White House Office of Management and Budget Seeks Public Comment on new MSA Standards (metro, Boston)
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This forum is big on MSA/CSA analysis, so wanted to share that on January 19, 2021, the White House Office of Management and Budget issued its formal call for public comments in advance of the June 2023 delineations being determined.
Here are the changes being "recommended" (aka, what will be adopted unless there is significant public comment backlash):
Quote:
The committee made the following recommendations in their report to OMB, available as a supplemental document to this Notice at www.regulations.gov:
(1) The minimum urban area population to qualify a metropolitan statistical area should be increased from 50,000 to 100,000 (see Appendix, Part A: Table 1 for a list of current metropolitan statistical areas likely to be among those that would be affected by this recommendation).
(2) The delineation of New England city and town areas (NECTAs), NECTA divisions, and combined NECTAs should be discontinued.
(3) Research should be undertaken on an additional, territorially exhaustive classification that covers all of the United States and Puerto Rico.
(4) The first annual delineation update of the coming decade should be combined with the decennial-based delineations.
(5) OMB should make publicly available a schedule for updates to the core based statistical areas (see proposed update schedule below).
(6) OMB should continue use of American Community Survey commuting data in measurement of intercounty connectivity, though changing societal and economic trends may warrant considering changes in the 2030 standards.
I don't have any major heartburn, though I'm sure New Englanders will be pissed about #2 and ~33% of MSAs could be demoted to micropolitan under #1.
Don't get rid of NECTAs. its nice to have and is always there as a back group off sanity when new England groups/government and organization try to determine what their "area" is. Lowell, Brockton, Framingham is still the center of an area, its not just Greater Boston...Not really how that works.
Would it be worth changing to a model that allows split counties? This would be especially useful in the West, as counties tend to be larger, and are often urban in one part but primarily complete wilderness in the rest.
This could be based on standards using census blocks, plus radii.
The ACS would need to adjust to match, but could that be fairly simple?
The boundaries would change more incrementally and often as sprawl occurs. Is that good (representing how cities function) or bad (a less-stable statistical base)?
Would it be worth changing to a model that allows split counties? This would be especially useful in the West, as counties tend to be larger, and are often urban in one part but primarily complete wilderness in the rest.
This could be based on standards using census blocks, plus radii.
The ACS would need to adjust to match, but could that be fairly simple?
The boundaries would change more incrementally and often as sprawl occurs. Is that good (representing how cities function) or bad (a less-stable statistical base)?
I don't think it's feasible for a few reasons:
1) Pre-2013 delineation, OMB and Census used to actually take into account local opinion in setting MSA/CSA boundaries. And they were inundated with requests from cities and counties that they should also add [x] county even though only 1% commute into the inner city for x,y,z reasons.
When OMB would come out with delineations, local governments that got stiffed would cry foul and say that [x] city was favored by the White House and that's why they got a bigger metro area.
So in the 2010 standards, OMB said enough and completely stripped out any local opinion whatsoever: no petitioning, no lobbying, no whining. Nothing. The entire delineations would be quantitative and based off objective data collected by Census.
Splitting counties would likely require engaging with county governments on how to splice and dice, and that's something the Feds absolutely do not want to do. If the Feds created their own sub-county divisions, that would likely get mired in courts. From the Feds' perspective, is it worth the fight? Probably not.
2) The MSA/CSA is ultimately a tool to disburse funding. If you splice/dice a county, you're going to get smaller MSAs in size 99% of the time, which means billions less flowing to Western states. Politics will get in the way and the Western Senators will pounce. They're very touchy about this stuff.
3) I think the Feds would also say, "we do split counties to determine urban areas, so any changes to MSA boundaries would essentially duplicate a methodology we already employ."
Which is to say, I would pose the question to them (they will have to respond in the official rule implementing the changes, so would be good to get them on the record), but I would be shocked if they agreed.
I think a better middle ground is to ask them to estimate urban areas annually and elevate them, or at least put out that data on an annual basis. I know that Census Reporter has updated urban area counts, so they're obviously available. But probably buried deep in some ACS database that nobody without a stats degree could find. I think it's pretty ridiculous we only get formal urban area counts once a decade.
Some states in New England don't have county governments, so the county-based delineations used for MSA/CSA don't really apply to New England. So NECTAs are basically using the same definition of MSA, except you use towns instead of counties to determine metropolitan boundaries. Secondary cities in New England love NECTAs because they aren't getting swallowed up by Boston, whose MSA is nearly 5 million people and whose CSA is more than half the population of New England!
It's the ideal mhays laid out above for all MSAs nationally, except it's actually doable in New England because you don't have vast swathes of unincorporated jurisdictions.
You couldn't do NECTAs in my state - Virginia - for example because of Fairfax County's entire 1,147,532 population, only 38,000 live in towns. The rest live in unincorporated areas.
Agree with #1, there's nothing "metropolitan" about areas like Lewiston, ID that are essentially a small town surrounded by just enough rural-feeling sprawl to break past the 50k threshold.
I don't have any major heartburn, though I'm sure New Englanders will be pissed about #2
I don’t know if “pissed” is the right word. It’s just that MSA is a bad way to describe our metro areas because our county lines are generally archaic and meaningless.
Maybe if we redrew our county lines and reinstated county government, but I don’t think that will happen any time soon.
And this is great news since it would fold Puerto Rico into the MSA framework rather than it being its own isolated thing. It may also mean we get annual estimates from the Pacific territories instead of the once-a-decade counts that we still use for Guam, NMI, AS, etc.
My idea would have to be based on a specific standard. But I agree that even a standard (based on block groups etc.) would be a huge challenge.
It would be useful for the business world and nerds though.
PS, those <99,999s are a great illustration of the problem...some are massive areas for small "metro" populations.
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