[CTPP] Census News Brief #11

Subject: Census News Brief #11 From: Terriann2K(a)aol.com Senate Appropriators Cut Census 2010 Funding By A Quarter; Bureau of Economic Analysis funding up in Senate, American Community Survey plans continue to evolve. On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a Fiscal Year 2004 (FY04) funding bill that cuts $111.1 million from the Administration’s $662 million budget request for the Census Bureau. The House version of the Commerce, Justice, and State, The Judiciary and Related Agencies Appropriations bill (H.R. 2799), approved in late July, includes the full amount requested. The Senate bill allocates $181.8 million for the Census Bureau’s Salaries and Expenses account, $39 million less than the House allocation of $220.9 million. The Periodic Censuses and Programs account, which includes the decennial census, received $369.1 million, $72 million less than the President requested. The House bill appropriates $441.1 million for periodic programs. Details of the Senate committee action will be available within several days. Preliminary information suggests that appropriators cut funds mainly from 2010 census planning activities. The President’s budget requested $260.2 million for the three main components of the plan: launching the American Community Survey to replace the census long form ($64.8 million); designing a short form-only census in 2010 ($112.1 million); and improving the accuracy of the TIGER geographic database and the Master Address File ($83.3 million). Bureau of Economic Analysis funding up in Senate: The Senate FY04 Commerce spending bill includes $84.8 million for the department’s Economic and Statistics Administration (ESA), the full amount requested by the Bush Administration. Roughly 92 percent of ESA’s funding pays for activities of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The Census Bureau is also part of the ESA. The Senate allocation would fund three proposed new BEA initiatives, to improve the accuracy and timeliness of key economic indicators, retail data incorporated into national accounts, and measures of international trade. The House Commerce appropriations bill allocated $75 million for the ESA. American Community Survey plans continue to evolve: The Census Bureau continues to refine its operational plan for the American Community Survey in light of the delay in launching the survey nationwide. Budget constraints prevented the bureau from fully implementing the survey in 2003 as originally planned. With adequate funding, the bureau will start the ACS in July 2004 (the last quarter of Fiscal Year 2004) by mailing questionnaires to a sample of 250,000 households each month. Follow-up visits to unresponsive households, however, will not start until after September 2004, when the next fiscal year begins. The ACS will start to cover ‘group quarters’ in 2005; college dorms, nursing homes, and other group quarters are not part of current ACS testing. The bureau’s Associate Director for Demographic Programs, Nancy Gordon, told members of the Decennial Census Advisory Committee last spring that the delayed ACS start was a “gift of time” that would allow the agency to train the large field workforce needed to carry out the survey. The Census Bureau also plans to test questionnaires in languages other than English, and is exploring whether a computer-assisted response option for Spanish-speakers (called “reverse CATI,” or computer assisted telephone interview) can be expanded to other languages. The Census Bureau will soon issue results from tests of how making the ACS a voluntary survey would affect cost and data quality. Since the May advisory committee meetings, the Census Bureau has shifted responsibility for the ACS to the Decennial Census directorate, which is headed by Associate Director J. Preston “Jay” Waite. Census News Briefs are prepared by Terri Ann Lowenthal, an independent consultant in Washington, DC. Please direct questions about the information in this News Brief to Ms. Lowenthal at 202/484-3067 or by e-mail at terriann2k(a)aol.com. Thank you to the Communications Consortium Media Center for posting the News Briefs on the Census 2000 Initiative web site, at www.census2000.org. Please feel free to circulate this information to colleagues and other interested individuals. ------------ Ed Christopher Planning Specialist Resource Center Federal Highway Administration 19900 Governors Drive Olympia Fields, Illinois 60461 708-283-3534 (V) 708-574-8131 (cell)