For years people in Texas have threatened state secession, often in jest tinged with earnestness.  Before the Civil War, the South seceded from the North to form the Confederacy.  Now Brookline Town Meeting members want to secede from Norfolk County.  The motivation, as always, is money – specifically taxes.

Brookline was incorporated into Norfolk County from Boston in 1705.  Today the town pays over $700,000 in county taxes, more than any of the other 27 cities or towns within the county.  Massachusetts county tax assessment is based on property wealth, not population or use of county services.  The town’s valued land works against it.

“We just feel disaffected by the county government,” said Brookline Town Administrator Mel Kleckner in his Town Hall office last Wednesday.  “It’s unfair that some cities and towns are obligated to be part of the county when the state dissolved most of the other counties in Massachusetts.”

In July 1997 the county directly north of Norfolk, called Middlesex, was abolished due in part to mismanagement of a public hospital.  The state legislature assumed the responsibilities of the county.  In the next three years seven other counties were abolished, seen as archaic forms of governance.  Only six county governments remain in the state.  Seventy percent of the population of Massachusetts resides outside county government jurisdiction.

A couple weeks ago Brookline submitted a resolution to the state asking to withdraw from Norfolk County.  Now the town is trying to garner support from other cities and towns within the county to petition the state legislature.  Brookline is even looking to its southern neighbor, Plymouth County, for signs of support.

“I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon,” said Kleckner of secession or county dissolution.  “The budgetary concerns of the state probably prevent that from happening.”  The Massachusetts state government would assume Norfolk County’s responsibilities.

Counties in at least 22 states have filed secession proposals in the last century.  Many of the secessions are conceived with the intent of splitting or merging counties.  Unlike other states, each of the 296 towns and 55 cities in the state of Massachusetts is an incorporated municipality.  Since the counties of Western Massachusetts were dissolved, municipal and state government have inherited their former duties.  One of these duties is land surveying.  County engineers were instrumental in laying out roads in developing regions.  In rural areas of the state, like Berkshire County, county government was important for small communities.  Brookline has a full-service engineering department.

“The county runs an agricultural school,” said Kleckner.  “We send one student there.  They own and run a golf course.  We have one of those in our town.  That’s about the extent of it.”

There is a Brookline District Court run by the county on Washington Street, a short walk from City Hall.  Some people think that by pushing secession from Norfolk County, Brookline will lose that court.  If the town secedes, the state may swoop in and run the court like it has for towns in dissolved counties.

“The court serves our population very well, including the police department,” said Chair of the Board of Selectman Betsy Dewitt in a meeting room at Town Hall two weeks ago.

The Brookline resolution drafted for the state legislature includes a compromise.  Instead of pursuing county withdrawal, the town would be willing to “support mechanisms to eliminate the inequitable county assessment.”  Kleckner says that idea is a long shot.