On Tuesday, May 12, the Nevada County Board of Supervisors heard a presentation from “State of Jefferson” proponents that managed to be even more fanciful than the similar sales pitch made in Lake County last winter.

It included the usual litany of complaints – Northern California is somehow “unrepresented” in Sacramento, environmental regulations are destroying the economy, the state is wallowing in a morass of debt and taxes and crime, individuals and businesses are leaving in droves, etc.

Several speakers also made a passionate though equally delusional appeal for an unspecified form of “liberty” that seems to boil down to the elimination of any restrictions on their capacity to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible by any means possible, and as usual abundant patriotic rhetorical flourishes were accompanied by verbal assaults on both the state and the federal governments and by rampant confusion regarding our nation’s history.

But there were a few novelties this time, such as testimony by a self-styled “constitutional expert” from Santa Barbara (an “expert” with no academic or professional credentials) who spent more time arguing that what the state really needs is more state legislators than in opposing the one person/one vote principle of equal representation that has become the chief target of SOJ proponents.

The fantasy that elections are controlled by government employees who make up “50 percent or more of the electorate” also struck an inventive note.

Likely to be of particular interest to Lake County was the assertion by chief spokesman Mark Baird that “eight county governments” agree with the proposal to split the state – an outright falsehood uttered just seconds before his promise to “tell the absolute truth.”

Actually only six counties have endorsed secession: Glenn, Modoc, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama and Yuba. The total of eight is arrived at by including Lake and Lassen, whose Boards of Supervisors voted instead to put the issue on the 2016 ballot for the people to indicate their preference.

The effrontery of the SOJ proponents in listing these counties among their supporters demonstrates almost as much arrogance as it does deceptiveness.

For more information about the complex issues surrounding this proposal and a link to the video of the meeting visit www.KeepItCalifornia.org .

Victoria Brandon lives in Lower Lake, Calif.