[Talk-us] admin_level and COGs, MPOs, SPDs, Home Rule

Greg Troxel gdt at lexort.com
Fri May 8 19:09:58 UTC 2020


stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> writes:

>> Also, I don't believe in "states with no counties".  I do believe in
>> "county government dissolved".  Still, the counties as boundaries
>> continue to exist, and remain important, and shoudl still be
>> admin_level=6.  Many times interacting with the government you are
>> required to list your county.  And, almost everyone believes in county
>> boundaries and the notion of knowing which county you are in, even if
>> they don't collect taxes and have employees.
>
> I don't wish to insult you, but in this regard, it matters little what
> you believe.  As long as we agree that the constructs of human
> political institutions "are what we say they are," beliefs really
> don't enter the equation.  There really do appear to be four states
> without counties, though two (Alaska and Louisiana) have "county
> equivalents."  The two remaining (2.5 if we include Massachusetts' 8
> non-counties out of its 14) which really don't are Rhode Island (and
> that's fairly "pure" when it comes to "no counties," they are truly
> geographic in nature, not political) and Connecticut.  The latter
> "dissolved" its counties in 1960, "reformulated 15 RCOGs" (councils of
> town governments with strictly limited function, like landuse
> planning), then in 2014 reduced these to 9 RCOGs.

My point is that in Massachusetts, counties are real in that the
government expects you to know what county you are in, and there are
signs. Many state government functions are lined up with these counties
- it's just that the people are state employees instead.  The federal
government believes in counties - they are used to organize lots of
things even if the counties have no taxing and spending.  So they really
are a political subdivision, even if they have zero government
functions.

We in the Massachusetts local community want to have admin_level 6
relations for these boundaries, and I personally consider deleting them
to be vandalism.



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