Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 27, 2022

Boroughitis was the creation in the 1890s, usually by referendum, of many small boroughs in the U.S. state of New Jersey, particularly in Bergen County (map shown). A previously little-used law that allowed parts of existing townships to vote by referendum to form independent boroughs was amended in 1894 to allow boroughs formed from parts of two or more townships to elect a representative to the county Board of Chosen Freeholders. This 1894 act, in combination with another to consolidate school districts, made it easy and attractive for dissatisfied communities to break away and become boroughs, in order to gain a seat on the county board or to keep control of the local school. Forty new boroughs were formed in 1894 and 1895, with the bulk in Bergen County, where townships were broken up or greatly reduced in size; there are few of them there today. The state legislature scuttled the right to elect a freeholder in 1895, and ended the formation of boroughs by referendum in 1896.