For The County Of Marion: Fill & Download for Free

It varies, fairly significantly, from state to state.In some states (e.g. Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin), the state is partitioned into counties: every part of the state is in one and only one county, and there is no part of the state that is not in any county. In others, however there may be parts of the state that are not part of any county; for example, in Missouri the City of St. Louis is not in any county, and in Virginia there are several independent cities, each of which is not part of any county. In addition, in some states there are cities that have been consolidated with the county, forming a combined unit of government called a consolidated city-county. An example of this situation is Indianapolis, Indiana. Finally, in Louisiana they have parishes, which function in essentially the same way, and Alaska simply has nothing resembling a county at all.It is generally the responsibility of county government to provide “universal” services that apply to everyone in the county. In most states, the state’s courts of general jurisdiction are organized at the county level, and the county government provides for judges, a sheriff, and a jail. Traditionally, there is also a county coroner, whose primary duty is to record all deaths that occur in the county, and investigate those which are suspicious; in many jurisdictions this usually elected office has been supplanted or replaced by a professional medical examiner, usually hired by the county executive rather than elected. (In Indiana, and perhaps elsewhere the county coroner also has the odd duty of having the authority to arrest the sheriff should it become needful to do so.) Counties are also generally responsible for conducting public elections. The county’s highways (the roads between cities) are the county’s responsibility as well.Cities, whether or not independent or consolidated, and to a lesser degree towns or villages provide the services that are peculiar to urban living: garbage collection, fire protection, schools, parks, and so forth. These services may not be available as a matter of right to those who live outside of a city, town, or village; for example, in Indiana if you live outside of a city or town and want fire protection, you will have to voluntarily agree to pay for it from the local fire service, or they won’t come to your house to put it out when it catches on fire. But if you live in a city, this service is provided for you as part of the “standard service” that you get by paying taxes.Of course, these services cost money, and counties, cities, towns, and villages all have to raise funds to pay for the cost of providing these services somehow. In most cases, this is through property taxes: owners of real property are assessed, usually annually but in some places semiannually or biannually, a tax based (in some way) on the value of their land, which they must pay or their land will be seized from them by the taxing authority. In some places, one pays tax to both the city and the county if one is in both; in others, the county only taxes those not in a city or town, and in others the county collects taxes both for itself and on behalf of the city, remitting the city’s share to the city. There may also be other forms of tax: sales tax, income tax (city-level income taxes are rare, but not entirely unheard of), various odd excises taxes, and so forth. The manner in which these are collected also varies from state to state.In some places, the county government is almost irrelevant and it’s the city government that is primarily in control. In others, the opposite is the case. In most, it’s a more blended situation. If you want to see how it can get really fun, take a look at how property taxes work in Illinois.This is a snippet of our property tax bill. (I deliberately left out the amounts; you don’t need to know how much we pay in taxes.) There are sixteen different tax levies that go into computing our annual property tax bill, arising from nine different taxing authorities. (The State of Illinois doesn’t levy property taxes; only a handful of states assess property taxes at the state level. Most states raise state-level revenue through income taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, or a combination of these.) The first four are special-purpose taxing districts that provide water and sewer service, fire protection, library services, and parks and recreation, respectively. The next three are educational services: community college, high school, and elementary and middle school, each of which is a separate, independent governmental unit. The next group is the township, a level of government that is lower than that of the county. In Illinois, just as the state is partitioned into counties, each county is partitioned into townships (except for the parts of the state that are in Chicago, where the townships have been abolished). Townships are, in Illinois, responsible for local road maintenance, “general assistance” (certain forms of poor relief), and general administration. Our township (the Town of Leyden) also provides garbage collection, but that’s not a legally mandated service. (Also, the assessment for garbage collection is, oddly, zero.) Finally, there’s the taxes that go to the County itself. Those go to maintaining our forest preserve (more parks), paying for elections, for general county government (including the courts), for the county sheriff, county jail, and the sheriff’s police, and for the county’s public health service. Many of these taxes are small; for example, our levy for the consolidated elections fund comprised 0.25% of our total tax bill. Over 40% goes to the elementary school system, and 25% more to the high school. The next highest category is fire protection, at 11%.Indeed, until a few years ago, there was a levy on our taxes to pay for a tuberculosis sanitarium that the county had closed something like fifty years ago; the remaining levy (which for us was something like two cents per year) was to fund the pension of its remaining surviving retired employee. But she finally died, and when she did the fund to maintain her pension was wrapped up and the dedicated levy for its maintenance terminated.If we lived in a city or village, there’d be additional taxes on our bill for the services being provided by the city or village. Because we don’t live in a city or village, however, we instead pay (fairly small) taxes to the Town of Leyden (for which we get somewhat fewer services than if we lived in a city or village, in exchange for somewhat lower taxes).Illinois is unusual in the way that it proliferates government entities. In most places, instead of having separate legal entities to provide fire protection, library services, and parks, all of these would be provided by the same entity, which would normally be a city or town.As to who’s in charge: that also varies. In most cases, a city will have a mayor and a city council, both elected by the residents of the city. A county usually doesn’t have a chief executive officer; rather, there’s a county council elected by the residents of the county, one of whom is chosen to be the chairperson or president of that council and who acts as the “head” of that county. Here in Cook County, that individual is the county board president. In Dallas County, Texas, the comparable role has the title of “Judge”, for reasons that escape me.I’ve only given you a brief glimpse into all of this complexity, of course; every state has its own variation on these general themes, and often within each state there may be multiple variations as well (e.g. Indiana, with the special treatment that Indianapolis-Marion County has as a consolidated city-county). Perhaps the most exceptional case is that of New York City, which is a consolidated city, but one that is consolidated not with one county (as in the case of Indianapolis or Jacksonville), but with five, thus inverting the usual order of cities being mostly subordinate to counties. In New York City, each of the five boroughs is coterminous with a county, and much of what would normally be done at the county level elsewhere in the State of New York is done instead by the City of New York. But not all: for example, New York City has five prosecuting attorneys, one for each borough. But only one police force, and only one sheriff with duties covering all five counties. Every other county in the State of New York has its own elected sheriff.Ultimately, you’ll have to take the time to learn how things work in your state and your county and your city. What you learn will probably not transfer, at least not all that well, to any other place.

