[CTPP] Census News Brief

[Nathan Erlbaum]

hellooooo....ya think!!!!!!

Secretary Locke testified yesterday before the House Appropriations 
Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science.  In his opening 
statement, panel Chairman Alan Mollohan (D-WV) said the 2010 census “has 
been beset by a lack of management and oversight, a lack of acquisitions 
expertise, and a lack of transparency by an agency whose culture is 
perceived as so impenetrable as to be self-defeating.”  He noted that 
the revised contract for handheld computers, which limited use of the 
devices to address canvassing this year, has “renewed some confidence” 
in the Census Bureau, but that “great risk remains” in the decennial census.


>>> edc at berwyned.com 4/29/2009 11:45 AM >>>
April 29, 2009
	
SECRETARY LOCKE PRESENTS 2010 BUDGET REQUEST
TO APPROPRIATORS
Plus: Latino leaders reject call for census boycott; Advisory panel 
expresses ‘no confidence’in paid ad campaign; and more.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke made his first appearance before the 
congressional Appropriations Committees in his new role as head of the 
department that oversees the U.S. Census Bureau.  The Senate 
Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science held a hearing on April 
23 to consider President Obama’s funding request for Fiscal Year 2010 
(FY2010), although the President has yet to release a detailed budget. 
(See February 26, 2009 Census News Brief for information on the 
President’s budget outline for FY2010.)

Secretary Locke told appropriators that the Administration’s request of 
$13.8 billion in discretionary funds for the far-flung Commerce 
Department includes an increase of $4.3 billion over the Fiscal Year 
2009 funding level for the 2010 census, for a likely total request of 
roughly $7 billion.  The Census Bureau will have additional funds 
available from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; the agency 
will spend the $1 billion stimulus bill allotment in both 2009 and 2010. 
  Expenditures in 2010 could be in the range of $7.8 billion, including 
FY2009 allotments carried over to 2010.

In his prepared statement, the Secretary assured lawmakers that the 
Census Bureau would have adequate funds to hire nearly 1.5 million 
temporary workers to carry out the census.  He highlighted the 
importance of “extensive advertising and partnership activities on 
hard-to-reach populations, to encourage a high response rate.”

Subcommittee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) said she was especially 
concerned about the FBI’s ability to process fingerprint and background 
checks for the large temporary workforce in a timely way next year.  For 
the 2010 census, all census workers must clear FBI-administered 
background checks before they are hired and then fingerprint checks when 
their post-hiring training begins.  In 2000, the FBI ran name-based 
background checks only on temporary census employees.  Sen. Mikulski 
also cited concerns about management of the census, saying she was 
interested in learning about reforms to be sure the 2010 census “will 
not be delayed or compromised.”

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), the panel’s ranking member, said he was 
“concerned with the potential for political mischief in the execution of 
the 2010 census,” citing previous statements by a presidential spokesman 
about the White House’s role in overseeing the census.  The senator 
noted that President Obama’s nominee for Census director, Dr. Robert 
Groves, supported a statistical adjustment of the 1990 census, a 
sample-based correction of the original census numbers that the senator 
said would “lazily backfill and inaccurately represent the count of our 
nation’s residents.”  Sen. Shelby expressed concern that a political 
party could use sampling-based adjustments of the population count to 
steer more federal program dollars to communities represented by members 
of its own party.

He also suggested that the White House or the Census Bureau could 
manipulate the census numbers “solely for political gain” by 
undercounting in some states and overcounting in others.  The Census 
Bureau’s evaluation of accuracy in the 1990 census, when Dr. Groves 
served as an Associate Director at the agency (a career position), 
showed that all states were undercounted to some degree.  (Alabama’s 
estimated undercount of about 1.8 percent was slightly higher than the 
estimated net national undercount of 1.6 percent in 1990.)  Then-Census 
Director Barbara Everitt Bryant, appointed by President George H.W. 
Bush, recommended use of the accuracy-check survey (called the Post 
Enumeration Survey, or PES) to correct undercounts and overcounts in the 
1990 census.  Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher rejected the 
recommendation.

Calling the census “the most serious looming issue” facing the new 
Secretary, Sen. Shelby said the decision to use paper-and-pencil, 
instead of handheld computers, to collect information from unresponsive 
households was due to “managerial failures and incompetence” and would 
increase the total cost of the 2010 census to nearly $15 billion.

