In the United States, a county is an administrative or political subdivision of a state that consists of a geographic region with specific boundaries and usually some level of governmental authority. The term "county" is used in 48 U.S. states, while Louisiana and Alaska have functionally equivalent subdivisions called parishes and boroughs, respectively. The specific governmental powers of counties vary widely between the states. Counties have significant functions in all states except Rhode Island and Connecticut, where county governments have been abolished but the entities remain for administrative or statistical purposes. Massachusetts has removed most government functions from eight of its 14 counties. The number of counties per state ranges from the three counties of Delaware to the 254 counties of Texas. Most counties have subdivisions which may include townships, municipalities and unincorporated areas. Others have no further divisions, or may serve as a consolidated city-county where a city and a county have been merged into a unified jurisdiction. Some municipalities are in multiple counties; New York City is uniquely partitioned into five counties, referred to at the city government level as boroughs. Conversely, the independent cities of the states of Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, and Nevada are municipalities that do not legally belong to any county, but may still function as if they were consolidated city-counties. The United States Census Bureau uses the term "county equivalent" to describe places that are comparable to counties, but called by different names. Louisiana parishes; the organized boroughs of Alaska; independent cities; and the District of Columbia are equivalent to counties for administrative purposes. Alaska's Unorganized Borough, a 323,440-square-mile (837,700 km2) area that has no county equivalent government, is further divided into 11 census areas that are statistically equivalent to counties. Territories of the United States do not have counties; instead, the United States Census Bureau also divides them into county equivalents. The U.S. Census Bureau counts American Samoa's districts and atolls as county-equivalents. American Samoa locally has places called "counties", but these entities are considered to be "minor civil divisions" (not true counties) by the U.S. Census Bureau. As of 2020, there are currently 3,143 counties and county-equivalents in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. If the 100 county equivalents in the U.S. territories are counted, then the total is 3,243 counties and county-equivalents in the United States. The county with the largest population, Los Angeles County (10,039,107), and the county with the largest land area, San Bernardino County, border each other in Southern California (however, eleven boroughs in Alaska are larger in area than San Bernardino).
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