Within a state, which government institution is responsible for drawing and determining the boundaries of county lines?
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1AFAIK there IS no single government institution that's responsible. Almost all county boundaries were defined at statehood, if not before, and have changed little in the last century. The state legislature of each state would be responsible for changing them, for instance when Nevada's Ormsby County was eliminated en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ormsby_County,_Nevada or its short-lived Bullfrog County was created en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullfrog_County,_Nevada– jamesqfJun 5 '20 at 5:00
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County borders are created by the state legislatures, although some counties predate statehood (for example, Madison County, which is currently a small county in downstate Illinois at one time included most of what is now Illinois, all of Wisconsin, Michigan's upper peninsula and parts of Minnesota, when all of that was still territories, rather than states (I assume, but don't know for sure, that these original county borders were established by the U.S. Congress).
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1Congress created the county of Arlington (then named Alexandria County) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_Organic_Act_of_1801). I believe President Washington surveyed the original lines.– emoryJun 7 '20 at 21:31