Secretary Locke testified yesterday before the House Appropriations 
Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science.  In his opening 
statement, panel Chairman Alan Mollohan (D-WV) said the 2010 census “has 
been beset by a lack of management and oversight, a lack of acquisitions 
expertise, and a lack of transparency by an agency whose culture is 
perceived as so impenetrable as to be self-defeating.”  He noted that 
the revised contract for handheld computers, which limited use of the 
devices to address canvassing this year, has “renewed some confidence” 
in the Census Bureau, but that “great risk remains” in the decennial census.

Census Bureau outlines plans to spend stimulus funds:  The Census Bureau 
has submitted to Congress its plans for spending an additional $1 
billion allocated for the 2010 census in the stimulus package.  “The 
Census Bureau’s proposed investments will improve our ability to conduct 
an accurate census and will create thousands of good-paying jobs,” 
Commerce Secretary Locke said in a press statement.

The agency will spend $250 million to expand its partnership and 
outreach efforts to minority communities and other hard-to-reach 
populations, including $120 million to increase partnerships by hiring 
an additional 2,000 Partnership Specialists in regional offices by July 
2009.  It is adding $100 million to the broader communications plan, 
which includes paid advertising and the Census in the Schools program. 
The bureau will spend $30 million to hire more telephone interviewers 
working during the census from call centers to follow-up with households 
whose census questionnaires indicate – through answers to so-called 
‘probe questions’ – that someone may have been left off the form or 
included mistakenly (Coverage Follow-Up operation).

The remaining $750 million, the Census Bureau said, will “support early 
2010 Census operations that will reduce operational and programmatic 
risks.”  Specific spending plans include enhancements to the following 
operations:

● Group Quarters enumeration (college dorms, prisons, military barracks, 
etc.) -- $138 million
● Update/Leave operation (census workers deliver questionnaires in 
remote areas and communities with hard-to-pinpoint addresses, and update 
address lists and maps as they go) -- $116 million
● Update/Enumerate operation (similar to Update/Leave, but census 
workers collect census responses as they visit housing units; used on 
American Indian reservations, colonias, and resort areas with high 
seasonal vacancy rates) -- $108 million
● Local Census Office (LCO) staffing (LCOs support all major census 
field operations; roughly 500 LCOs planned for 2010) -- $388 million

Hispanic faith group rejects call for census boycott:  The National 
Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC) called on Latinos, 
“regardless of faith or legal status,” to participate in the 2010 
census.  The self-described “largest Hispanic faith organization” in the 
U.S. issued a statement last week after the National Coalition of Latino 
Clergy & Christian Leaders (CONLAMIC) urged undocumented residents to 
boycott the 2010 census unless Congress enacts “genuine immigration 
reform.”  According to its web site, CONLAMIC works in “support of a 
comprehensive solution to the immigration crisis and to combat local 
anti-immigrant crackdowns."

Rev. Miguel Rivera, CONLAMIC’s chairman, said in an article on the 
Coalition’s web site that, “Our church leaders have witnessed misuse of 
otherwise benign Census population data by state and local public 
officials in their efforts to pass and enact laws that assist in the 
perpetration of civil rights violations and abuses against undocumented 
workers and families.”  Rev. Rivera urged the estimated 30 percent of 
his Coalition’s church members who are undocumented residents not to 
participate in the census until Congress and the Obama Administration 
approve comprehensive immigration legislation.  CONLAMIC says it 
represents about 20,000 evangelical churches in 34 states.  In an April 
21, 2009 Associated Press report, Rev. Rivera also noted, “Even though 
they [undocumented immigrants] don't vote, they are being used as guinea 
pigs to get money for cities," an apparent reference to the use of 
census data to allocate nearly $400 billion annually in federal program 
funds to states and local governments.

Rev. Wilfredo De Jesus, Vice President of Social Justice for the NHCLC, 
countered COMLAMIC’s suggested benefits of a boycott, saying that fair 
political representation, allocation of resources, and tracking 
demographic change in the Latino community depended on an accurate 
count.  “The clear majority of Latino advocacy and faith organizations 
support the efforts of the U.S. Census Bureau to count each person in 
America in 2010,” Rev. De Jesus said.

Other Latino leaders also expressed disappointment in the boycott 
movement.  Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), chairwoman of the Congressional 
Hispanic Caucus (CHC), said in a statement, “To not be counted would 
have political implications and jeopardize vital resources, including 
federal funding for schools, health care, job training and 
infrastructure.”  Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-TX), chairman of the CHC’s 
Civil Rights, Veterans, and Worker Protections Task Force, added, 
“Boycott groups are uniting and bringing attention to the important 
issue of immigration reform; though well intentioned, their efforts are 
failing to take into account the long-term implications of their 
actions.  2010 census numbers will affect the daily lives of all 
Hispanics throughout the next ten years; we must not let this important 
opportunity for representation pass us by.”

