“One may think in terms of federalism as representing a layer cake, with each layer – federal, state, and local – having specific governmental functions it and it alone can handle, in actuality it has taken the form of a marble cake with each level sharing in the planning, delivery, or funding of many governmental functions.”—Berman, 2003
Washington makes all the headlines, but the governance that most directly shapes daily life happens closer to home.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 90,498 active local government entities—counties, municipalities, townships, school districts, and special districts—in America. Together, these entities have the power to levy property taxes and decide what gets built next door. Their authority is enormous, yet their operations remain largely invisible, buried under thousands of hours of meetings and public records.
The most familiar among these entities are general-purpose governments of counties, municipalities, and townships. These entities are responsible for a broad portfolio of services within a defined territory. Less familiar, but far more numerous, are special districts—single-purpose bodies created to handle one specific function such as fire protection, irrigation, or cemetery management.
This decentralization of governance is a defining feature of American democracy.
“In America, on the other hand, it may be said that the township was organized before the county, the county before the State, the State before the Union.”—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835
Unlike many other countries, America’s long history of independent governance has prevented the consolidation of local government powers. Up until the early 20th century, cities were the primary economic and governance centers of the country, raising far more in revenue than the federal or state governments. By the time Washington expanded its reach during the New Deal, most American cities already had decades of entrenched governance structures.
This historical legacy allowed municipal authority to be defined bottom-up. Cities first independently came up with policies based on their circumstances before they were implemented nationwide. For example, the first comprehensive zoning ordinance in the country was adopted by New York City in 1916 long before federal land use policy existed (NYC Planning, n.d).
The public squares of Savannah, Georgia were built according to the Oglethorpe Plan in 1733—43 years before the founding of America. Local governance here predates the constitution itself.
This is not to say that American local governments have remained static since their founding. Since 1952, the number, composition, and powers of local governments have changed dramatically. In the intervening decades, school districts consolidated, falling from 67,355 to just 12,545. But special district and municipal governance have expanded, layering new permitting authorities and taxing bodies onto an already complex system.
Special districts nearly tripled from 12,340 in 1952 to 39,313 in 2022 while municipal governments saw a modest increase.
These structural features have allowed American cities to innovate and made American democracy resilient. At the same time, they have also made it difficult to create a national picture of governance. Because each state developed its own rules for governance, no two states (or even cities) have the exact same structure. Chicago manages its public services through dozens of independent special districts; New York City consolidates equivalent functions into city agencies. Neither approach is wrong; they are simply different products of different pasts.
Click any state to see its breakdown
Illinois has over 6,900 local government entities. Its neighbor, Michigan, has fewer than 2670.
The practical consequence of this system is a maze of regulatory and permitting authorities
We see this friction most often in land use policies. A typical entitlement package can require zoning clearance from the city or county board, environmental approvals from a separate special district, and road access authorization from yet another body—each on its own timeline, with its own procedural requirements. On average, developers spend 2-3 years on the entitlement process, though it is not unheard of for large projects to have longer timelines.
It took 7 years, 3 denied applications, and multiple rounds of litigation in county and state courts for Piedmont Capital Investment to finally receive its rezoning for a multifamily development with a daycare.
We make this decentralized information accessible and actionable.
The marble cake of governance that Berman described is not going away, it is only getting more complex. This complexity is a structural feature of American democracy, not a bug to be fixed. But it does need to be navigated.
The 90,000 governments that shape daily life in America are public by design. However, they are scattered, procedural, and impossible to follow at scale without the right tools.
That is the problem GatherGov exists to solve. Our platform continuously parses commission meetings and municipal documents nationwide, linking entities across jurisdictions into a coherent picture of where projects stand and how municipalities are moving.
When a developer files an application or a commission casts a vote, GatherGov captures it and surfaces it, before anyone else is paying attention.