The tension between local and central is eternal, but I'll never understand the attraction of pushing coercive state power down to hyper-local level:
That's the beauty of each state being allowed to have the governance model that its citizens want. Don't like it? You can exercise your freedom of speech and right to vote, or you can move to another state. In some states, like Ohio, governance is carved up into tiny pieces - State -> Counties -> Townships -> Cities / Villages.
You may have a village of 1,000 people, with its own tiny town hall for the mayor, its own fire department, 3 person police department, school system (that can pretty much make most all the education decisions they want), the ability for the residents to vote decide what tax rate they want levied against them to pay for their schools, on and on. It's often good, and sometimes bad, but it's about freedom and diversity and the ability to set up a system that the voters want.
Then you can go to another state where everything is hyper standardized (but still specific to that state). All of that is deeply ingrained into concepts of freedom and governance, checks and balances. Sure, it allows towns to do really stupid crap, and if citizens don't like it they can mobilize and vote people out, elect one of themselves to do things differently, etc. Happens ALL the time, and is happening in my small town right now actually, as a number of town council members are about to be shown to the exit in just a few months over some things they tried to pull that got the vast majority of citizens in an uproar.