The last time we discussed the California city of Oroville, we were reporting on the potential for its dam to catastrophically break.
In part, the dam experienced maintenance problems because infrastructure projects that actually involve infrastructure don’t get funded as they should.
Now the city is back in the news, taking on Sacramento and trying to counter its questionable policies.
A city council in California overwhelmingly voted to declare the city a “Constitutional Republic City” to protect its citizens’ rights in light of federal and state mandates.”What we are doing is protecting our citizens’ rights as much as we can on the local level,” Oroville Vice Mayor Scott Thomson told Fox News Digital.”In a way, we are acting as a sanctuary city for our citizens and their rights and freedoms protected by the U.S. and state constitutions,” he added. “Gavin Newsom modeled this type of declaration for us when he declared San Francisco a sanctuary city for what he believed to be overreach by the federal government against his citizens.”
Turnabout is fair play: Oroville is using the progressive approach to “Sanctuary City” for illegal immigrants and turning it around to serve Californians.
“It’s just basically drawing the line,” Thompson said, according to the report. “It’s not necessarily against one specific mandate, we’re not talking about one mandate that’s been pushing on us recently it’s a barrage of mandates.””I think it’s time for us to draw a line in the sand,” he added, according to CBS 13. “Enough is enough.”Thompson previously told ABC 7 in an email: “this has to do with the large amount of mandates that are affecting every aspect of our lives and our kids’ lives. The American culture and way of life is being challenged at its very core and perverted by radicalized politicians who have forgotten that, as a republic, the power belongs to the people.”According to the CBS 13 report, the resolution aims to allow the city to opt-out of enforcing “any executive orders issued by the state of California or by the United States federal government that are overreaching or clearly violate our constitutionally protected rights.”
Councilmember Janet Goodson mentioned the possible impact on finances, saying Oroville has received about 4.8 million in COVID funding over the past two years. But her concerns were addressed by the city attorney.
The resolution is not a policy, nor does it change the city’s ordinance. It can be modified or amended at any time, therefore city attorney Scott Huber says, “As a result, there is no risk of loss of funding with it.”An example he used was when cities passed resolutions declaring themselves ‘sanctuary cities’ violating federal law.The courts ruled specific actions would need to be taken to lose funding.”I am quite certain that this would not result in any loss of funding for the city. In the event that it could in the future you could revise this and do what you will but this is not going to put it jeopardy any state or federal funding.”
I sure hope that Oroville’s dam against senseless mandates is strong and effective.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY