March 21, 2008
This report addresses two very specific questions raised by New York’s Commission on Local Government Efficiency and Competitiveness:
• How does New York’s system of layered general purpose local governments compare
with the systems in other states, how does layering vary within New York, and what
alternatives are there to layering?
• What are the possibilities for city-county mergers in New York?
These questions are part of a much broader set of questions: How should local
governments be structured, what should their service areas be, and how many should
there be?
Layering of general purpose local governments New York has a complex system of 1,607 general purpose local governments -governments that serve more than one purpose, and are not limited to a single function such as education or fire protection. There are four types of general purpose local governments: counties, cities, towns, and villages. The land area of New York is divided into 57 counties plus New York City, which together with 14 native American reservations exhaust the territory of the state. The counties outside New York City have 61 cities and 932 towns within their borders. These cities and towns exhaust the territory of the counties, so that New York has no unincorporated territory. (An unincorporated area is an area within a county that has no sub-county government.) None of the cities or towns crosses county boundaries. With one minor exception, cities and towns do not overlap. Some counties have no cities, while others have several. Every county has at
least one town. Finally, New York has 556 villages, which sit within towns. Many towns have one or more villages wholly or partly within their borders, with 76 villages crossing town boundaries.(New York has five towns that are coterminous with their village and have a single government that exercises town and village powers.)
This leads to multiple layers of general purpose local government. Village residents have three layers – the village, the town their portion of the village is in, and the county. Town residents outside of villages have two layers – the town and the county. City residents
outside New York City also have two layers – city and county. Finally, New York City residents have just one layer of government, as the City performs the functions of both a city and a county. (In addition, the 0.1 percent of New York’s population outside New York City who live on Native American reservations also have only one layer of government.) Thus, New York citizens can reside within one, two, or three layers of
general purpose local government.
Historically, cities were centers of population and industry, and towns were sparsely populated, occasionally with densely populated areas that were incorporated as villages. But over time, the economies and demographics of cities, towns, and villages changed dramatically but their legal structures did not. Between 1950 and 2000 cities (outside New York City) lost 24 percent of their population while towns increased in population by 121 percent. A 2006 study by the state comptroller noted that the distinctions among towns, cities, and villages are now quite artificial, with all of these governments capable of delivering a broad array of services. It showed that major urban areas in New York tend to be either large cities or large towns, smaller upstate urban centers tend to be cities or villages, smaller downstate urban centers tend to be either villages or town, and suburbs can be either villages or towns. The study described New York’s local government arrangements as “a structure no one would design today.” (Office of the New York State Comptroller, 2006b)
