Census Told to Show Adjusted Count
Wed Oct 9, 4:08
PM ET
By WILLIAM McCALL, Associated Press Writer
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - A federal appeals court Wednesday
ruled that the Census Bureau must release its statistically adjusted count for
every state, county and neighborhood in the United States.
Billions of dollars in government funding that is distributed
according to population is potentially at stake in the dispute.
The Census Bureau has refused to release the adjusted numbers,
contending the figures are unreliable and would cause political battles over
federal funding. The bureau has instead been releasing only the population
counts arrived at through census takers and questionnaires.
But a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals said that the public is entitled to see the adjusted figures, too, under
federal open-government law.
Congressional Democrats, minorities and big-city mayors
have been pressing for the release of the numbers on the suspicion that large
numbers of people were missed and that their districts were shortchanged
federal, state and local funding because of it.
A 1999 U.S. Supreme Court ruling bars the use of
adjusted numbers for reapportioning congressional seats,
but such data
can be used for local districting purposes and for distributing federal grants.
A spokesman for the Justice Department, which
represented the Census Bureau, did not immediately return a
call for
comment.
After census takers and census questionnaires were sent
out in 2000, the Census Bureau used mathematical formulas to estimate how many
minorities, renters and other groups might have been missed in inner cities,
rural areas and other places. Those figures are often called the "undercount."
Oregon state Sens. Susan Castillo and Margaret Carter,
both Democrats, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to see the adjusted
population figures. But the Census Bureau asked for an exception to the law.
In its ruling Wednesday, the appeals court upheld U.S.
District Judge James A. Redden of Portland, who last November ordered the
government to release the undercount.
The case marked the first time a federal judge had ruled
that the adjusted 2000 counts for the entire country must be
released.