The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is considering a new proposal that would redefine the population threshold for metropolitan areas. Today, cities with 50,000 residents or more qualify as metropolitan areas. Under the new definition, cities must have 100,000 residents in order to be classified as metropolitan. This proposal would downgrade 144 municipalities from metropolitan to micropolitan areas, including: Auburn, Alabama; Joplin, Missouri; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Bismarck, North Dakota; and Morristown, Tennessee.
Some statisticians say the change was bound to happen because of increased urbanization and overall population growth. Although the OMB’s definition of metropolitan has evolved, including changes to factor in suburban sprawl, the 50,000 population number has not been altered since 1950.
However, for many communities this change is not just an innocuous administrative update. As law professor Amanda L. Kool says, “these definitions have real-world consequences that go beyond my irritation when someone . . . map-splains my town.” Kool lives in a town of 8,000 that is classified as part of the Cincinnati metropolitan area due to “commuting patterns.”
The foremost concern for cities facing the micropolitan downgrade is funding. Although the OMB states its definitions are not for “nonstatistical activities or for use in program funding formulas,” there are some federal programs that depend on these designations. For example, Niles, Michigan, received a $278,000 Community Development Block Grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which the city used for a “park clean-up, a summer camp for children from low-income households, a school resource officer’s salary, [and] homeless services and code enforcement,” according to the South Bend Tribune. In addition, a representative from Hinesville, Georgia’s metropolitan planning organization opposes the proposal because some state transportation improvement programs are tied to federal designations used by the Department of Transportation.
Many rural communities also strongly oppose this change because they worry it will increase competition for rural-specific funding. Fred Ullrich with the Rural Policy Research Institute (RUPRI) Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis told Daily Yonder:
We’ve introduced this really bizarre imbalance now, because now I have nonmetropolitan counties with [urban areas of] 95,000 people in them and they’re competing for the same bit of pie that the nonmetropolitan county with 5,000 people.
Jerry Merrill, the mayor of Rexburg, Idaho (population 29,000 in non-metro Madison County) expressed a similar concern in his comment to the OMB. He notes the proposal will “make it harder for Idaho communities to access the federal funds necessary to pay for the education, transportation, sewer systems, sidewalks and social services."
Consequently, the new classification scheme reduces competition for metro-specific federal funds. This favors urbanized areas, like the Miami-Dade Transportation Planning Organization, which unsurprisingly says full steam ahead with the new metro designation proposal.
Aside from funding concerns, some experts are concerned this designation may obscure or inflate statistical data about rural communities used by policymakers and businesses. According to Tony Glover at the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services:
Data users of all kinds often request localized data, and this proposal will negatively affect them. Small, predominantly rural states like Wyoming need all the data they can get, and this proposal does not serve them well.
Glover’s comment illustrates an overarching problem: obtaining good statistics about rural places. A prior post on this blog discussed this challenge in the context of the 2020 Census. Without good data, it is difficult to enact sound policy solutions.
The OMB is accepting comments until Friday, March 19 on this matter. While it will be difficult to predict and measure the full impact of this proposal, hopefully this comment period at least provides a better sense of all the stakeholders.
On top of this critical issue about population designations, the OMB also faces a political problem as it is currently without a leader. President Biden’s nominee, Neera Tanden, withdrew after it became clear she was unlikely to be confirmed by the Senate.
One name under consideration for the top spot is Shalanda Young, who is a native of Clinton, Louisiana, a town of 2,000 located 40 miles away from Baton Rouge on the fringe of the metropolitan area. Young’s hometown is situated similarly to Professor Kool’s, and it may be interesting to see her response to this metropolitan designation question.
Update on Mar. 22: The Brookings Institution recently published a preliminary analysis of the OMB proposal. The report concluded that new non-metro counties would be more prosperous and have lower poverty rates than the old non-metro counties, indicating that the realignment potentially masks distressed communities.
2 comments:
How interesting that this classification change is something the Biden administration is tackling! Personally, I think the designation needs more nuance, instead of raising the bar to meet population increases as if it were economic inflation. However when I first read your post I thought the change might be a good thing, but increasing competition for resources for already struggling rural localities would not benefit the country. I think re-designations like this can be harmful as they tend to erase the identity of those smaller rural communities by lumping them in with much larger cities.
Really interesting read, Mary. Like Kennedy, I thought the classification change would be a good thing at first. You cited great arguments in opposition to the change that I think exemplify disparity in funding between rural and urban communities. I don't think the current classification should continue because it is outdated. However, a more nuanced analysis might be necessary since the population benchmark is clearly arbitrary and inaccurate anyway. I know data from the census is not 100% reliable, but hopefully some meaningful information can come from last year to aid in reclassification.
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