Inspired by a large portion of southern and eastern Illinois’ exclusion from the Illinois Department of Employment Security’s prominent report on unemployment rates throughout the state, I decided to write about the benefits of pushing federal policy makers to designate southern Illinois its own Metropolitan Statistic Area (MSA).
By the way, it took a lot of restraint to not go off on the local media for not calling the IDES press secretary, whose number was listed at the top of the press release on the state’s unemployment rates, to request the figures for southern Illinois. It was way too easy. I called Monday morning and had three years worth of data to share with you a few hours later, plus some extra information about how the report is assembled. Just sayin’.
Anyways, here’s my weekly contribution to the Carbondale Times…
Thinking of southern Illinois as a metropolitan area can be a bit of a stretch, but that mindset often excludes the region from reports to state and federal policy makers.
Consider the Illinois Department of Employment Security’s monthly reports containing the most recent unemployment rates from throughout the state. Except for the state’s cumulative unemployment rate, southern Illinois is not represented in the department’s most prominent report.
That’s because like many government agencies, the employment department relies on data from Illinois’ 12 Metropolitan Statistic Areas to complete its reports.
Despite it being one of the larger communities south of Springfield, Carbondale and its surrounding area is not within one of those designated areas. That’s not uncommon, but most of the land within Illinois’ borders east of Interstate 55 and south of Interstate 72 is also outside of an MSA. That means communities such as Charleston-Mattoon, Effingham, Mount Vernon, Marion and, of course, Carbondale can be easily overlooked in government reports.
Seems like quite a blind spot, especially when talking about a region that relies heavily on government programs to get by.
Why not try to change that and push federal regulators to designate southern Illinois as its own MSA?
Officially, MSAs are geographically confined regions with a population of at least 50,000 people. They can include multiple counties if at least 25 percent of the population commutes to a job in the immediate surrounding area, according to designation guidelines.Their sole purpose is to provide the government with social and economic information about the region, but communities within an MSA qualify to apply for grants that can be used to fund public works projects.
So on top of not being as visual in reports as the rest of the state, southern Illinois is also missing out on opportunities to apply for free money that could be used to improve its infrastructure.
Designating a southern Illinois MSA is not a new idea. A past effort to create a metropolitan area encompassing communities along Illinois Route 13, such as Carbondale, Carterville and Marion was derailed by the region’s geography — mainly how Crab Orchard Lake separates Carbondale and Murphysboro from the rest of the pack.
However timing might be on southern Illinois’ side. The last time MSA designation rules were amended coincided with the deicidal census in 2000. New guidelines might be more welcomed in Washington, D.C. now as census workers begin analyzing this year’s population count.
To be fair, the region in question does include 11 smaller versions of an MSA, which require a population of at least 20,000. Carbondale and Marion fall under that classification, but those are not as widely publicized as the larger counterparts.
And just because southern Illinois does not appear in those preliminary reports does not mean governmental agencies have turned their back on the region – at least one would hope not. However in most cases it does mean researchers have to specifically request for the region’s data, which can be difficult for the government employee unfamiliar with Illinois’ layout.
It also creates the opportunity for the region to be withheld from policy critiques, legislative committee meetings and political campaigns. Policy makers, campaign staffers and lobbyists sometimes chose to exclude some data pools to sweeten their proposals.
Southern Illinoisans may not expect to be thought of the same way as people in Chicago, the Quad Cities, Bloomington-Normal or Springfield, but they do expect to be represented.
Unfortunately, this is not something bureaucrats in Springfield that tend to be more familiar with the region can handle. The federal government designates metropolitan districts.
David Gilles, chief of staff to Collinsville-based U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello, said Monday he was unaware of any effort to have southern Illinois included in an MSA. Neither was Rex Duncan, director of the SIUC community development and outreach program at the Dunn-Richmond Center.
It would be a shame to see this region miss out on opportunities to snag free public dollars and continue to be an area that can be easily overlooked in future government action. Why consciously let that continue when there might be a chance to fix the problem?
