Residents of Brown County got some unexpected news from the Federal Government recently.  After sifting through and analyzing the results of the 2000 Census, the Bureau of Economic Analysis concluded that the economy of the county of rolling hills and dazzling fall colors is fundamentally linked to the skyscrapers and blacktop of the city of Indianapolis .

Thus Brown County joins Putnam County to the west as the two newest members of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Statistical Area, or MSA, the state's largest.  That result is based on the commuting patterns and income flows that were recorded in the detailed "long form" Census responses. 

Clearly, it was a judgement call.  In the final analysis, the statisticians decided that the new residential growth pushing into the north out of southern Johnson County outweighed the county's long established connections to the west to Bloomington .  Thus a patch of the state's most beautiful real estate became part of its largest urban area.

But plenty of other Indiana counties can relate to its experience.  With the latest wave of reclassifications, exactly half of our state's 92 counties are now considered to be part of an MSA. Indianapolis 's expansion to outlying counties was echoed in the Gary-Hammond, Lafayette, Bloomington , Evansville and Terre Haute MSA's.  Meanwhile, the brand new singlecounty MSA 's of La Porte/Michigan City and Columbus came into being.

Interestingly, some counties went in the opposite direction.  Clinton County , east ofLafayette , is no longer part of that MSA, as are the once-included Huntington and Adams counties in the Fort Wayne area.  AndAnderson , while still an MSA county, has reverted back to its status as a single-county MSA, after spending a decade as part ofIndianapolis .

Unfortunately, the inconsistent nature of these revisions gives the whole classification process a "game of chairs" flavor that belies the serious effort put into the overall process. One is tempted to say that the lines drawn on maps by statisticians in Washington are meaningless, but that is clearly not the case.

MSA counties are treated differently in official statistics, which, in turn, are the bread and butter for private sector market analysis.

Tiny Brown County may practically disappear in the sprawling Indianapolis MSA, but its leaders can point to timely data available on employment, retail sales and income for MSA's and say that they are included.  And as they say in the legal profession, incomplete information trumps no information every time.

But the definitions are also valuable as an outside, independent assessment of how our urban areas are growing.  Based on the best data available, the BEA tells us, for example, that one really can't talk about PutnamCounty 's economic well being without taking into consideration the fortunes ofIndianapolis .  After all, 45 percent of county workers there commute to jobs outside its borders, with the majority heading east in the morning.

Some of us, blinded by geographic loyalties borne out of high school athletics or political patronage, might be surprised to find out how the world outside our windows has changed. Growth at the fringe of urban areas remains the big story in economic and population growth, and the new MSA definitions bear that out.