Southern Californians know the difference between Orange and Los Angeles counties. It's Disneyland vs. the Getty Center. Republicans vs. Democrats. The Orange Crush vs. the East L.A. Interchange.
But to a committee of federal bureaucrats deciding how to collect economic data, Los Angeles and Orange counties are a single unit of smog-filled urban sprawl. The panel is moving ahead with a proposal to combine the two counties when reporting economic statistics. It's a change that has drawn protests from state and local officials as well as regional economists worried that it will mask changes in the economy.
The recommendation of the Metropolitan Standards Review Committee would combine two of the nation's most populous counties in compiling such statistics as regional unemployment, new private-sector jobs and welfare recipients, among other things.
The monthly data are analyzed by governments, social service agencies and economists to determine who has jobs, who needs training, what industries are growing and which are shrinking. Up to 30 federal surveys could be affected, according to local officials.
The two counties have been treated as separate statistical areas for 50 years.
Although it does not appear that there will be an immediate fiscal impact, local government officials worry that the change will obscure trends in the two counties, making it harder to win grants or argue for extra federal money to fund programs, said Candy Haggard, an Orange County official organizing efforts to fight the federal plan.
"If anything, they should be dividing our region into smaller units," said Beverly Burr, a Santa Monica economist advising Los Angeles County officials on the changes.
The recommendation would create a statistical area with a population of more than 12.6 million, greater than all but four states, including California.
"This amounts to less information for the Information Age," said Lisa Grobar, director of the Cal State Long Beach Economic Forecast Project.
"There is no small irony that these decisions are being made in Washington, D.C., and that they have no idea how important these statistics are to us. They say, 'Oh, it's just all Southern California,' " Grobar said. "If you look back over the past 10 years, you would see very important differences in the trends in the Los Angeles and Orange County economies."
