Here @paul.buerkner says that setting re_formula=NA sets the group level effects to zero. So it seems in my example above, specifying re_formula=~(1+time|state) would set county/town effects to zero but include the uncertainty in state.
So, I don’t understand @bgoodri comment linked above about integrating over the random effect left out of the re_formula() call.
The reason I would like to clarify this, is that I am working on an analysis where I would particularly like to show that much of the variation in my outcome is seen in the hierarchical group level effects. A good way to demonstrate this is by a series of conditional_effects() plots showing the trend over time when the uncertainty for time|state, time|state/county, and time|state/county/town is included for each plot (the plots show increasing uncertainty for the trend over time as the effects are included).
I would like to get the figure legend correctly written for those plots.
Any insight is appreciated. Thanks!