New counties

[jimrtex]

The creation of new counties (and county equivalents) is pretty rare. Are there currently any serious possibilties of new counties being created? New county movements are fairly common, but they rarely materialize.

Some recent examples:

I believe Broomfield, CO (city-county) is the newest county in the United States, having been created in 2001. La Paz, AZ is also fairly recent (1983).

Even changing county borders seems fairly uncommon. Colorado (again!) did this fairly recently, with Denver (another city-county) annexing land from Adams County for the airport. The independent city thing in Virginia has probably had some changes---I know the cities occasionally re-join counties.

Alaska has probably done some new boroughs recently and will continue to do so in the near future. That's not as interesting though...

It would make sense to split some of the California counties like those that run between Sacramento and Nevada, and also Riverside and San Bernardino.

In Texas, Potter and Randall should merge.

In Colorado, a county commissioner from the southern part of the county has to drive through 6 county seats to get to his own county seat (it is only 4 in summer).

Within cities, counties don't necessarily have that much authority.  Broomfield was somewhat special because it was in 4 counties, and fairly removed from any of the county seats (Boulder, Greeley, Brighton, and Golden).  Aurora might consider becoming a city and county.

There are possibly some rural areas like most of Park, eastern Elbert, eastern Adams and Arapahoe, except they really don't have the population to support a county government.

[jimrtex]

How do you think, a county system would be if it were invented now. I would think they were larger. The sacredness of counties seems to be very American thing.

This is due to a strong tradition of local self government, so they are not mere administrative regions of the central government.

[jimrtex]

This is due to a strong tradition of local self government, so they are not mere administrative regions of the central government.

Given the weakness of local government (or at least of democratic local government; perhaps this is the important distinction?) in most of the U.S. I'm not sure if that's really an answer. And, of course they aren't regions of central government, but they are administrative districts of the states, aren't they? This was a contested issue once, and local government (such as it was) lost.

Why do you say that local government is not democratic, when officials such as coroners and county surveyors are elected, and when towns in New England were governed by town meetings?

School districts are typically locally administered (and financed).

While sheriffs administer State law, they are locally chosen, and may provide different policy emphasis.

[jimrtex]

A mantra of American local government law is "Municipalities are creatures of the state." Municipalities (including counties) have no power independent of the states and can be overridden on any issue or dissolved/reorganized at will by state government.

This is not a mantra of the local governments.  It is the mantra of the centralists.

[jimrtex]

How'd they come up with the name Bullfrog County?

Bullfrog, Nevada : Empty County to Croak Unless It Goes to Waste

Old mine.