"Reclassifying Cities: Government Designates Three New Metro Areas in State"
By Colin Fly / AP

NASHVILLE (AP) - Nashville's 1.3 million residents living in 13 Middle Tennessee counties make it the largest of the state's 10 metropolitan areas, according to the federal government.

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget earlier this month redefined the way it looks at population near urban centers.

State officials and economists aren't sure what the changes will mean to agencies that use the data to determine federal funding formulas. Industries that utilize the numbers to determine where to expand or relocate also will be affected.

"Under the new areas, the state's number of metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) has increased from seven to 10," said Milissa Reierson, spokeswoman for the state Department of Labor and Work Force Development.

Reierson said there's no way to determine what the net effect on employment will be when the new standards are enacted in 2005. The standards will be used in collecting unemployment data beginning next year.

University of Tennessee research associate Betty Vickers said while the Census Bureau distributes the statistics only for informational reasons, MSAs are used for "a lot of unintended purposes."

"One reason the OMB puts out the numbers is so that in funding formulas, federal agencies can have a grasp on the size of central urban areas, commuting from rural areas to urban areas and the economic integration of the two," said Vickers, who works in the school's economic research center.

The government added five counties to the Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro MSA: Cannon, Hickman, Macon, Smith and Trousdale. Memphis (1.2 million population) added Marshall, Tate and Tunica counties in Mississippi.

Chattanooga (482,000) added Sequatchie County, while Sevier County was removed from Knoxville's MSA (629,000).

David Penn, director of the Business and Economic Research Center at Middle Tennessee State University, said the added counties will allow more detail on employment trends in specific industries.

Penn also said the new numbers should strengthen economic development.

"There are huge markets in all four parts of the state, and there's easy access to interstates that other states like those west of the Mississippi don't have," he said.

Two cities - Cleveland and Morristown - have been newly classified as metropolitan statistical areas, while the Tri-Cities has been divided into two areas - Johnson City and Kingsport-Bristol.

Both Cleveland and Morristown are close to other MSAs but didn't meet the criteria to be grouped with them.

Economic development won't suffer in Cleveland, according to Joe Guthrie, executive director of the Southeast Tennessee Development District.

"I think that the designation establishes new relations between transportation systems in the areas," he said. "But federal economic grants that are available to the areas will not be affected."

Seventeen Tennessee areas as large as Cookeville (95,714) and as small as Brownsville (19,655) have been classified in a new division - micropolitan statistical areas.

To receive the designation, there must be at least one urban area of between 10,000 and 50,000 residents, plus those living in the county and other nearby areas.

Haywood County Executive John Sharpe Jr. believes Brownsville's designation came after it declined to join Jackson's metropolitan area in 2000, when the Census Bureau said it had met minimum requirements.

Sharpe said the new classification could provide another opportunity for attracting industries to the area.

"They can look at our work force, or they could branch out and look at a pool of workers they can pull from," he said. "The name of the game is economic recruitment. For us to be viable, we have to attract industry and a diversified base of it."

On the Net:
Office of Management and Budget: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/
Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/