Citizens of Lake County: Beware of the secessionists among us! A small-but-vocal minority of states-rights libertarians are attempting to pack the county supervisors’ chambers on Tuesday, Feb. 17, with a cockamamie scheme to separate from the state of California and form their own state called Jefferson.

The state they’re proposing would be an impoverished rural backwater, lacking a major university, an international airport, a deep-water harbor or a city of any significance. During a previous failed effort, separatists in 1941 actually proposed Yreka as the capital of Jefferson. Have you ever been to Yreka? Yikes.

They hearken back to the good old days of the Civil War, when West Virginia became a state by first seceding from the union, then seceding from Virginia to rejoin the union.

And their example of West Virginia is actually an excellent case study in poverty, pollution, and poor health when a small, rural area cuts itself off from the larger, more prosperous, more functional state.

Compare West Virginia to the rest of the country now to see just how bad it could be for Lake County to exit California. Here are Quick Facts from the most recent census: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/54000.html .

Lake County already suffers from the dubious distinction of being the poorest county in the state of California. I care about my property value and you should too. We should be emphasizing our place at the heart of the prosperous Wine Country rather than considering joining the potato farmers to the north in a sentimentalized fantasy of bygone agrarian independence.

This entire State of Jefferson effort would be laughable if the secessionists didn’t take themselves so seriously. It’s little wonder that their propaganda is swaddled in half-truths and half-baked “patriotism.”

On Tuesday a small number of libertarian malcontents will swarm the supervisors chambers, shouting about taxes and the 10th Amendment. Remind them of West Virginia and maybe they’ll go away.

Nancy Harby lives in Lakeport, Calif.