[SllX]

Hmm, depends a lot on the State.

You can generally make two generalizations about local governments in the United States: they are local governments and you can’t make any other generalizations about them because everything depends on the State and sometimes a locality’s specific circumstances.

In California, municipalities do not adhere to the counties they are in, the county is a legal subdivision of the State which might also have a charter and cities are municipal corporations with a monopoly on the land use within their cities. School districts are also a form of local government here, as are special purpose districts like BART.

In some parts of New England, and I’m not going to go into specifics because when I looked into this more than 10 years ago this had changed or some States were changing it, the State is divided into counties and the counties were divided into townships which are the basis of the New England township system. Somewhere in there, there are also cities, and Maine has a couple of severely underpopulated places designated as Plantations.

So, congestion pricing in the US: NYC, LA, San Francisco and probably Seattle absolutely have the power to this if they wanted to, although I’ll say for San Francisco that would have made a lot more sense to try before the pandemic than now, cuz now, well now downtown is dead so what would it really do? Fairly certain Boston could as well. Everywhere else, I’m less certain, like in Texas I’m fairly certain cities there could, but I’m also fairly certain the Texan legislature under their own laws has the power to step in and go “No. None of that. Shame on you.”

[throw3823423]

In practice, there are no explicit constitutional protections for municipalities. So really, it's all states that can stomp on municipal legislation with impunity if they really felt like it. There might be a state constitution or two on the way, but those are easy to change, and many a state government is capable of either outright ignore constitutional changes brought in by voters, or do some aggressive deception in the drafting of summaries for constitutional propositions as to make them seem to do the opposite of what they really do. See a recent, pro-gerrymandering change to the Missouri constitution, which talked about independent commissions and cutting political donations, but really overrode earlier anti-gerrymandering language, and gave the governor total control over the process.

So broadly, the rights of local governments only go as far as the whims of the state government and the courts anyway, across the board.

[SllX]

There you go making generalizations about 50 separate sovereign entities with 50 different legislatures, constitutions and court systems independent of each other.

But yes, legislatures can change laws on a whim, which is quite a bit more of a process than when I do something on a whim. Given the half-a-hundred entities that are the subject of your comment, some variability in the laws and political processes creating different outcomes depending on their jurisdiction is an expected result.

[Spooky23]

NYC can only do it if granted the home rule authority by the state legislature - which it has.

In general, counties are pretty weak in New York.

[SllX]

You see, this kind of thing is why I led with this:

"You can generally make two generalizations about local governments in the United States: they are local governments and you can’t make any other generalizations about them because everything depends on the State and sometimes a locality’s specific circumstances."

That is good intel though. I thought NY was a home rule state, but is that only for municipalities which have had home rule enabled by legislation? This table doesn't really go into that many specifics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_rule_in_the_United_States

[bobthepanda]

Effectively home rule exists at the mercy of state legislation in NY due to the current legal precedents around the state constitution.

One weird NYC thing is that it is the only city I am aware of in the US that sits above the county level. The five boroughs are the five counties and mostly used for administrative management, since four of the boroughs are million plus cities in and of themselves; but the boroughs have no lawmaking powers.