How changing federal definitions would mean fewer "metro" places, and less federal assistance to "rural" areas

Sarah Vowell writes for the New York Times:  "My Beloved College Town Has a Problem.  It's Too Popular." Here's the data part of the story, about Bozeman, Montana: 

Lately, this college town in the Gallatin Valley close to Yellowstone National Park, with Montana’s busiest airport, has been one of the country’s fastest-growing “micropolitan statistical areas” — what the federal Office of Management and Budget calls places with an urban core and a population of 10,000 to 50,000.

And here's a related excerpt that gets at the politics of the column, which implicates a proposed definitional change that would have implications for federal funding flowing to Big Sky Country--and to Bozeman in particular:

Forthcoming census results are expected to confirm that Bozeman’s population has surged past 50,000, bumping it up from “micropolitan” to the O.M.B.’s “metropolitan” category. 

* * * 

But then the O.M.B., like a crow dropping a mouse corpse from the sky, announced a proposed change to the “metropolitan” threshold to populations of at least 100,000.

As you'll already have a sense, Vowell is a very funny writer, so don't miss the column in its entirety.  Plus, you'll learn something about the politics and implications of federal designations of what counties are nonmetropolitan (including micropolitan) and which ones are not. 

Another interesting post on the metro-nonmetro distinction, and some hi-jinks it causes, is here.