Their principal functions are judicial administration, public safety and the organization of elections, although in recent years they have taken on a variety of new functions, such as solid waste disposal, public health, libraries, technical and community colleges and environmental protection. Townships were originally subdivisions of county government and were primarily responsible for road maintenance. Today, townships carry out a full range of governmental functions, such as police and fire protection, trash collection, zoning and land use, recreation and economic development. State law usually categorizes them according to population size or density. In many states, they are indistinguishable from small cities, except that they lack municipal charters.
Cities are municipal corporations that operate under charters from the state.
Until the last half of the 18th century, the tendency was for the state to grant each municipality a charter unique to its needs. Typically, local communities of different populations receive different types of charters, so that the charters of large cities tend to establish a different form of government than is characteristic of smaller cities, and large cities tend to have more taxing and regulatory authority than do small cities. But, in all cases, the powers granted to a municipal corporation are to be narrowly interpreted. Any fair, reasonable, substantial doubt concerning the existence of a power is resolved by the courts against a corporation, and the power is denied. To counter Dillon's restrictive view of local authority, states adopted a new way to charter local governments, one more way in keeping with the American tradition of popular sovereignty.