County officials have expended $192,400 to ascertain what the policy advisor to the board of supervisors’ only Democrat told them two years ago when he was the chief of staff to a Republican supervisor: San Bernardino County will not secede from the State of California.
Ken Hunt, who was then Second District Supervisor Janice Rutherford’s Chief of Staff, in the summer of 2022 made an immediate size-up of a proposal by Jeff Burum to ask San Bernardino County’s voters to weigh in on whether San Bernardino County should withdraw from California. Hunt, who had been Fontana’s city manager for two decades, said the proposal would never fly. After much hoopla, excitement and expense, it appears that everyone, even those who so enthusiastically embraced the idea, have come to the same conclusion.
On July 26, 2022 Jeff Burum came before the board of supervisors, asking them to consider putting what was termed an “advisory” measure in the form of a question on the November 8, 2022 ballot asking whether San Bernardino County should separate from the State of California and venture into the world from here on out as the 51st State of the Union, to be named “Empire.”

Normally, for a citizen or group of citizens to place an item on the ballot takes a lead time of upwards of six months. In order to qualify an initiative to be considered countywide in San Bernardino County for the November 2022 ballot, there was a requirement that proponents gather the signatures of 8 percent of the voters who participated in the previous gubernatorial election where the initiative was to apply. That meant that for Burum and those he was affiliated with, he would need to gather 42,981 valid signatures of the county’s voters, a daunting task. And since the absolute last date for everything to be submitted to the county registrar of voters for the November 2022 election was August 12, 2022, what Burum was asking was impossible.
Burum, however is no normal individual. Historically, he has been one of the top two or three contributors to Republican causes and Republican candidates throughout San Bernardino County.
Decrying the State of California’s allocation of resources and complaining that San Bernardino County’s taxpayers were paying way more to Sacramento than the county and city governments were getting back from the state, Burum told the board of supervisors as much as he asked them to put the measure before the county’s voters. This seemed to put the fear of God into the county’s top decision-makers. They ordered the clerk of the board to put discussion of such action on the agenda for their next meeting, which was scheduled for August 9, 2022.
But even if the board of supervisors at the August 9, 2022 meeting used its authority as the panel embodying the county’s top elected officials to bypass the need to gather the signatures of 42,981 county voters to place the measure on the ballot, the deadline would still be missed, since such a request from an elected board must be voted upon and given what is called a first reading and then be considered again, at which time it is confirmed with a second reading. Since the board was not scheduled to meet again until August 23, 2022, at which point the registrar of voters’ ballot deadline would have passed, Burum and those who had signed onto the secession idea, including Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren and Upland Mayor Bill Velto, were out of luck, or so it appeared.
The board, determined to please Burum, scheduled a special meeting for August 3, 2022, at which it took up the ballot initiative proposal. The board’s members voted to approve the idea on the spot on August 3, then took up the second reading on August 9, 2022, at which point the way was cleared for the item to get on the ballot.
On November 8, 2022, after the polls closed at 8 p.m., the tallying of the votes began. Ultimately, it turned out, a majority – a slight one but still a majority at 212,615 or 50.62 percent in favor and 207,439 or 49.38 percent opposed – supported Burum’s brainchild, which had been dubbed Measure EE.
While Burum hailed what had occurred as “a bold step forward’ and others were trying on for size the idea of taking up life in a place that was no longer part of the Golden State, things fell into a holding pattern for months. No one had thought through what leaving the State of California would entail. Others realized what Hunt had said moments after he heard about the idea: there was no prospect that the California legislature or the United States Congress and Senate would go along with fracturing California.
Weeks and then months and then more than a half of a year went by without the issue being addressed, at least officially. Having to do something, the board of supervisors designated a subcommittee that was to consist of Supervisor Curt Hagman, then-County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez and County Chief Financial Officer Mathew Erickson to come up with some direction. Hagman, who is the county board’s leading recipient of Burum’s financial support, Hernandez and Erickson convened on July 7, 2023 and promptly punted, recommending that an independent set of eyes look at the matter. In August 2023, the county entered into a $192,400 contract with Blue Sky Consulting Group, located in Oakland, to brainstorm about “all options to obtain the county’s fair share of state and federal resources,” which, after all, it was reasoned, was what Burum wanted all along.
Those within the board of supervisors’ inner circle say that Hagman knew the ballot initiative was an absolutely absurd proposal and that Burum had sent him and everyone else in the county on a fool’s errand, but he was willing to humor Burum because of his demonstrated predilection for handing out campaign contributions in the tens of thousands of dollars to the county’s politicians.
Blue Sky owner Matthew Newman reportedly gloated upon getting the contract, saying, “This is the easiest $200,000 we will ever make.”
In short order, Blue Sky dismissed the formation of Empire as the 51st state as unachievable. That conclusion was reached, according to an individual privy to Blue Sky Consulting Group’s internal operations “after 25 minutes of in-depth analysis.”
San Bernardino County Supervisors are so embarrassed over having expended $192,400 to ascertain what Hunt, who is now the policy advisor to Supervisor Joe Baca in the aftermath of Rutherford’s departure from the board, spontaneously uttered two years ago when he was Rutherford’s chief of staff, which boils down to essentially: San Bernardino County will not secede from the State of California.
Since inquiries about the Blue Sky report first began in earnest in February, the county has made repeated statements that it will be released shortly. Some of those statements maintained that the report was not yet completed. Those claims are no longer operative. In May, the county said the report would be released within a week. In June, the report, it was said, would be discussed at the supervisors’ June 11 meeting and then the June 25 meeting. It was not discussed or released that month nor in July. It is not agendized for discussion at next week’s meeting on August 6.
The Sentinel is told that the report from Blue Sky is so embarrassingly thin and the conclusion so obvious that no one connected with the county wants to release it. Concern is that members of the public, upon seeing the final product, will become unrecoverably annoyed with the board of supervisors over the squandering of taxpayer money.
Hagman wants to stay on Burum’s good side but would prefer not to be associated with the secession concept at this point.
Hernandez’s successor as county chief executive officer, Luther Snoke, is, one county employee said, “full up with having to smile like some kind of clown while going through the motions of this charade of entertaining the board of supervisors on an absolutely ridiculous notion that is taking up time and attention and resources when there are so many real things to tend to.”
One knowledgeable source gave his assessment.
“It absolutely cannot come about,” he said of San Bernardino County’s secession. “There are not enough votes in the California legislature to go anywhere with this and the United States Congress would never sign off on a portion of the state that represents just a tad over three-and-a-half percent of the entire state’s economy becoming its own state.”
According to the best available figures, California has in 2024 a $3.987 trillion gross state product, while San Bernardino County has a gross county product of $141.34 billion.
-Mark Gutglueck