Connecticut "county equivalents" Probably Changing in 2023

[MikeTheActuary]

Just saw this story that might interest county collectors here: https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/Relics-of-CT-history-will-soon-see-a-new-twist-16693047.php

Unfortunately, county data is almost useless in Connecticut, because the groups of towns in the eight historic counties are not the same as the groups of towns in the regional entities we have today – nine planning regions represented by "councils of governments,"  or COGs. For example, historic Hartford County has 29 towns, while the Capitol Planning Region (also known as the Capitol Region Council of Governments) covers 38 towns.

In 2019, state officials petitioned the U.S. Census Bureau to designate the planning regions/COGs as "county equivalents,"  so data will be reported for the regional entities that actually use it.

The change is now in final review by state agencies. Barring a last-minute objection, it will be approved by the end of the year and go into effect in 2023.

FWIW, here's a map of the current COG definitions:

[JayhawkCO]

If I'm reading that right, I'd be going from missing 3 counties to only missing 2.  I'd also be gaining 2 counties. (5/8 vs. 7/9)

[Rothman]

Courts will still use the old counties, per my understanding.

I think people need to assess what makes a county a county.  Does the Census...or judicial considerations?

[7/8]

Courts will still use the old counties, per my understanding.

I think people need to assess what makes a county a county.  Does the Census...or judicial considerations?

That's for the Council of mob-rule.com to decide.

[NWI_Irish96]

Courts will still use the old counties, per my understanding.

I think people need to assess what makes a county a county.  Does the Census...or judicial considerations?

That's for the Council of mob-rule.com to decide.

I would think it would depend on what ends up being signed by the state on highways.

[Rothman]

Courts will still use the old counties, per my understanding.

I think people need to assess what makes a county a county.  Does the Census...or judicial considerations?

That's for the Council of mob-rule.com to decide.

I would think it would depend on what ends up being signed by the state on highways.

That would be nothing.

[triplemultiplex]

They should come up with better names if this going to happen.  These are too bureaucratic.

[NWI_Irish96]

Courts will still use the old counties, per my understanding.

I think people need to assess what makes a county a county.  Does the Census...or judicial considerations?

That's for the Council of mob-rule.com to decide.

I would think it would depend on what ends up being signed by the state on highways.

That would be nothing.

Well, absent any signage from the state, I'd go by whatever the Census Bureau uses, and apparently they are going to convert to the new definitions in 2023: https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/reference/ct_county_equiv_change.pdf

[Rothman]

Courts will still use the old counties, per my understanding.

I think people need to assess what makes a county a county.  Does the Census...or judicial considerations?

That's for the Council of mob-rule.com to decide.

I would think it would depend on what ends up being signed by the state on highways.

That would be nothing.

Well, absent any signage from the state, I'd go by whatever the Census Bureau uses, and apparently they are going to convert to the new definitions in 2023: https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/reference/ct_county_equiv_change.pdf

Why would you go by the U.S. Census over the State's own courts?

[Scott5114]

Courts will still use the old counties, per my understanding.

I think people need to assess what makes a county a county.  Does the Census...or judicial considerations?

That's for the Council of mob-rule.com to decide.

I would think it would depend on what ends up being signed by the state on highways.

That would be nothing.

Well, absent any signage from the state, I'd go by whatever the Census Bureau uses, and apparently they are going to convert to the new definitions in 2023: https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/reference/ct_county_equiv_change.pdf

Why would you go by the U.S. Census over the State's own courts?

Because clinching "Unorganized Bureau, Alaska" is fairly unsatisfying.

[GaryV]

When doing genealogy, facts are generally noted as "Location, County, State" or the equivalent.  That's because many of the records are held at county courthouses - birth certs, marriage certs, death certs, wills, etc.

Thus I'm in the camp of "stick with the county per the court".

[MikeTheActuary]

Courts will still use the old counties, per my understanding.

It's not that the state courts use the old counties as much as the state courts judicial districts happen to coincide with the traditional county boundaries.

In addition to keeping tabs of the counties I've physically visited, I also track which counties I've worked via ham radio.  The group that formalizes the rules for "county hunting" on the radio looks like they'll follow along with this change (although they do use Judicial Districts in Alaska rather than either boroughs or census divisions).

[MikeTheActuary]

When doing genealogy, facts are generally noted as "Location, County, State" or the equivalent.  That's because many of the records are held at county courthouses - birth certs, marriage certs, death certs, wills, etc.

Thus I'm in the camp of "stick with the county per the court".

