The five counties of Hawaii on the

Hawaiian Islands The Hawaiian Islands () are an archipelago of eight major volcanic islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the Pacific Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, extending some from the Hawaii (island), island of Hawaii in the south to nort ...

enjoy somewhat greater status than many

counties A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

on the United States mainland. Counties in Hawaii are the only legally constituted government bodies below that of the state. No formal level of government (such as city governments) exists below that of the county in Hawaii. Unlike the other 49

states State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

, Hawaii does not delegate educational responsibility to local school boards; public education is carried out by the Hawaii State Department of Education. Hawaiian counties collect

property tax A property tax (whose rate is expressed as a percentage or per mille, also called ''millage'') is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or Wealth t ...

es and user fees in order to support road maintenance, community activities, parks (including life guards at beach parks), garbage collection, police (the state police force, called the Hawaii Department of Public Safety, is limited in scope), ambulance, and fire suppression services. All the counties were created in 1905 from unorganized territory, seven years after the

Territory of Hawaii The Territory of Hawaii or Hawaii Territory (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ''Panalāʻau o Hawaiʻi'') was an organized incorporated territories of the United States, organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from Apri ...

was created. The county of Kalawao was historically exclusively used as a

leper colony A leper colony, also known by many other names, is an isolated community for the quarantining and treatment of lepers, people suffering from leprosy. '' M. leprae'', the bacterium responsible for leprosy, is believed to have spread from East ...

, and does not have many of the elected officials the other counties do. Many services for Kalawao County are provided by Maui County. For example, the web site for the office of the Maui County Clerk says "The office is also responsible for the elections in the County of Maui and the County of Kalawao".

County information

The

Federal Information Processing Standard The Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) of the United States are a set of publicly announced standards that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed for use in computer systems of non-military United Stat ...

(FIPS) code, which is used by the United States government to uniquely identify counties, is provided with each entry. The FIPS code for each county links to census data for that county.

County information

References

Further reading