List of counties in Hawaii
Encyclopedia
The five counties of Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

on the Hawaiian Islands
Hawaiian Islands
The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll...

 enjoy somewhat greater status than many counties
County (United States)
In the United States, a county is a geographic subdivision of a state , usually assigned some governmental authority. The term "county" is used in 48 of the 50 states; Louisiana is divided into parishes and Alaska into boroughs. Parishes and boroughs are called "county-equivalents" by the U.S...

 on the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 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. Rhode Island also has five counties, making Delaware the state with the least counties, at three. Public education is carried out by the Hawaii State Department of Education (Hawaii does not delegate educational responsibility to local school boards like the other 49 states),, so Hawaiian counties collect property tax
Property tax
A property tax is an ad valorem levy on the value of property that the owner is required to pay. The tax is levied by the governing authority of the jurisdiction in which the property is located; it may be paid to a national government, a federated state or a municipality...

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
State police
State police are a type of sub-national territorial police force, particularly in Australia and the United States. Some other countries have analogous police forces, such as the provincial police in some Canadian provinces, while in other places, the same responsibilities are held by national...

, called the Hawaii Department of Public Safety
Hawaii Department of Public Safety
The Hawaii Department of Public Safety is a department with in the executive branch of the government of the U.S. state of Hawaii. It is headquartered in Room 400 in the 919 Ala Moana Boulevard building in Honolulu CDP, City and County of Honolulu...

, 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
Territory of Hawaii
The Territory of Hawaii or Hawaii Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 7, 1898, until August 21, 1959, when its territory, with the exception of Johnston Atoll, was admitted to the Union as the fiftieth U.S. state, the State of Hawaii.The U.S...

 was created. The county of Kalawao
Kalawao County, Hawaii
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 147 people, 115 households, and 21 families residing in the county. The population density was 11 people per square mile . There were 172 housing units at an average density of 13 per square mile...

 is used exclusively as a leper colony, and does not have many of the elected officials the other counties do.

County information

The Federal Information Processing Standard
Federal Information Processing Standard
A Federal Information Processing Standard is a publicly announced standardization developed by the United States federal government for use in computer systems by all non-military government agencies and by government contractors, when properly invoked and tailored on a contract...

 (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.
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