For genealogy purposes in Connecticut, county is irrelevant.   Vital records are maintained at either the town or state level.

It's not that the state courts use the old counties as much as the state courts judicial districts happen to coincide with the traditional county boundaries.

This apparently is no longer true.   For example, Hartland is now part of Litchfield's judicial district despite being in Hartford County.

[oscar]

Courts will still use the old counties, per my understanding.

I think people need to assess what makes a county a county.  Does the Census...or judicial considerations?

The Extra Miler Club settled on county equivalents for Canada a few years ago. The one consistent thread was that courts were irrelevant there, though in Canada the court systems aren't tied to local/regional governments as much as in the U.S. For an extreme example, Nunavut Territory has only one courthouse, covering three time zones (the judges fly to and from outlying communities as needed). We used the territory's three administrative divisions (basically, territorial agencies with branch offices usually have one in each division not covered by the home office), which roughly coincide with the three time zones.

Also, the census divisions defined by Statistics Canada generally took a beating in favor of province-designated government entities. The one exception was in Newfoundland/Labrador. Only the Inuit-dominated Census Division 11 has a county-like regional government, and we stayed with the census divisions in the rest of that province for lack of a better alternative.

Other lessons from that project could come into play for re-dividing (or not) Connecticut, though none jump out at me right now.

I like the proposed Councils of Government-based definitions, since the COGs seem to be as close as Connecticut comes to regional governments.

Because clinching "Unorganized Bureau, Alaska" is fairly unsatisfying.

But county line signs for the Unorganized Borough would be so cool! Right now there are no signs where you enter the Unorganized Borough, only where you leave it to enter an organized borough.

Some county counters treat the Unorganized Borough as a single unit, spread out over thousands of miles between Attu and Hyder. That's especially true for the ones who insist on visiting the county seat, only the U.B. doesn't have one, in keeping with its being so "Unorganized".

[JayhawkCO]

So basically if Oscar speaks, we listen.  I just got two more counties.

[NWI_Irish96]

Courts will still use the old counties, per my understanding.

I think people need to assess what makes a county a county.  Does the Census...or judicial considerations?

That's for the Council of mob-rule.com to decide.

I would think it would depend on what ends up being signed by the state on highways.

That would be nothing.

Well, absent any signage from the state, I'd go by whatever the Census Bureau uses, and apparently they are going to convert to the new definitions in 2023: https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/reference/ct_county_equiv_change.pdf

Why would you go by the U.S. Census over the State's own courts?

As someone traveling into the state from out of state, unsigned court jurisdictions really don't hold any meaning. If the state signed those jurisdictions, I'd be more than happy to use them, but in this case the state asked the Census Bureau to use the new boundaries so that signifies the state finds them more important than the court boundaries.

[MikeTheActuary]

This apparently is no longer true.   For example, Hartland is now part of Litchfield's judicial district despite being in Hartford County.

FWIW, a map of Connecticut's judicial districts: https://www.jud.ct.gov/directory/maps/JD/default.htm

While Middlesex, New London, Tolland, and Windham Counties coincide with current judicial districts, the boundaries of the other four traditional counties are now semi-irrelevant for the courts.  You can see parts of county boundaries preserved, but the fragmentation in Fairfield County and the introduction of discrete districts for Waterbury and New Britain messed with tradition.

[Rothman]

So basically if Oscar speaks, we listen.  I just got two more counties.

Not if you haven't visited them since their formation.  You can't visit something that doesn't exist yet.

[JayhawkCO]

So basically if Oscar speaks, we listen.  I just got two more counties.

Not if you haven't visited them since their formation.  You can't visit something that doesn't exist yet.

Meh, if I've been to a town and that town is in a county, I've been to that county.

[Rothman]

So basically if Oscar speaks, we listen.  I just got two more counties.

Not if you haven't visited them since their formation.  You can't visit something that doesn't exist yet.

Meh, if I've been to a town and that town is in a county, I've been to that county.

The county will not exist any longer, so no dice.  You visited something that will no longer exist.

[JayhawkCO]

So basically if Oscar speaks, we listen.  I just got two more counties.

Not if you haven't visited them since their formation.  You can't visit something that doesn't exist yet.

Meh, if I've been to a town and that town is in a county, I've been to that county.

The county will not exist any longer, so no dice.  You visited something that will no longer exist.

Well then you're saying despite me having been to Connecticut (multiple times), since all of the counties are going to change, I will have been to Connecticut but have been to zero counties.  I'm choosing to not recognize Schrödinger's Connecticut.

