Source: United States Senator for North Dakota John Hoeven
Senator Pressed OMB to Abandon Change, Outlining Negative Impacts
WASHINGTON – Senator John Hoeven today announced that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has abandoned its proposal to change the minimum population to qualify as a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) from 50,000 to 100,000. Hoeven worked to stop the proposal which would have negatively impacted communities in North Dakota as the MSA designation is used in funding formulas for multiple federal programs, as well as in determining geographical regions for federal labor market statistics.
“We worked to stop this misguided proposal that would have negatively impacted more than 140 communities across the U.S. including Bismarck, Minot and Grand Forks,” said Hoeven. “We appreciate OMB heeding our call to reject the change, which would have directly affected the federal funding that these communities receive for infrastructure, health care, housing and other federal programs. Changing the MSA metric would have been short-sighted and had far-reaching impacts on these communities.”
Hoeven worked to ensure that the administration did not move forward with this proposal. In March, Hoeven urged the Acting OMB Director to reject the change and joined his colleagues in stressing the negative impacts that changing the criteria would have on over 140 rural communities across the country including Bismarck, Grand Forks and Minot.
Additionally, Hoeven joined Senators John Boozman (R-Ark.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and a bipartisan group of senators in outlining to the OMB Acting Director the negative consequences of the proposal on rural communities. Click here for the full letter. Hoeven also joined Senators Amy Klobuchar, Tina Smith, Kevin Cramer and others in pressing OMB Deputy Administrator Dominic Mancini, who oversees the agency at OMB responsible for governmental statistics, to abandon the proposal. The senators wrote that “this change could result in the loss of federal programming for many small- and mid-sized counties, cities and towns across the country.”
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