NWS maps also depict county boundaries. But their geocoder splits the difference, returning both “Hartford, CT, USA (Capitol)” and “Hartford, CT, USA (Hartford County)”. Weather maps by commercial media outlets almost invariably show counties, Louisiana parishes, and Alaska boroughs, and sometimes census areas in Alaska’s Unorganized Borough, but apparently never Connecticut planning regions.
As far as I can tell, every broadcast TV station in Connecticut depicts county boundaries on its radar, satellite, and traffic maps, both in broadcasts (WFSB, WTNH, WVIT, WTIC) and in OSM-based interactive maps (WFSB, WTNH, WVIT, WTIC). Similarly, The Weather Channel provides forecasts by county rather than planning region, and their interactive maps only depict county boundaries.
(All these interactive maps use the OSM-based Mapbox Streets vector tiles in conjunction with the proprietary Mapbox Boundaries dataset.)
Granted, one can probably distinguish between weather reporting and administration, but together with public health, the legal system, property records, and more, it does seem like demographics is the odd one out here. The one other map I’ve found that prioritizes planning regions is The National Map, which incorporates the National Boundary Dataset. (Indeed, it spells out “Planning Region” in labels.)
Does anyone have a strong opinion that Connecticut should be primarily divided into planning regions as admin_level=6 administrative boundaries? I didn’t see any discussion at the time the change to favor planning regions was made. Other discussions I’ve seen have always ended in either a stalemate or a consensus that counties should remain the primary boundaries.