[Scott5114]

I remember reading on one of the sites of Old Roadgeek Canon–I'm thinking it was somewhere on mob-rule but it could have been on the Extra Miler Club's site, but I can't find it now–that stated their suggested rule for county splits was, if you visited the territory that remained in the old county, you get credit for only that old county. If you visited territory that ended up in the new county, you would get credit for both counties (because you visited the land that is in the new county and you also visited the jurisdiction that at the time covered that land and but now no longer does).

This would seem to imply that in the event of a complete boundary redraw, land visited would govern, and the lack of continuity of jurisdiction would be irrelevant. Taken to its logical conclusions, continuity of jurisdiction as the governing factor could lead to absurd results anyway, such as a clinch depending on things like whether a city-county merger was legally implemented as one government subsuming the other, or both being discontinued and a new government entity being formed with the same jurisdictional boundaries as the old one. That level of rules-lawyering is horseshit, so if I had visited Connecticut, I'd be filling in my mob-rule map based on "I was on X road before the redraw, and it is now in Y county, so I am marking that as visited".

[NWI_Irish96]

So basically if Oscar speaks, we listen.  I just got two more counties.

Not if you haven't visited them since their formation.  You can't visit something that doesn't exist yet.

Meh, if I've been to a town and that town is in a county, I've been to that county.

The county will not exist any longer, so no dice.  You visited something that will no longer exist.

Well then you're saying despite me having been to Connecticut (multiple times), since all of the counties are going to change, I will have been to Connecticut but have been to zero counties.  I'm choosing to not recognize Schrödinger's Connecticut.

This is how I look at it: Specific to Connecticut, there are no longer formal county-level subdivisions. To hold to the true definition of counties, you had to visit Connecticut before 1960 or else you've never been to any counties in Connecticut. What has existed since 1960 are county-equivalent subdivisions that happen to be identical to the counties that used to exist. When you've documented your travel since 1960, you've documented which of these areas you've been to. What is happening is that the Census Bureau and others are changing the boundaries of their county-equivalent subdivisions at the request of the state. Since there weren't really counties before this change, I'm clearly in the camp of counting the new areas as visited if you've ever visited any portion of that area before the change.

Now, if a state with actual counties were to split a county into two, creating a new county with a new county government and a new county seat, I can see not counting visiting that area before the county existed.

[Rothman]

So basically if Oscar speaks, we listen.  I just got two more counties.

Not if you haven't visited them since their formation.  You can't visit something that doesn't exist yet.

Meh, if I've been to a town and that town is in a county, I've been to that county.

The county will not exist any longer, so no dice.  You visited something that will no longer exist.

Well then you're saying despite me having been to Connecticut (multiple times), since all of the counties are going to change, I will have been to Connecticut but have been to zero counties.  I'm choosing to not recognize Schrödinger's Connecticut.

Yep.  Have to go back and revisit Connecticut to clinch the new counties.

Last time you were in CT, you clinched the old counties.

[JayhawkCO]

So basically if Oscar speaks, we listen.  I just got two more counties.

Not if you haven't visited them since their formation.  You can't visit something that doesn't exist yet.

Meh, if I've been to a town and that town is in a county, I've been to that county.

The county will not exist any longer, so no dice.  You visited something that will no longer exist.

Well then you're saying despite me having been to Connecticut (multiple times), since all of the counties are going to change, I will have been to Connecticut but have been to zero counties.  I'm choosing to not recognize Schrödinger's Connecticut.

This is how I look at it: Specific to Connecticut, there are no longer formal county-level subdivisions. To hold to the true definition of counties, you had to visit Connecticut before 1960 or else you've never been to any counties in Connecticut. What has existed since 1960 are county-equivalent subdivisions that happen to be identical to the counties that used to exist. When you've documented your travel since 1960, you've documented which of these areas you've been to. What is happening is that the Census Bureau and others are changing the boundaries of their county-equivalent subdivisions at the request of the state. Since there weren't really counties before this change, I'm clearly in the camp of counting the new areas as visited if you've ever visited any portion of that area before the change.

Now, if a state with actual counties were to split a county into two, creating a new county with a new county government and a new county seat, I can see not counting visiting that area before the county existed.

I look at it that if I've been present in a place, I've "clinched" being there.  If a county splits, just like Scott said above, if I haven't been anywhere in the new area, I haven't been to that county. 

If Wales secedes from the U.K., despite me having been to the U.K., I will not have been to Wales because I've never been to Cardiff, Swansea, or any other Welsh city.  If Scotland secedes, I have been to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, and multiple other Scottish cities, ergo, I've been to Scotland.