Here's what I know about the MSA delineation process: The final announcements are expected between mid-May and June 30. The letters that went out last fall to Members of Congress were only on issues in which local opinion was to be solicited--when it's solicited, it's solicited through the congressional delegation--which usually pays no attention to it. (The problem is exacerbated because the letter usually arrive in the fall of year 2, when campaigns are in full force and districts are changing.) People like us have to pay attention. However, judging by the letters that went out in Michigan (I have copies of all of them but had to get them through a senator's office), not much of interest was up for local opinion. It was mainly questions of whether or not to combine MSAs and, if so, what to name them. I have had some conversations with the people in the Census Bureau who do all the legwork for OMB. What was published several years ago was based on 1990 commuting. They didn't get the commuting data any earlier than we did, and are working with the information now (that's why I think that there are not two different files). They are working through all of the counties to figure out what will go with what, but there is NO local opinion solicited and no local option involved. The job is much bigger in the past because they are making all those Micropolitan areas (10,000 to 50,000 urban clusters). I think most people are going to be surprised when they see the final Micropolitan lists, which you can anticipate by knowing the cities over 10,000 but there are more when urban clusters of 10K exist even when they're not a single city. There's one coming in Allegan County, MI which is a real surprise. Unless local opinon was solicited and provided (as we did for Lenawee County, MI), many counties which used to be outlying or ring counties in large metros are now going to be Micropolitan on their own. Sometimes they'll then be combined (into Combined MSAs) but lots of times they won't. This will reduce the size of some of the old CBSAs and often the MSAs as well. E.g., Saginaw-Bay-Midland, formerly one MSA, will now be two metros and a micro. I'm not sure whether it will be combined as well. Same is true for Battle Creek-Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids-Muskegon. This is going to turn a lot of rankings upside down. OMB doesn't want to let anything out. We have no way, at least before the areas are announced, of knowing what local opinion letters they received. There are no hearings planned. These upcoming areas, under the 12/00 definition, are IT for this decade. Whether there will be any move to change the definition for 2010 remains to be seen. I doubt that there's much enthusiasm for it among the feds, because they did a great deal of work in the 1990s to come up with the 12/00 definition. Hope this helps. Patty Becker At 10:08 AM 03/25/2003 -0800, you wrote: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Patricia C. (Patty) Becker 248/354-6520 APB Associates/SEMCC FAX 248/354-6645 28300 Franklin Road Home 248/355-2428 Southfield, MI 48034 pbecker(a)umich.edu