'New California' Effort To Split State Launched -- Again

CALIFORNIA -- Fed up with the way California's government works? Well, you're not alone. Golden State residents Robert Preston and Tom Reed recently launched "New California," an effort to split the state into two.

On their Facebook page, Preston and Reed said "New California is a new state in development by egregiously aggrieved Californians exercising our Constitutional right to form a new state separate from the tyranny and lawlessness of the State of California."

The duo, who read their Declaration of Independence at a ceremony Monday in Marysville, Calif., share conservative ideals, values they said are lost in California's government.

“Well, it’s been ungovernable for a long time," Preston told CBS. "High taxes, education, you name it, and we’re rated around 48th or 50th from a business climate and standpoint in California."

They are proposing the coastal areas from Ventura to Napa be split from the rest of the state. The other regions will be considered New California, they said.

“There’s something wrong when you have a rural county such as this one, and you go down to Orange County which is mostly urban, and it has the same set of problems, and it happens because of how the state is being governed and taxed,” Preston told CBS.

To launch their effort, they've organized committees in different counties to get Californians (or New Californians) on board.

Of course, this isn't the first time someone in California has tried to split the state into two.

In 2011, Riverside County supervisor Jeff Stone tried to split the state in half with southern California separate from northern California.

Other attempts to change California happened in 1941, 1965, 1992 and 2014, USA Today reported.

--Photo courtesy of New California