County seat

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A county seat is a term for an administrative center for a county, primarily used in the United States. In the northeast of the United States, the statutory term often is shire town, but colloquially county seat is the term in use there. Parts of 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 counties – instead being divided, respectively, into council areas and districts. Counties are called "parishes" in Louisiana, and Alaska is divided into "boroughs" (here, meaning a very large district or region of the state). Their seats of county government are called "parish seat" and "borough seat," respectively. The Canadian province of Ontario, in addition to counties, also has territorial districts, regional municipalities, and at least one metropolitan municipality, which are effectively different types of counties in that they perform county government functions.

In the United States, as in England and Canada, a county is an administrative division of a state which has no sovereign jurisdiction of its own, so it would not be correct to say that a county seat is equivalent to a capital city since it is just an administrative centre. (See also the article, Counties of the United States.) Counties administer state or provincial law at the local level as part of the decentralisation of state/provincial authority. In many U.S. states, state government is further decentralised by dividing counties into townships, to provide local government services to residents of the county who do not live in incorporated cities or towns.

As the county seat of Ingham County, Michigan, Mason is the only city in the U.S. that serves as the county seat ahead of the state capital (Lansing).

A county seat is often, but not always, an incorporated municipality. The exceptions include, inter alia, the county seats of counties that have no incorporated municipalities within their borders, such as Arlington County, Virginia, and 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.

Most counties have only one county seat. However, some counties in Arkansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and Vermont have two or more county seats, usually located on opposite sides of the county. An example is Harrison County, Mississippi, which lists both Biloxi and Gulfport as county seats. The practice of multiple county seat towns dates from the days when travel was difficult. There have been few efforts to eliminate the two-seat arrangement since a county seat is a source of pride (and jobs) for the towns involved. Connecticut and Rhode Island have no county level of government and thus no county seats. Vermont has its shire towns, but no county government to speak of, consisting only of a Superior Court and Sheriff (as an officer of the court). Massachusetts has abolished a number of its counties and the state now operates the courts in those districts. It should also be noted that a few counties have their county seats in a neighboring county: examples include Shannon County, South Dakota, and Todd County, South Dakota.

In Virginia, there are (since 2001) 39 independent cities, which are legally distinct from the counties that surround them. An independent city interacts with the commonwealth (state) government directly whereas towns, the only other type of municipal government authority in Virginia, do so through the county government apparatus. However, many of Virginia's independent cities act as the county seat for their neighbouring counties. Also, for certain statistical purposes, some independent cities are considered part of the county from which they separated. For example, the City of Fairfax is separate from Fairfax County, but is still the county's seat and also lies within Fairfax County for statistical purposes.

Similarly, the City of Baltimore, Maryland is also an independent city, and much like Fairfax, surrounded on three sides by a county of the same name. However, unlike Fairfax, "Baltimore City", as it is officially known, is in no statistical, political, or geographical way associated with surrounding Baltimore County.

Also, St. Louis, Missouri is independent from St. Louis County, Missouri (though at one time the two were affiliated).