Friday, June 15, 2007

Counties – Question 1

Question for Matt B and Xavier D. What is the origin of the term “county,” and what is the major difference between counties and cities?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The original name for county came from early European time where a county was the landd under the jurisdiction of a count. The difference between a county and a city is that a county will normally be made up of a few cities, as it is defined as the tier of organization immediatly below the state, but immediatly above a municipal or civil township.

MATT BURROUGHS

Anonymous said...

The name “county” dates back to English history when it was called shires. These shires were consisted of a court, which exercised both judicial and legislative powers. The first county government here in the United States was established in 1634 in VA. According to the text, a county is a subunit of states which remains as the most geographically comprehensive unite of local government in all states except Louisiana and Alaska. Counties are not created as cities, because they were not created by the inhabitants’ requests. Counties were made to carry out state functions at a more local level. They were not created as Municipal Corporation to take care of the citizen's needs.

Xavier de Jesus

Robert Botsch, USCA Political Science said...

Xavier got it all correct, noting that counties cover the entire state and are administrative units of states (as well as potential providers of services) while cities do not comprehensively cover the state and are created at citizen request. So everyone (save in states that do not have counties) lives in a county but not everyone lives in a municipality!

Bob B