Facing criticism from small cities that feared losing status and funding, the federal government said Tuesday that it won\u2019t raise the population threshold for what qualifies as a metro area.<\/p>\n

The Office of Budget and Management said it will keep the minimum population needed in a community\u2019s core city at 50,000 residents in order to be designated a \u201cmetropolitan statistical area,\u201d also known as an MSA. (more<\/a>…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facing criticism from small cities that feared losing status and funding, the federal government said Tuesday that it won\u2019t raise the population threshold for what qualifies as a metro area. The Office of Budget and Management said it will keep the minimum population needed in a community\u2019s core city at 50,000 residents in order to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,27],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-8425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-budgetsfinance","category-news-events","tag-featured"],"yoast_head":"\n