I can’t really conceive of any of those scenarios. This is starting to sound like one of those “Can God create a rock that is too heavy for him to lift?” type of questions. As for any newly created state, a state is not allowed to become a state – not in the US anyway – unless it does have supporting infrastructure up and running.
Generally State constitutions don’t attempt to forbid every dumb thing that people have no reason to want to do, they try to restrict things that people are concerned might happen. Why would a state want to put its capital in a location where it can’t pass laws, can’t have it’s own police, can’t profit from taxes on the businesses that hang off of the capital, and where it’s pretty much completely at the mercy of another state whether it can even operate? Also, sovereign immunity usually protects any officers of a State government from a lot of potential lawsuits, but it might not offer protection if you’re carrying out governance in an area where you’re not sovereign.
OP, is there a scenario you have in mind that prompted this question?
They might not be very likely, but there is nothing in the law preventing them. Suppose Hawaii was flooded by a tidal wave, was projected to remain underwater or at least uninhabitable until 2018, and that Oregon agreed to allow the 5% of Hawaii residents and officials that survived to hold emergency elections and set up temporary offices in Portland to print aid checks and serve as a gathering point to make appropriate plans to resettle Hawaii. Bingo, now you have an out-of-state capital.
Or, suppose the Canadian military invades Maine, summarily executing all Maine state officials that they find and blazing a path of fire through the state. The governor and surviving members of the legislature, running for their lives, pile into an old dinghy and eventually wash ashore in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, where they build an emergency shelter from parts of the old boardwalk, sit in a circle on the beach and declare a State of Emergency, request Federal funding to purchase tanks for the Maine State Police, recruit replacement Maine police officers from local New Jersey communities, and pass a law permitting Maine children whose schools were burnt down by the Canadians to receive credit toward a Maine high school diploma by attending out-of-state schools.
Why is it hard to understand how it would work? The state would buy some land and put some administrative facilities on it, just like in any capital.
Right, and it gets even weirder. The county seat of Fairfax County is Fairfax, which is not in Fairfax County even though it is surrounded on all sides by Fairfax County. So if you live in Fairfax County and need to visit certain county offices, you have to leave Fairfax County and go to Fairfax in order to meet with the appropriate Fairfax County officials, then to go home to Fairfax County you have to leave Fairfax. If you like the neighborhood you visited when visiting with your Fairfax County officials and decide to move there, you become a resident of Fairfax and cease to be a resident of Fairfax County, so now your officials are in a different neighborhood. If you live here long enough, it becomes normal.
Those things might be conceivable in some other country, but they are absolutely inconceivable in the US. In the cases involving inefficiency, it’s conceivable that it might be more efficient to put the capital in another state- but it still won’t happen. We do lots of things that are inefficient - and most especially with government agencies.* We value independence more than efficiency - State A doesn’t want its governor escorted from the airport to the capital by the State B police. Perhaps more importantly, State A is not going to set up its capital in State B , so that State B gets tax revenue from State A employees (who are likely residents of state B) and State B gets the economic benefit of State A employees spending most of their money in State B. As it is, it’s not uncommon for states and municipalities to require residency as a condition of employment - it’s literally inconceivable to imagine that any state would arrange things so that many of the employees working in the capitol will be residents of state B. And even if they don’t live in State B, if State B has an income tax, it will ensure that they pay income tax to State B on money earned in State B.
If Hawaii was rendered uninhabitable until 2018, the legislature would sooner set up shop in a houseboat where Hawaii used to be than go to Portland- although I’m not sure who they would be printing aid checks for (as there are no longer any Hawaii residents) or where they would be getting money to fund the checks ( as there are no more Hawaii residents or businesses paying taxes)
- I worked for a state agency that was headquartered in Albany- even though over half of the staff worked in the NYC area, over half of the client population was in the NYC area, and the chair of the agency spent a great deal of time in his NYC office. Why was the headquarters in Albany when most of the activity was in NYC ? Because it was required by law , not because it was efficient.
Although the actual county administration buildings are in an island of Fairfax County surrounded by Fairfax. (But obviously nobody lives there, except I guess people in the jail.)
First of all, the question I was responding to was, “Why on earth … ?” And those are absolutely all conceivable “on earth.”
Second, I stress again that the OP has not asked what is politically likely in the United States but merely what is permitted
As an aside I think it’s rather a conceit that we as Americans purport to cling to state boundaries as basic facets of our identities when of all the nations of the earth our internal jurisdictions are not based on ethnicity, language, race, religion, origin, creed, or any other actual characteristic of personal identity.
Many other countries draw their internal boundaries based on actual divisions of these kinds. Our states are largely arbitrary and the result of historical accidents that in terms of human history happened just about yesterday at lunchtime.
