Texas counties

[Brittain33]

How often do people drive to their county courthouse?

[Brittain33]

Rockwall is a total absurdity and should be dissolved. Kaufman is probably the best bet to provide services.

Somervell and Hood pair nicely together in one reasonably sized county.

Delta, Franklin, and Morris counties in the Arkansas region of the state are too small to be viable.

[Brittain33]

Rockwall is a total absurdity and should be dissolved. Kaufman is probably the best bet to provide services.

Rockwall is actually pretty populous--why dissolve it?

1/5 the area of neighboring counties, no independent identity other than suburban Dallas sprawl. Other county seats are within easy driving distance.

[Brittain33]

To be honest, this thread gives me an idea of a "county consolidation" trend for other states. Perhaps I'll do that some time soon

Georgia is a worse offender than Texas for stupid counties.

[Brittain33]

I was curious why the reform-minded state government during the Reconstruction era didn’t seize the opportunity to fix mistakes made by the previous slaveholder governments of Texas, but looking at maps from the 1870s, it looks like the micro-counties and underpopulated counties were developed at a later date after the descendants of slave holders seized control.

[Brittain33]

would you merge them in the first place?

So you can grab their tax base, and make people drive an hour to the courthouse?

That doesn't seem to be a problem in much larger counties like San Bernardino, California or Nye County, Nevada.

True, and aren’t Texans tougher about doing long distance drives when they need to compared to people in many other parts of the country?

[Brittain33]

Indeed, the established constitutional precedent since the 19th century is that local government in the United States is entirely the creation of, and exists entirely at the behest of, the states.

Could you provide citations?

A state government and constitution itself is a creation of the People.

Texas Constitution, Article IX, Section 1(a) forbids detachment of any part of a county and attachment to another county without an affirmative vote of the voters of both counties.

Tenth Amendment, which specifically names the States as separate from the people. Remember that the original states preceded the U.S. Constitution.

[Brittain33]

Indeed, the established constitutional precedent since the 19th century is that local government in the United States is entirely the creation of, and exists entirely at the behest of, the states.

Could you provide citations?

A state government and constitution itself is a creation of the People.

Texas Constitution, Article IX, Section 1(a) forbids detachment of any part of a county and attachment to another county without an affirmative vote of the voters of both counties.

Tenth Amendment, which specifically names the States as separate from the people. Remember that the original states preceded the U.S. Constitution.

Who created the States?

The original ones? Royal charter.

[Brittain33]

That certainly answers my remaining questions about your knowledge of UK local government.

I refuse to believe that Jim doesn’t know how government works in the UK, so there is just some reason he’s choosing to describe it in a technically correct, functionally misleading way.