County seat

taixyz1992 Fri Feb 04, 2011 8:53 am

A county seat is an administrative center for a county or civil parish, primarily used in the United States. In the Northeast United States, the statutory term often is shire town,[1] but colloquially county seat is the term in use there. Parts of the Canadian Maritimes also use the term shire town. In England, Wales and Ireland, the term county town is used. This term is still sometimes used colloquially in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but today neither are divided into administrative counties – instead being divided, respectively, into council areas and districts. Louisiana uses parishes instead of counties, and the administrative center is a parish seat. Alaska is organized into "boroughs", which are large districts, and the administrative center is known as a borough seat.

United States counties, as in England and Canada, function as administrative subdivisions of a state and have no sovereign jurisdiction of their own, although some have authority to enact and enforce municipal ordinances. Counties administer state or provincial law at the local level as part of the decentralization of state/provincial authority. In many U.S. states, state government is further decentralized by dividing counties into townships, to provide local government services to residents of the county who do not live in incorporated cities or towns.

A county seat is usually, but not always, an incorporated municipality. The exceptions include, but are not limited to, the county seats of counties that have no incorporated municipalities within their borders, such as Arlington County, Virginia and Howard County, Maryland. (Ellicott City, the county seat of Howard County, is the largest unincorporated county seat in the United States, followed by Towson, the county seat of Baltimore County, Maryland.) The county courthouse and county administration are usually located in the county seat, but some functions may also be conducted in other parts of the county, especially if it is geographically large.

Satellite TV
Gatlinburg real estate