[CTPP] Census 2000 News Alert

From: Census2000 <Census2000(a)ccmc.org> President Sends 2000 Budget Request to Congress Monitoring Board Issues Two Reports President Clinton's fiscal year 2000 (FY00) budget proposal, sent to Congress yesterday, includes $2.789 billion for the decennial census, an increase of $1.76 billion over the appropriation for the current year. The budget request was prepared before the Supreme Court ruled last week that the Census Act prohibits sampling to calculate the state population totals for congressional apportionment purposes. The Census Bureau is developing a new plan for 2000 that conforms to the Court's opinion. The cost of that plan is expected to be significantly higher than the current request. The largest portion of the ten-year cost of the census is spent in the year the count takes place. In FY00, the Census Bureau will: launch the full-scale paid advertising campaign; mail (or hand-deliver in sparsely-populated areas) questionnaires to the 118 million residential addresses on its list; hire several hundred thousand temporary enumerators to visit households that do not respond by mail; and process the data as forms are returned. The budget request for the census also includes funding for the American Community Survey (ACS), a new program being developed to eliminate the need for a census long form in 2010 by collecting demographic and housing data throughout the decade. The Bureau plans to collect ACS data from a national sample of households, in order to compare the results with the 2000 census and establish a benchmark for the full-scale survey starting in 2003. Because FY00 ends on September 30, 2000, the cost of tabulating and publishing the census data will be included in the budget for fiscal year 2001. Funding for the decennial census is part of the Periodic Censuses and Programs ("Periodics") account, one of two main funding categories for the Census Bureau. The Periodics account covers other activities that support census operations, such as mapping and address list development under Geographic Support and technology for data processing. Excluding decennial census funding, the President requested $156 million for the remainder of the Periodics account, about $31 million over this year's funding level. The second main funding category for the Bureau is Salaries and Expenses (S & E), which covers ongoing surveys to collect important demographic, economic, and social data. The President proposed $157 million for the S & E account, $21 million more than the current year's allocation. As Congress considers the Bureau's budget for FY00, it also must contend with funding for the last quarter of the current fiscal year. Last fall, Congress and the Administration agreed to appropriate funds for the Commerce, Justice, State and The Judiciary budget account only through June 15, 1999, in order to allow more time to resolve the long-standing controversy over the use of sampling methods in the census. Census Monitoring Board reports: The eight-member Census Monitoring Board, established one year ago pursuant to a provision in the Census Bureau's FY98 funding bill, submitted its first reports to Congress late last week. Reaching sharply different conclusions about how best to eliminate the persistent census undercount, the four members appointed by the congressional Republican leadership submitted one report, while the four members appointed by the President submitted their own document. Saying that it is "impossible to produce an accurate or complete count using traditional methods of census enumeration," the Presidentially-appointed members concluded that a post-enumeration survey (PES) to measure the accuracy of the count is "an essential part of any modern census." They noted that the decision on whether the Bureau should produce two sets of census numbers in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling is "a political issue outside of the Board's purview" but said a PES is necessary to avoid "a massive undercount of minorities and children." The Presidential appointees recommended hiring more personnel and spending more money on advertising in areas with high undercount rates, as well as grants to local governments to help with address list development. They endorsed the Bureau's decision to replace the Post Census Local Review program conducted in 1990 with pre-census activities to improve the accuracy of the address lists, called Local Update of Census Addresses, or LUCA. The Presidential members also urged the Bureau to conduct extensive research into the use of administrative records for future censuses. Saying they "strongly disagree" with statistical adjustment of the census, the congressionally-appointed members wrote that their report revolves around a question: "When it comes to the census, if proven methods can find real people, why do we want to guess?" They concluded that the Bureau's planned uses of sampling "favor[s] national accuracy at the expense of local accuracy" and offered several steps they said ould "find real people where they really live." The congressional appointees recommended giving local officials an opportunity to review population and housing unit counts before the final tally, as they did in 1990 during the Post Census Local Review program, and supported reinstatement of a 1990 program to locate people on parole or probation using administrative records. They also advocated using Medicaid, Food Stamp, and other program records to find children who might be missed. The congressional members also asked Commerce William Daley to meet with them on a regular basis. The U.S. General Accounting Office concluded in a 1992 critique of the last census that coverage improvement programs "contributed relatively little to the census counts and showed evidence of high rates of erroneous enumerations," although they did add some people to the count who otherwise would have been missed. Post Census Local Review (PCLR), the parolee/probationer check, and a recheck of vacant housing units were among the programs used in 1990 to improve the count after nonresponse follow-up was completed. The Monitoring Board held a hearing on administrative records last fall. All of the witnesses concluded that existing program records could not be used to reduce the disproportionate undercount of people of color and children in 2000. According to Census Bureau evaluations, about half of the 500,000 people added to the 1990 census using parole and probation records were included erroneously. The decision not to conduct PCLR in 2000 was part of the fundamental redesign of the census process. The Bureau determined that working with local governments in advance to compile the address lists and conducting a quality-check survey to measure under- and overcounts in the initial tally would improve accuracy more than a massive recanvass of neighborhoods late in the census process. At a meeting of mayors last week in Washington, D.C., Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer urged the Bureau to let local officials review preliminary counts in 2000 but also voiced continued support for statistical sampling to produce more accurate numbers. Under Secretary of Commerce Robert Shapiro noted that a high percentage of the people added to the 1990 census during PCLR lived in Detroit. The report prepared by the congressional members of the Monitoring Board is available on their web site at http://www.cmbc.gov/ . The Presidential appointees' report will be available through the Government Printing Office web site. Congressional oversight hearings: The House Subcommittee on the Census held a hearing in Phoenix, AZ, on January 29, to discuss local suggestions for conducting an accurate count in 2000. Rep. Dan Miller (R-FL) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), the panel's chairman and senior Democrat respectively, were joined by two members of Arizona's congressional delegation, Rep. J. D. Hayworth (R-AZ) and Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ). Witness included local officials, civic leaders, and several representatives of American Indian Tribes. We will provide a summary of the proceedings in a future News Alert. Nearly 20 local elected officials and community activists signed a letter to Reps. Miller and Maloney, recommending ways to ensure an accurate count in Phoenix and the State of Arizona. The letter noted the high percentage of Hispanic Americans in the city and state populations, as well as the large number of American Indians living on reservations. The letters also urged Congress to support the use of sampling methods for purposes other than congressional apportionment, saying failure to do so would ensure an undercount of people of color and low-income people in 2000. Signers included senior officials from the Arizona Education Association, Urban League of Greater Phoenix, National Congress of American Indians, Arizona Hispanic Community Forum, League of Women Voters, Asian Chamber of Commerce, and American Jewish Committee, and Avondale Mayor Thomas Morales Jr. Questions about the information contained in this News Alert may be directed to TerriAnn Lowenthal at (202) 484-2270 or, by e-mail at <terriann2k(a)aol.com>om>. Please direct all requests to receive News Alerts, and all changes in address/phone/fax/e-mail, to Census 2000 at <Census2000(a)ccmc.org> or 202/326-8700. Please feel free to circulate this information to colleagues and other interested individuals.