Title is the question, basically. I’m talking USA states here.
I don’t see anything about it in the Constitution; do any state constitutions allow for (that is, fail to explicitly prohibit) farming out capitalical duties to a town across the river?
Given that this would be utterly unimaginable politically, I suspect that no state constitution does so.
They probably don’t prohibit the governor being a Martian either.
What possible rationale would there be for having a state capital in another state?
A county seat need not be within the county. For example, the county seat of Augusta County, Virginia, is in Staunton VA (a separate independent city, entirely surrounded by Augusta County).
Ohio allows the legislature to relocate the capital by an ordinary law (with it defaulting to Columbus in the absence of that), and it doesn’t put any conditions on it.
It would be a bad idea since it would place important things like immunity and security completely in the hands of another state, but I don’t know why it would be illegal in the absence of something explicitly prohibiting it.
Some states designate the capital in the constitution. Texas, for example.
What does this mean effectively in terms of administration? That the county seat itself is not subject to the rule of the county? That the sheriff of Augusta has no authority there? Does it have it’s own police force, property taxes, etc.? Does it have two separate offices of vital records? (One for Augusta Co., and one for Staunton?)
Is a situation’s utter political unimagineability really much of a guarantee that a law won’t be passed to address it?
Yes, because it’s not part of the county. The county just happens to own property and office buildings there.
If the people on the east side of the state hated the people on the west side of the state and vice versa, they could compromise and put the capital in neutral territory – out of state.
It’s not unimaginable for me. Daegu is the provincial capital of Gyeongsangbukdo although it’s not part of the province. No reason why it couldn’t work in the US.
Or just put up a wall dividing the city.
Is “capital” an official designation, or just a conventional way to refer to the location of the seat of government? Federally, a very large number of US government agencies have their headquarters in Maryland or Virginia, and I think there is even one in West Virginia, and the “summer capital” of the USA is at Camp David, Maryland.
Several countries in the world have multiple capitals, in which the legislature is centered in one city and the judicial in another. Such as Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa. When a nation moves its capital, it mayh take decades to fully transfer the seat of government from one city to another (Nigeria, Cote-d[Ivoire, Kazakhstan).
Granted, those are not US states, but I suspect that there are many states in which there is no enacted law nor constitutional provision that relates to a specific municipal entity needing to be formally proclaimed as “The Capital” and exclusively the venue of any/all government administrative activity. There is certanily nothing to that effect embodied in the US Constitution, which gives the states broad power to regulate such things, such as whether a state even has a capital at all. In fact four states don’t even call themselves states, but commonwealths instead.
This is the situation with all cities in Virginia. When a city is incorporated, it is jurisdictionally separated from the surrounding county. Every city and every county can offer the full range of departments and services, such as sheriffs and police departments. Virginia cities are thus often referred to as “county-equivalent” entities.
One can even imagine a government which had no fixed seat at all. Maybe the governor just sets up office in the building of his or her choice in his or her hometown, or in whatever city is deemed most convenient. Official records might be contracted out to a commercial data center, which might be physically located anywhere in the world, or in a combination of many places. Administrative details like DMV offices already need to be located in many different places in the state, and so on.
If they hate each other so much they never should have become a state in the first place.
Many states bound the capital location constitutionally out of a concern that the government in office could go “on the run” as it were and relocate from session to session somewhere inconvenient in order to limit citizen/minority participation (one of the grievances against Royal rule in the Declaration of Indepencence) or provoke a constructive termination for the employees or direct pork at each current leader’s hometown. So the Statehouse is to be located, and the legislature to meet regularly and the governor have his main office, in that specific town/city.
Meanwhile, in Maryland, the City of Baltimore is wholly independent from Baltimore County and not its county seat, and furthermore Baltimore County does not contain any incorporated municipalities. So saying the large suburb of Towson is the county seat just means that it is where the courthouse and administration building are located.
Perhaps it could be a question of having the land available. Consider the fact that many cities have airports that are located several miles away from the city they are named for, often in other counties or even other states. For example, Knoxville TN is in Knox County but the Knoxville Airport (TYS) is in Blount County. And the Cincinnati Airport (CVG) is in Kentucky. Suppose that a crowded city decided it was cheaper to build their capital across the border rather than give up some valuable real estate of their own?
Mississippi has ten counties that each have two officially designated county seats. This arose from having divided some counties into two judicial districts. There are a few other 2-seat counties scattered around, New York has one.
Regarding the airports, St. Joseph Missouri’s airport is on the Kansas side of the Missouri River. It is stil in Missouri territory, but you have to drive through Kansas to get from St. Joseph to the airport.
Well, the city of Chandigarh is in the Union Territory of Chandigarh, of which it is the capital. It is also the capital of both the bordering states of Panjab and Haryana, and it’s in neither of those states jurisdictionally.
Interesting, and I suppose you are going to make the legislature operate virtually, too, as well as all bureaucrats who actually perform the day to day running of government departments. I’m afraid it won’t fly - all of those people value working by PRIVATE face-to-face personal contact - going to lunch with each other, discussing policy on the golf course, etc. That isn’t going to change readily. For one thing, they would be aghast at the idea of not being able to be completely off the record and not in an email server somewhere.
No, but it makes it extremely unlikely.
Being the state capital brings economic benefits to that city. I can’t imagine any state government deliberately spending a significant part of its budget to the benefit of another state. Any legislators who approved such a thing would be voted out of office in a heartbeat.
We’re talking about the United States, which has a federal system in which the states have a large degree of political autonomy. What’s possible in Korea, India, or Africa has very little to do with what’s politically possible in the US.