We are the most mobile society in the world. I would be surprised if 5 percent of the people I know live in the state where they were born. We have a national identity but people like to pretend that our state identities are somehow important when they have practically no impact on our lives. Hell, the university where we got our bachelor’s degrees (or not) is a more important source of personal identity than our states.
According to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_outside_the_territories_they_serve locating an capital or administrative center outside of the territory which it serves, while unusual, is not unheard of. The typical case might involve a city which politically separates itself from the surrounding region, but retains the government offices for that region because of its central location.
retracted
There’s another wrinkle to consider. In some states, including my own state of Missouri, the governor only has authority while he’s physically in the state (the lieutenant governor has temporary authority while the governor is gone.) It may be an archaic remnant of the days when travel was difficult (or it may be a remnant of when the pro-secessionist Missouri governor fled to Arkansas early in the Civil war) but it would be an incredible paradox to locate the state capital in a place where the governor has no legal authority to govern.
They would be for people temporarily living in migrant camps in Oregon or wherever, waiting for the day that they will resettle Hawaii.
The Hawaii state government presumably will have some financial reserves in an emergency fund. Even if not, they could have received an aid check from the Federal government that they would then be responsible for managing, sort of like how Medicaid is paid for by the Federal government but managed by the states.
And someone answered to the effect that it was likely that many states didn’t have any specific provision prohibiting it because it was inconceivable that any legislature would choose to do so. And then a question was asked about whether the political impossibility of doing so would really result in lack of a prohibition in a state constitution.
I wasn’t talking about state boundaries being a facet of our identities. I was talking about the governor and legislators and officials of state A not wishing to be bound by any laws or regulations of State B, as they would be if the capital were physically located there (Hey Texas, put your capital in NY state- but you can’t open carry. Or NJ troopers can’t use lights and sirens to get the NJ governor from the airport to the legislative offices in NY - if he wants an escort, it’s gotta be NY troopers.) and not wanting to move jobs and other economic activity out of State A into State B. There’s also what kunilou mentioned about some governors only having authority when physically in the state.
And this very much depends upon your circles - because something like 50% of the people I know were born in the same state where they live, and plenty of that 50% were both born and currently live in NYC.
By contrast, India has a Federal/State system very similar to the US, but the states of India are largely drawn on linguistic borders (they aren’t perfect, of course, but they are rather close). This makes it harder from a practical perspective to just move to a different state. Imagine if you were considering taking a job in Wyoming and had to also worry about finding enough time to learn to speak Wyomingese in addition to your fluent Pennsylvanian and good-enough Marylander, and then realize that your spouse’s paperwork is all in Floridian and now you need to get a certified Floridian->Wyomingese translator but find out that they are so rare that you have to settle on a two-step translation process of Floridian->Tennesseeish->Wyomingese. Don’t even think about trying to visit Disneyland, because everyone knows that Californian is by far the hardest American language to learn, dude.
To some extent, Canada and Switzerland also have state borders that roughly map to language borders. Finland, though not a federation, has some jurisdictional boundaries that closely divide majority language areas.
And my responses have indicated fairly specifically which questions I was responding to.
I’m pretty damn certain that I used several means of indicating that that particular comment was not in response to anything you were talking about … the dashed lines … “as an aside” … the use of “we” …
And taking the country as a whole, we will still be the most mobile society in the world.
Just as a matter of practicality, a whole lot of government business in India is conducted in English, because of exactly these kinds of issues.
The figures do vary from state to state, but overall 59% of Americans live in the same state as they were born. Even if you just look at adults it is around fifty percent. Your experience seems quite standard.
Excellent post overall, btw.
I know what we’re talking about. Someone said it was unimaginable to have the state capital outside of the state. I stated that it’s not unimaginable for me since I’ve seen at least one province with a capital outside the province and that, as I said, there’s no reason why that can’t work in the US. I was obviously aware of the subject.
There is also the case of Fairfax County in Virginia, referred to up-thread. For those of us who’ve spent a few years in that state, it’s not out of the ordinary. Those of us who’ve lived in Arlington, VA are also familiar with a county with no country seat, since there are no cities or towns (although a number of neighborhoods call themselves something-or-the other city) in that county.
In my youth, the USA was marked by a pleasent interest in the way the rest of the world worked. Not extending to actual visiting, or studying, but just a friendly neighbourly interest.
Virginia also has James City County, which is not a city, and whose county seat is Williamsburg, which is not part of James City County. Virginia does not have a city called James City. There is a place called Jamestown, but it is now a national park and no longer an operating town.
The capital of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh is, for historical reasons, currently not in Andhra Pradesh, although this is a temporary thing, they’re (last I checked) in the process of selecting a new capital. (Between 1956 and 2014, Andhra Pradesh included the state currently known as Telangana).