Each municipality with its own police department pays those officers out of their own budget. By having its own PD, the municipality increases the amount of patrol done by the police and the officers / command staff have more accountability to the powers-that-be in the municipality.Sheriff's deputies typically patrol more rural areas and towns which don't have their own PDs. While deputies may spend "contract time" in a particular small town, they are often called away by high-priority calls in other parts of the county.State police usually focus patrols on State highways. While they can respond to incidents in a town, that is not their focus.In some larger municipal areas, several agencies have combined to streamline the process. Indianapolis, IN, for instance, has the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. It was formed in 2007 when IPD merged with the Marion County Sheriff's Department. It made sense for that area because a large percentage of Marion County was actually Indianapolis.Now, if you could figure out how to streamline the various duties and jurisdictional issues that go along with the multiple agencies, and find a politically acceptable way to merge the various departments, you might have a good thing going. Unfortunately, it's not always easy or cost-efficient to do that.

Darn good question! There is not necessarily a point to it from strictly the view of efficient enforcement. Speaking about my state of Indiana now but I would say my explanation applies over most of the nation. The office of Sheriff is a very long standing elected office. Sheriffs need literally have no qualifications although they must at least undergo an abbreviated academy if they aren't already certified officers. Please note, the sheriff’s police officers or deputies do have to be fully certified, but not the elected official. Generally since sheriffs must be at least to some extent politicians, and since politicians are in general not much open to eliminating political offices, especially their own or one to which they aspire, this system is perpetuated. However, with agreements between higher politicians, the powers of the sheriff can be altered. The state laws spell out certain duties specific to the elected sheriff such as the maintenance of active files of warrants and service of the warrants. When the city of Indianapolis and the Marion County council agreed to merge law enforcement functions, for the very reason of improving efficiency and saving money, the office of Marion County Sheriff became one of maintaining the county jail, court services, prisoner transport (think “"paddy wagon”), and serving warrants and a few other enumerated civil enforcement duties. All Marion County Deputies who were already academy certified as cops had the option of becoming police officers in the Indianapolis Metropilitan Police Department and many did while others elected to remain with the sheriffs office but no longer with regular patrol duties. This process has happened in other cities such as nashville, TN, but not in other cities such as LA (at least I think LA still has separate forces) .