine at 250,000. That gives you a city over 800,000. Its like the St Paul-Minneapolis in Minnesota which also gives them more clout that way or just Anaheim-Santa Ana which gives you a city near 700,000. In fact I see some good in the future even with the high housing costs. The space program is gearing up with doing newer deliveries systems for satettles and Nasa needs a replacement for rocket system for getting to the international space station and the long term Mars goal. Also, Republicans are beefing up defense spending again which means that California will get a shot in aerospace since even Brown did a lot of tax breaks for aerospace until 2024. Also, e-commerce small companies are taking off, and while some California companies leave California foreign companies like Australia, Korea, France, China are company in. There was an Australian aerospace company that had a job ad for Anaheim.Also, if Mexico’s oil reforms worked by selling some of the oil fields to foreigners and Mexicans get better paying jobs than they usually do in Mexico less immigration by people with grade school education from Mexico and Central America to Orange County.