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Alaska boroughs

Alaska Boroughs and Census Areas

Alaska has sixteen organized boroughs. It is not divided into counties, as are 48 other states, but into boroughs. Many of the more densely populated parts of the state are part of Alaska's sixteen boroughs, which function similarly to counties in other states.

The sixteen boroughs include three "unified municipalities"--Anchorage, Juneau and Sitka. These come about when a borough and all cities located within it unite in a single unit of government.

There are 11 census areas in the state which have no borough government due to sparse population and are collectively known as the unorganized borough.

In 2000, Alaska’s 16 organized boroughs were inhabited by 545,664 individuals, or nearly 87% of the total population of the state.

Organized boroughs encompass only about 43 percent of the geographic area of Alaska.

Borough governance

Boroughs come in different types as far as their governance structure is concerned. There are eight "first-class boroughs", which are also known as "home rule boroughs"; seven second-class boroughs and one third-class borough.

A main difference between a first class borough and a second class borough is the authority to assume powers. A first class borough may exercise any power not prohibited by law on a non-areawide basis (i.e., in the area of the borough outside cities) by adopting an ordinance. A second class borough, however, must gain voter approval for the authority to exercise many non-areawide powers.

The state legislature authorized the creation of third class boroughs in Alaska in 1968, but amended the law in 1985 to prohibit the incorporation of new third class boroughs; there is only one such borough, Haines.

Borough website evaluations

Main article: Evaluation of Alaska borough websites
  • Five boroughs put their budgets online. Five provide partial budget information, and six provide no budget information at all.
  • Eight boroughs include information on their websites about public government meetings.
  • Ten boroughs include information about the county's elected officials. (Six provide partial information.)
  • Ten include information about the county's administrative officials.
  • Eleven give information about permits and zoning in the county.
  • Only one borough (Anchorage) provides information about audits that have been performed.
  • Only one borough (Kodiak) provides information about its contracts with vendors.
  • Only one borough (Anchorage) discloses its membership in government sector lobbying associations.
  • Five websites do (and eleven websites don't) provide information on how to request public records using the Alaska Public Records Act.
  • Six websites provide some information about county taxes.

List of boroughs

Name Borough Seat First Second class Third class Unorganized
Aleutians East Borough Sand Point X
Aleutians West X
Municipality of Anchorage Anchorage X
Bethel X
Bristol Bay Borough Naknek X
Denali Borough Healy X
Dillingham X
Fairbanks North Star Borough Fairbanks X
Haines Borough Haines X
Juneau Borough Juneau X
Kenai Peninsula Borough Soldotna X
Ketchikan Gateway Borough Ketchikan X
Kodiak Island Borough Kodiak X
Lake and Peninsula Borough King Salmon X
Matanuska-Sustina Borough Palmer X
Nome X
North Slope Borough Barrow X
Northwest Arctic Borough Kotzebue X
Prince of Wales-Outer Ketchikan X
Sitka Borough Sitka X
Skagway-Yakutat-Angoon Burough
Southeast Fairbanks X
Valdez-Cordova X
Wade-Hampton X
Wrangell-Petersburg X
Yakutat Borough Yakutat X
Yukon-Koyukuk X

External links

Borough websites:

Lists of counties
(parishes in Louisiana; boroughs in Alaska)

This article was taken and modified from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under the GNU license.

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