The budding movement for a 68th county in Florida is, at best, a fool’s errand.
The last thing Florida needs is another county, and all of the offices and financial costs associated with one another courthouse, commission, court clerk, public defender, tax collector, property appraiser, school board and superintendent, sheriff, supervisor of elections, health department, emergency manager, ad infinitum.
Within the next decade, we may see a movement in the opposite direction, to merge Florida counties as an effective means of reducing the costs of small, local, regionally redundant governments. As a state, Florida should be marching toward 40 counties, not 68.