Texas counties

[jimrtex]

Could you reasonably merge a lot of the ones that have very few people in them???

Why would you?

They have a minimal government structure. Folks would have to travel further to the county seat when they did need services. One of the big services is is maintenance of county roads. Would the absorbing county provide the same level of maintenance. If there is a major crime, call in the Texas Rangers, and the trial will be in district court.

Exceptions might be Dallam and Hartley, and Potter and (northern) Randall.

Delegate maintenance of the county website to a regional council of governments.

[jimrtex]

Could you reasonably merge a lot of the ones that have very few people in them???

Why would you?

They have a minimal government structure. Folks would have to travel further to the county seat when they did need services. One of the big services is is maintenance of county roads. Would the absorbing county provide the same level of maintenance. If there is a major crime, call in the Texas Rangers, and the trial will be in district court.

Exceptions might be Dallam and Hartley, and Potter and (northern) Randall.

Delegate maintenance of the county website to a regional council of governments.

I am talking about ones that have very few people in them. One of them has less than 100. Having fewer counties would make sense as a lot of the infrastructure is redundant.

What sort of infrastructure is redundant?

BTW, Loving County is the fast growing county in the country.

Which county would you merge the small counties with (start with the 8 counties with fewer than 1000 persons).

[jimrtex]

Could you reasonably merge a lot of the ones that have very few people in them???

Why would you?

They have a minimal government structure. Folks would have to travel further to the county seat when they did need services. One of the big services is is maintenance of county roads. Would the absorbing county provide the same level of maintenance. If there is a major crime, call in the Texas Rangers, and the trial will be in district court.

Exceptions might be Dallam and Hartley, and Potter and (northern) Randall.

Delegate maintenance of the county website to a regional council of governments.

I am talking about ones that have very few people in them. One of them has less than 100. Having fewer counties would make sense as a lot of the infrastructure is redundant.

What sort of infrastructure is redundant?

BTW, Loving County is the fast growing county in the country.

Which county would you merge the small counties with (start with the 8 counties with fewer than 1000 persons).

I'd start with merging Loving, Winkler, and Ward Counties into a Monahans County, with Monahans being the county seat. At 169+7110+10658= 17837 people (2010 census) and 677+841+836=2354 mi² area, it's still fairly small, especially compared to the trans-Pecos counties.

Now for the rest of the sub-1000, since you wanted ideas for all of them.

Borden seems to have most in common with Dawson.

Given the dominance of the King Ranch over both counties, Low population Kenedy should be merged into Kleberg.

While Kent is smaller in population than Stonewall to its east, I'd have the merged county keep the Kent name, but put the county seat in Aspermont.

King has several logical possibilities, but I already merged Stonewall with Kent, and merging with Dickens reduces the number of counties named after Alamo defenders, so merging with Knox, keeping the name of the smaller county and the county seat of the larger, as I did with Kent and Stonewall, seems the best solution here.

McMullen with LaSalle.

Roberts with Hemphill.

As for Terrell, I'd leave it alone for now. The only logical possibility to merge it with is Pecos and both Terrell and Pecos are trans-Pecos counties, which are all large in area. That said, it's down to around one-fourth of its 1950 population, so the merger may need to eventually happen.

But why would you merge them in the first place?

So you can grab their tax base, and make people drive an hour to the courthouse? Do you want to consolidate the schools too? And kill the communities?

Do you work for some hotel chain that builds out on the interstate?

[jimrtex]

Given Texas (much like the rest of the rural US) is built on a grid, can't you simply make the squares larger?

Here would be my proposal forTexas under such an assumption. Only one county in this map is smaller than 5000 people. The number of counties gets cut from 254 to 161, almost 100 counties get cut.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/fee90257-05e5-47b6-ab7c-1123bf486c2c



Admittedly this is a very arbitrary map and if Texas wanted to cut on its number of counties it'd need a ton of intervention from people who actually know the area but at least in the west this is what I mean by "making the squares larger"

If the people who live in these smaller counties want to dissolve their county government, they should certainly be allowed to do so.

[jimrtex]

How often do people drive to their county courthouse?

Isn't that an argument to get rid of counties?

If we didn't have counties, there wouldn't be sheriffs. Without sheriffs, there would be no crime.

[jimrtex]

With all due respect I am yet to see why low population is an argument to merge counties to begin with. This seems to be a solution in search of a problem.

Big waste of government funds?

Which government?

[jimrtex]

Why 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.

You misquoted me. The question was WHY

You pretend to have articulated a reason for eliminating counties, which you have clearly not, and then make it appear as I have critiqued your non-articulated position.

[jimrtex]

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?

But there is no necessity of them driving long distance to their local court house. It is true that Texans have more common sense than persons in many other parts of the country.

[jimrtex]

With all due respect I am yet to see why low population is an argument to merge counties to begin with. This seems to be a solution in search of a problem.

Because a county, unless it's a CINO (county in name only), requires a certain number of full-time employees, no matter how small the population, so small counties are less efficient per capita, and have higher taxes than if they were merged into another county.

The smallest counties in Texas are typically fairly wealthy particularly if they have any oil.

Loving County has a $20 million budget. Many departments have only one or two employees. The exception appears to be the sheriff. If Loving County was merged into Ward, those tax dollars would be shipped off to Monahans or Kermit. Would there be any deputies assigned to Mentone?

