ABSTRACT

Seemingly the levels above municipal governments are county governments and special districts. While these two types of governments are quite different we have chosen to address their roles in metropolitan governance together because both play relatively limited roles in the broad sweep of public policy making. We describe counties as “dark continents.” While they play critical public service delivery roles in much of the United States, they are often forgotten in discussions of effective public service. In much of the United States, county government is relegated to responsibility for the “leftover” activities: providing services for scattered parcels of unincorporated lands, or necessary, but not very visible, public functions such as recordkeeping (birth records to land deeds), or quite literally, back roads. Some parts of the country have always minimized the importance of county government, but even the parts of the country that historically valued the county seem to be diminishing its role.