SS8CG5: County and Municipal Governments

    I can most likely bet that most students know the least about county and city governments compared to the state and national governments. After reading this blog post, this will hopefully change.
    County governments are around mainly because they are subunits of the state government. What I mean is each county government carries out certain functions that the state government does not (for example the county Juvenile court which only deals with that county's juvenile cases but is still a part of the state's judicial branch). The county government is ran by a Board of Commissioners, which is in turn ran by a County Commissioner. This board is elected by the people, just like sheriffs and tax assessors are, and deals with the day-to-day tasks of the county and ordinances (county laws).
     City governments are much like county ones in the fact that they are ran most times by a group called a council. This council can either be headed by a strong-mayor, which has executive powers such as vetoes; a weak-mayor, which is just pretty much like another councilman that represents the city at places; or a city manager, which the council hires and then the city is ran by this manager.

Savannah city hall.

    Another kind of "local" government is a consolidated government. This is when city and county governments merge together. An example of this is Athens-Clarke county. The final kind is a "special-purpose" government. This is pretty much just a form of government that only deals with one set thing. Some examples are the Board of Recreation and Board of Education.

Fun Facts:

Athens merged with Clarke county in 1991.

Most counties get their revenue from property taxes.

Atlanta is the largest city in Georgia, and is the capital of our state.