From the mighty weight of progressive climate legislation to sweeping housing reforms, California is justly reputed for passing policies that have set the standard for the rest of the world. Yet there is a difference between the promise of a policy and its actual implementation.
Growing up in the rural desert of southeast California, I saw this firsthand. Inland communities such as mine often struggle with challenges in development. It’s a truth incompatible with the idea of a prosperous California. As California continues to grow, it’s worth looking at how the state chooses to separate itself from the burdens of food production and industrial infrastructure that falls on inland communities far from the coast.
My story is not unique. There are structural challenges throughout California, from the Central Valley’s agricultural heartland to smaller counties across the state. It’s truly a shame. These regions alone produce a significant share of the resources that sustain California’s economy, but they receive few political and infrastructure investments in return. As such, a governance gap grows between the state’s coastal centers of power and the inland regions that bear the costs of maintaining the state’s ambitions.
While the state is capable of passing powerful policies, implementation requires resources that are not evenly distributed. To completely understand the governance gap, it’s necessary to first look at the geography of the state’s economy. Inland California is not peripheral to the state’s success; it’s foundational to it.
Our food provides the clearest example. The Central Valley, which is similar to my home, the Imperial Valley, is one of the most productive agricultural regions on Earth. Stretching 450 miles across the state’s interior, the region uses less than one percent of the nation’s farmland but produces a quarter of the food consumed in the United States.
Even so, the communities that live in and sustain this agricultural giant experience economic and environmental challenges. Despite the region’s importance, research indicates that 55 percent of Central Valley residents live in state-identified disadvantaged communities.
Additionally, the environmental conditions in inland communities further show the gap. The San Joaquin Valley, located in the central part of California, is consistently described as having the worst air pollution in the United States. The very center of California is cursed with such a burden, but this isn’t a commonality across the state. Rather, researchers at UCLA have found that pollution and climate risks disproportionately affect inland and Latine-majority communities across California.
Infrastructure is no different. Impactful, large-scale, industrial projects are more likely to be located in inland counties near minority communities, as land is cheap and development faces increasingly fewer political and developmental barriers. Coastal cities are promised smart city infrastructure, advanced public transportation, and complex water supply systems. On the other hand, inland communities receive warehouses that are too close to schools and failing septic systems. In particular, the Central Valley and Riverside County face critical drinking water crises, with nearly 400 small, under-resourced water systems unable to consistently provide safe drinking water. These aren’t the infrastructure investments inland California wants or needs.
It’s not difficult to see the pattern. Comparable to the Greek mythological Titan Atlas, inland California is tasked with carrying the state’s agricultural production, industrial infrastructure, and energy capacity on its back.
This isn’t coincidental, nor does it result from deliberate neglect. Rather, California’s structural geography is to blame. There is an uneven distribution between economic production and political influence, leaving those with power over the state’s policies to benefit and burden different regions in vastly different ways.
Now the question becomes obvious: Why does a state dominated by a single political party, which often claims equity as one of its core values, allow such imbalances between its rural and inland regions?
The answer centers around the talk, versus the walk. The state can talk and pass legislation in Sacramento, but that’s just the start. They have to walk to properly implement policies across all of California. UC Berkeley Law finds that state initiatives are struggling to achieve their intended purpose due to a lack of funding and administrative capacity.
This problem is only enhanced in rural counties, where smaller jurisdictions have to operate with fewer staff members and smaller budgets than in larger metropolitan governments. Policies designed for statewide goals are forced to rely on local implementation systems that struggle to execute them. On the same token, ambitious initiatives often suffer structural barriers when local governments lack the institutional resources to translate goals into action.
An example of a policy designed for coastal California cities that has largely failed to be effectively implemented in inland areas is managed retreat. This is a planned response to climate change or environmental hazards. Places such as Los Angeles have successfully implemented managed retreat for rising sea levels. Yet, inland regions of California do not have such plans in place for similar instances of climate change, such as wildfires. There are ways to care for the people in the cities. Why not in inland regions?
Another example of implementation failure is California’s homelessness policy. In San Francisco, homelessness is tackled with a sense of care, with efforts to integrate folks into voluntary shelter placements and to offer resources. Unfortunately, Fresno does not have the same resources as San Francisco and takes a different approach. Fresno focuses on immediate enforcement and uses citations or arrests as deterrents for the homeless. These two different approaches result from a lack of resources.
The economic structures of California are also to blame. It’s true that coastal California is dependent on technological industries as well as the finance and media sectors that produce high wages and substantial tax revenue – all these industries are essential to the state. However, equally essential is inland California’s agricultural and industrial production. Inland regions experience fewer economic opportunities compared to California’s coast, which is demonstrated by the fact that the per capita income of the Inland Empire is less than two-thirds that of Orange County. They both do the work, so why are the benefits only felt on one side of California?
Political influence also runs dry in inland California. Most of the state’s major universities are located on the coast, as are corporate headquarters that handle the state’s money, and the policy organizations that like to stay close to power. The big picture starts to take form here. From the west stems the political agenda of California. Unfortunately, inland regions don’t receive as much love — having little policy influence — and they don’t have strong opportunities to speak about their needs.
It’s no wonder that a governance gap exists. California’s structure excels at producing strong policy rhetoric, but its ability to implement and shape those policies remains uneven across the state. Inland regions aren’t simply experiencing isolated policy failures. They are operating amidst a structure that unevenly distributes political influence and economic resources across California’s geography.
So, what can we do? The first step of many is to recognize that the challenge in front of us is not simply about passing better policy, but rather ensuring that policy can actually be implemented across the entire state. Research from UC Berkeley Law shows that California’s ambitious policy goals frequently falter not because of flawed goals, but because local governments lack the support to implement them. Strengthening local capacity, especially where it’s needed most in rural communities, would enable state initiatives to work as intended rather than remaining aspirational commitments on paper.
State investments must also become geographically balanced. While the coast does provide valuable assets, this does not negate the fact that inland California is equally important to powering the state’s economy. Targeted state investment in key programs to close this governance gap would not only equalize the state but also strengthen the economic resilience of these regions and the state’s agricultural and industrial sectors. It’s a win-win.
But most importantly, California must ensure that inland communities have a true voice in the policymaking process itself. Basically all of the heavy hitters in policy are located in California’s coastal regions. It’s their problems that are heard, but we must hear all of California. If not, our policy debates will take shape far from the communities most affected by the legislation passed. Creating stronger mechanisms for regional input, whether through targeted state advisory bodies or expanded local participation, would ensure that statewide policies better reflect the needs of the entire state, rather than the priorities of a few metropolitan centers.
None of these reforms would wholly eliminate the differences between the regions of California. But they are the right steps to rebalance the relationship between the state’s centers of power and the communities that sustain its economic foundation.
Those in Sacramento can pass all the laws they want with all the rhetoric and ambition as they’d like, but the reputation of California depends ultimately on whether those policies can deliver meaningful outcomes across each and every corner of the state. So far, only half of California experiences such. If California hopes to remain a national model, it must ensure that the benefits of its ambitions reach all of the state, particularly the inland communities that make its success possible.
Because the future of California will not be determined only in its coastal cities, but by the valleys and deserts that sustain our Golden State.
Featured Image Source: Gael De La Cruz