Daines pleased city size designations remain in place

Efforts by U.S. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) successfully resulted in Bozeman, Missoula and Great Falls maintaining their current Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) standards, which will allow them to receive more federal funding.

“I’m glad to see the Biden administration listen to my request and roll back the proposal to change city size designations that would have robbed Bozeman, Missoula and Great Falls of critical resources,” Sen. Daines said on July 13. “This is great news for our Montana communities.”

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Tuesday announced that the 2020 Standards for Delineating Core Based Statistical Areas will supersede the 2010 standards with modest revisions. Following a public comment period, the revised recommendation is to leave the current MSA core population threshold in place, OMB said.

“Consistent with the Standards Review Committee’s revised recommendation, OMB’s 2020 Standards will maintain the MSA threshold of 50,000,” OMB said. “Recognizing the committee’s concern that MSA thresholds have not kept pace with population growth, OMB will work with the Standards Review Committee to conduct research and stakeholder outreach to inform the 2030 standards update.”

Sen. Daines has led a push to protect the city size designations for Montana cities since OMB announced its plan to change the definition of an MSA to be an area with 100,000 people, which would have caused Missoula and Great Falls to be downgraded from “metropolitan” to “micropolitan.” In turn, these towns stood to lose critical federal funding, according to the senator’s office.

Among his many efforts, Sen. Daines in April cosponsored the Metropolitan Statistical Area Stabilization Act, S. 1431, with bill sponsor U.S. Sen. Jon Tester (R-MT), which would have stopped the proposed rule change.