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Comment by ilek | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, unrelated but I hadn't realised you had laws at the county level too in the USA. I assumed it was federal and state only.

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How influential counties are varies greatly from state to state. Where I'm from, there's no unincorporated land, it's all in towns. So the counties are relatively unimportant and town government is correspondingly more important. Elsewhere counties are highly influential.

And also a city/municipality/township level as well.

It gets even more specific than that, while home owner's associations don't generate laws that lead to criminal penalties when broken, the rules HOA's create are legally binding and have probably a significant impact on many people's quality of life and every day freedom. They are very personal rules and you can get in trouble for stupid things like leaving your garage door open or how you hang your laundry. People living with HOA's have opted for trading in freedoms for slightly higher property values.

My, soon to be ex, HOA decided they want to make rules regarding public roads. If they catch you parking on said public road, they will inspect your garage and issue heavy fines if you're storing anything in it.

> It gets even more specific than that, while home owner's associations don't generate laws that lead to criminal penalties when broken, the rules HOA's create are legally binding and have probably a significant impact on many people's quality of life and every day freedom.

HOA rules aren't laws of any kind; they are legally binding only because you have entered into a contract to obey them.

> People living with HOA's have opted for trading in freedoms for slightly higher property values.

Or, they have opted to live in modern homes: HOAs are usually established by developers, and virtually all new development (ISTR seeing figures of 80% in CA) is subject to HOAs.

You can even have sub-county regulations, too. You can have county taxes as well. But unless you're in a big city, they tend not to matter much apart from, like, not being allowed to have couches and garbage on your front lawn or something like that.

Federal, state, county, and city governments, and special districts (e.g. transit district, school district) all have some degree of legislative power.

Goes all the way down to city level, even.

Some companies and private organizations will even create "by-law"s in an attempt to control you.

Uh, why does this comment have a negative score?

Yep, a homeowner's association could put a lien on your house if you broke their by-law about hanging a sports team flag on your front porch, for instance.

In NYC, which is of course an outlier, the counties (each borough) are smaller and fall below the city level.

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