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino 
Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) and a member of the Census 
Bureau’s 2010 Census Advisory Committee, said the strategy “may be 
well-intended but misguided and ultimately irresponsible.”

Advisory panel expresses ‘no confidence’ in communications contractor: 
A panel of stakeholders advising the Census Bureau on the 2010 census 
paid advertising campaign issued a vote of “no confidence” in Draftfcb, 
the prime contractor responsible for the Communications program, which 
includes advertising and outreach to promote participation in the 
census.  The Joint Advertising Advisory Review Panel (JAARP), comprised 
of representatives of the Census Bureau’s official advisory committees, 
met last week to review proposed ads Draftfcb developed for the national 
census promotion campaign.

The Census Bureau’s five Race and Ethnic Advisory Committees (REACs), 
representing communities of color that are at higher risk of 
undercounting in the census and other Census Bureau surveys, concurred 
with JAARP’s ‘no confidence’ statement with respect to Draftfcb’s 
creative materials for the 2010 census general campaign, at their 
biannual meetings held later in the week.

Former Census director to advise Census Bureau through 2010 count: 
Former Census director Kenneth Prewitt, who headed the Census Bureau 
during the 2000 census, will be a part-time consultant to the agency as 
it moves from final preparations to conduct the decennial count next 
year.  A Commerce Department spokesman confirmed the arrangement to the 
Washington-based National Journal on Monday, after Republicans in the 
House of Representatives indicated they were drafting a letter to 
Secretary Gary Locke, protesting Dr. Prewitt’s “back door entry” to the 
agency without going through the formal confirmation process.

In their letter to the Secretary, Rep. Darryl Issa (R-CA), ranking 
member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Patrick 
McHenry (R-NC), senior Republican on the Subcommittee on Information 
Policy, Census, and National Archives, and two other Republican members 
of the census oversight subcommittee, said that the consulting 
arrangement could be viewed as “circumvention of congressional 
oversight” and “a blatant disregard” of the Senate’s confirmation role. 
  The lawmakers requested specific information about the terms of Dr. 
Prewitt’s consulting agreement, including how much he will be paid, 
where his office is located, the nature of his work, and the projects on 
which he will work.  The full text of the letter is available at 
http://republicans.oversight.house.gov/media/4-28-09PrewittCensus.pdf.

Dr. Prewitt, now the Vice-President for Global Centers and Carnegie 
Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University, was the leading 
choice for Census director in the new Administration, according to 
former Commerce Secretary nominee Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), until Dr. 
Prewitt withdrew his name from consideration.  The National Journal 
article quoted Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), a member of the census 
oversight subcommittee, as saying, “Considering former Secretary 
[Carlos] Gutierrez used [Prewitt] as a consultant, too, you have to ask 
why the Republicans are in such a tizzy,” a reference to Dr. Prewitt’s 
appointment last year to an expert panel advising the Commerce Secretary 
on options to modify the 2010 census plan after concerns about the 
performance of handheld computers came to light.

New information on “hard to count” populations by State:  The Census 
Project has posted a new table on its web site 
(www.thecensusproject.org, Fact Sheets) showing the percent of people in 
each State living in “hard-to-count” areas, by race and Hispanic origin. 
  The new Fact Sheet explains how the Census Bureau defines 
hard-to-count areas; the analysis is based on 2000 census data from the 
Census Bureau’s 2010 Census Planning Database, which the agency is using 
to target outreach, promotion, and other resources in communities that 
are at greater risk of an undercount.


Census News Briefs are prepared by Terri Ann Lowenthal, an independent 
legislative and policy consultant working with a wide range of census 
stakeholders to promote an accurate 2010 census.  All views expressed in 
the News Briefs are solely those of the author.  Please direct questions 
about the information in this News Brief to Ms. Lowenthal at 
TerriAnn2K at aol.com.  Please feel free to circulate this document to 
other interested individuals and organizations and to reprint any or all 
of the information. Previous Census News Briefs are posted on the Census 
Project web site, at www.thecensusproject.org.

-- 
Ed Christopher
708-283-3534 (V)
708-574-8131 (cell)

FHWA RC-TST-PLN
19900 Governors Dr
Olympia Fields, IL 60461

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