The 35 US counties that have no county government
Connecticut, Rhode Island, most of Massachusetts, all of Alaska’s census areas, and one county in Hawaii whose mayor is a state health official.
Thirty-five of the 3,144 county-equivalents in the fifty states and the District of Columbia have no county government. Not a weak one, not a part-time one: none. There is no county board, no county budget, and in most cases no county website to link to. If a template on your site prints “contact the county government” or resolves a county name to a .gov domain, it is producing false information for these 35 entities.
They arrive at that state four different ways. Rhode Island and Connecticut abolished county government outright, Rhode Island keeping the boundaries afterwards and Connecticut eventually replacing them. Massachusetts abolished most of its county governments but not all. Alaska has eleven entities that never had a government because they were never meant to be governments. And one county in Hawaii is administered by a state department, under a mayor who holds the office by virtue of a different job.
The complete list
| State | Entity | Census type | Situation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska | Aleutians West | Census Area | Statistical subdivision of the Unorganized Borough; never had a government |
| Alaska | Bethel | Census Area | Same |
| Alaska | Chugach | Census Area | Same; created 2 January 2019 |
| Alaska | Copper River | Census Area | Same; created 2 January 2019 |
| Alaska | Dillingham | Census Area | Same |
| Alaska | Hoonah-Angoon | Census Area | Same |
| Alaska | Kusilvak | Census Area | Same; replaced Wade Hampton 1 July 2015 |
| Alaska | Nome | Census Area | Same |
| Alaska | Prince of Wales-Hyder | Census Area | Same |
| Alaska | Southeast Fairbanks | Census Area | Same |
| Alaska | Yukon-Koyukuk | Census Area | Same |
| Connecticut | Capitol | Planning Region | Council of governments; county government abolished 1960 |
| Connecticut | Greater Bridgeport | Planning Region | Same |
| Connecticut | Lower Connecticut River Valley | Planning Region | Same |
| Connecticut | Naugatuck Valley | Planning Region | Same |
| Connecticut | Northeastern Connecticut | Planning Region | Same |
| Connecticut | Northwest Hills | Planning Region | Same |
| Connecticut | South Central Connecticut | Planning Region | Same |
| Connecticut | Southeastern Connecticut | Planning Region | Same |
| Connecticut | Western Connecticut | Planning Region | Same |
| Hawaii | Kalawao | County | Administered by the state Department of Health; population 82 |
| Massachusetts | Berkshire | County | Abolished 1997 to 2000, functions to the state |
| Massachusetts | Essex | County | Same |
| Massachusetts | Franklin | County | Same |
| Massachusetts | Hampden | County | Same |
| Massachusetts | Hampshire | County | Same |
| Massachusetts | Middlesex | County | Same |
| Massachusetts | Nantucket | County | Same |
| Massachusetts | Suffolk | County | Same |
| Massachusetts | Worcester | County | Same |
| Rhode Island | Bristol | County | Abolished 1846; boundary survives as a judicial district |
| Rhode Island | Kent | County | Same |
| Rhode Island | Newport | County | Same |
| Rhode Island | Providence | County | Same |
| Rhode Island | Washington | County | Same |
Connecticut: nine regions where eight counties used to be
Connecticut abolished county government in 1960. Everything a county did passed to the state or to the towns, which in New England were already the meaningful unit of local government. The eight county boundaries survived for decades afterwards purely as statistical geography: lines on Census maps with nothing behind them.
That ended with the 2022 Census vintage, when a Federal Register notice of 6 June 2022 replaced the eight counties with nine planning regions as the state’s county-equivalents. The regions are councils of governments, voluntary associations of member towns, and they are not coterminous with the old counties. Both the regions and the counties are built from towns, but grouped differently, so there is no county-to-region crosswalk, only a town-level one. Anyone still joining 2020 Decennial Census data to Connecticut geography is working on the eight legacy counties, because those products were published that way and never reissued.
The nine are uneven: Capitol Planning Region holds 994,115 people against Northeastern Connecticut’s 98,096, and Northwest Hills covers 786.64 square miles against Greater Bridgeport’s 140.19. The Connecticut state page lists all nine with populations and land areas, and there is a longer account in why Connecticut replaced its counties.
Rhode Island: abolished in 1846, still on every map
Rhode Island got there more than a century earlier, abolishing county government in 1846. The five names, Bristol, Kent, Newport, Providence and Washington, persist as judicial districts and as the units the Census Bureau tabulates, with no county government behind them. Rhode Island and Connecticut are the only two states where not one county-equivalent has a government of its own. The Rhode Island page carries all five.
Massachusetts: nine gone, five still running
Massachusetts is the awkward one: the answer varies by county. Between 1997 and 2000 the state abolished nine county governments and transferred their functions to state agencies: Berkshire, Essex, Franklin, Hampden, Hampshire, Middlesex, Nantucket, Suffolk and Worcester. Five kept theirs and still have functioning county government today: Barnstable, Bristol, Dukes, Norfolk and Plymouth. Nantucket is a further wrinkle: county and town cover the same island, and the town government is what operates there. A rule of the form “Massachusetts counties have no government” is wrong five times out of fourteen, which is why the Massachusetts page records the flag per county rather than per state.
Alaska: eleven areas that were never governments
Alaska’s eleven census areas are the most commonly misread case. They were never abolished, because they never existed as governments in the first place. Alaska organises local government as boroughs, and a large part of the state, the Unorganized Borough, has no borough at all. The Census Bureau cut that territory into census areas so there would be something to publish statistics for. That is their entire function.
You can see the statistical nature of them in how freely they change. Valdez-Cordova Census Area was split into Chugach and Copper River effective 2 January 2019, taking new codes 02063 and 02066 while 02261 retired. Wade Hampton became Kusilvak on 1 July 2015. Petersburg Census Area became Petersburg Borough, an actual government, while keeping GEOID 02195. Real governments do not get redrawn and recoded on that schedule.
Alaska has 30 county-equivalents: 13 boroughs, 4 cities and boroughs (Juneau, Sitka, Wrangell and Yakutat), 2 municipalities (Anchorage and Skagway), and the 11 census areas. Only that last group lacks a government, and the Alaska page marks each one.
Kalawao County, Hawaii
Kalawao is the smallest entity in the country that is legally called a county: 11.99 square miles on the north coast of Molokai, population 82, second-smallest by population after Loving County, Texas, at 52. It has no elected government. Under Hawaii law its mayor is the Director of the Hawaii Department of Health, and the county is administered as a state facility rather than as a unit of local government, an arrangement that follows from its history as the Kalaupapa settlement for people with Hansen’s disease.
Why this is a field and not an assumption
The practical version of all this: any page or dataset that assumes a county has a government will be wrong 35 times. It will invent a county executive for Providence and describe Yukon-Koyukuk, an area of 145,767.49 square miles with no government of any kind, as though there were someone there to call.
So this site stores county government as a boolean and never defaults it to true. The field is set explicitly for all 3,144 entities, and pages that would otherwise print government contact language check it first. A separate field records whether the entity has a county seat, which 21 do not. The two lists overlap without matching, and the difference is set out in county seats explained. Getting either one wrong by assumption is the sort of error that reads as authoritative right up until someone from Rhode Island notices.