Most definately, States control the standard for cities.. Cities are incorporated entities, and in NYS, Cities have to have fire departments. (full fledge ones, not vollunteer ones) --which is why Long Island with a very high population density, has almost no cities... only towns, and villiages. (Glen Cove is only city on in Nassau county, and it was incorporated in the 1800's, when Glen Cove was a thriving city that manufactured starch (and sold it to the NYC market for the most part.)
there are other requirements, like population, and schools--City don't get to use (or pay a premium to use) county service (like what in NY is called BOCS) --county based school services for special education, GED programs, afterschool programs, etc. like city based fire and police, the cost of mantaining all the state and federaly based programs can be expensive. (federal law requires local schools to have a program suited to meet the needs of every student--one severly handicapped student can be very expensive)