[jimrtex]

Would there be any need for deputies assigned to Mentone?

So far as I can see, the best argument for maintaining the current county map is that the counties don't actually do enough for a re-organisation to be worth it.

So far as I can see, the best argument for maintaining the current counties is that there is NO substantive argument for change.

My weekly game of whist has been cancelled because of COVID-19, so I was wondering about getting rid of counties is no reason.

The sheriffs office in Loving County is probably mostly for stopping oil field equipment theft.

[jimrtex]

Yes, but the reason there's no need for change is that they don't provide many services, and the services they do provide are of marginal enough importance that restructuring is a waste of effort.

What services would you have them provide that they don't provide now?

[jimrtex]

I can't say I really care, given that I live several thousand miles away, have never visited west Texas and have no burning desire to do so.. But where a general reorganisation of administrative sub-divisions has been carried out in other nations in recent years, it's usually been because those sub-divisions provide major services (housing; transport; economic co-ordination etc.) to their residents and hence need to match up to the day to day horizons of their residents. None of those services are really provided by the counties at the moment, nor is there any obvious reason they might do so in future. So the case for a change basically comes down to wanting to fiddle about with maps.

Housing and transport aren't really governmental services. There are regional council of governments that coordinate programs and services to address needs that cross jurisdictional boundaries Texas Regional Councils (PDF) But those are more cooperative - associations for discussions, with perhaps some service to the county and city members - as opposed to the general public (GIS, office supplies, IT support).

The England doesn't really have the concept of local self-government since it was historically governed by the King, thus organization of sub-divisions may be viewed simply as reshuffling HM Bureaucracy.

[jimrtex]

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.

[jimrtex]

I can't say I really care, given that I live several thousand miles away, have never visited west Texas and have no burning desire to do so.. But where a general reorganisation of administrative sub-divisions has been carried out in other nations in recent years, it's usually been because those sub-divisions provide major services (housing; transport; economic co-ordination etc.) to their residents and hence need to match up to the day to day horizons of their residents. None of those services are really provided by the counties at the moment, nor is there any obvious reason they might do so in future. So the case for a change basically comes down to wanting to fiddle about with maps.

Housing and transport aren't really governmental services. There are regional council of governments that coordinate programs and services to address needs that cross jurisdictional boundaries Texas Regional Councils (PDF) But those are more cooperative - associations for discussions, with perhaps some service to the county and city members - as opposed to the general public (GIS, office supplies, IT support).

The England doesn't really have the concept of local self-government since it was historically governed by the King, thus organization of sub-divisions may be viewed simply as reshuffling HM Bureaucracy.

Housing and transport may not be governmental services in Texas, but there are plenty of places in the world where housing and transport are provided/administered by local government.

Your last paragraph is a non-sequitur, but given that Texas counties were set up under the auspices of the state rather than on the independent say-so of the residents, I'm not even sure how that's meaningfully different.

You may misunderstand the concept of local self-government. It does not mean that the local government is sovereign, but rather than voters of a locality choose who governs themselves.

[jimrtex]

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?

[jimrtex]

I can't say I really care, given that I live several thousand miles away, have never visited west Texas and have no burning desire to do so.. But where a general reorganisation of administrative sub-divisions has been carried out in other nations in recent years, it's usually been because those sub-divisions provide major services (housing; transport; economic co-ordination etc.) to their residents and hence need to match up to the day to day horizons of their residents. None of those services are really provided by the counties at the moment, nor is there any obvious reason they might do so in future. So the case for a change basically comes down to wanting to fiddle about with maps.

Housing and transport aren't really governmental services. There are regional council of governments that coordinate programs and services to address needs that cross jurisdictional boundaries Texas Regional Councils (PDF) But those are more cooperative - associations for discussions, with perhaps some service to the county and city members - as opposed to the general public (GIS, office supplies, IT support).

The England doesn't really have the concept of local self-government since it was historically governed by the King, thus organization of sub-divisions may be viewed simply as reshuffling HM Bureaucracy.

Housing and transport may not be governmental services in Texas, but there are plenty of places in the world where housing and transport are provided/administered by local government.

Your last paragraph is a non-sequitur, but given that Texas counties were set up under the auspices of the state rather than on the independent say-so of the residents, I'm not even sure how that's meaningfully different.

You may misunderstand the concept of local self-government. It does not mean that the local government is sovereign, but rather than voters of a locality choose who governs themselves.

Which, given that Britain does not in fact have an absolute monarchy, would mean that your original statement was complete nonsense.

At times, HM may on advice of Her ministers defer to the wishes of Her subjects in various localities.

[jimrtex]

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.

Good Queen Bess told Her Parliament "My government shall merge West Suffolk with East Suffolk, except for the bit that shall be attached to Norfolk."

Someone in the assembled mob of commoners who had been summoned to Her Lords Chamber snickered, "She said Norfolk!". Her Majesty glowered down from the Throne, "We are not amused." The miscreants were thrown in the Tower of London never to be heard from again.

Sir Ted handled the paperwork, and she gave Her Royal Assent.

[jimrtex]

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.

And it's the State constitution, not a County Constitution that guarantees that. If the Texas Constitution were amended to give more authority over county boundaries to the State government, then the State government could adjust the counties as it desired.

What is the process for amending the Texas Constitution (is there a reason you used passive voice?).

The last time the Constitution was amended in 1999, the authority to create counties in certain areas was eliminated.