From: Census2000 &lt;Census2000(a)ccmc.org&gt; President Sends 2001 Budget Request to Congress; Funds Needed to Complete Census and Publish Data Plus: Census Bureau Challenges Localities to Boost Response Rates; Local Offices Open, Hiring Blitz Begins; State Legislatures Continue Debate Over Use of Corrected Numbers President Clinton today sent to Congress his budget proposal for fiscal year 2001 (FY01), which begins on October 1, 2000.  The request includes $421 million to complete the 2000 decennial census and begin tabulating and publishing the data collected during the count.  That amount is a decrease of $4.055 billion from the current year (fiscal year 2000) allocation of $4.476 billion. According to the Administration's summary explanation of its budget, the requested funding will cover completion of the Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation (ACE) survey, which is designed to measure undercounts and overcounts in the initial set of numbers.  The Census Bureau also must finish shutting down local census offices and data processing centers.  By law, the Bureau must tabulate and report the total population of each state to the President by December 31, 2000, for purposes of congressional apportionment (i.e. allocating the 435 seats in the House of Representatives among the 50 states).  By April 1, 2001, it must transmit the detailed, block-level counts to the states for use in the redistricting process. The President also requested $25 million to continue developing the American Community Survey (ACS).  (The budget documents refer to the program as "continuous measurement.")  The ACS would collect demographic and socio-economic data from a rolling sample of households throughout the decade, possibly eliminating the need for the traditional census long form in 2010.  This year, Congress allocated $20 million for the ACS, which the Census Bureau is testing in 31 sites around the country. Funding for the decennial census and the ACS is part of the Periodic Censuses and Programs ("Periodics") account, one of two main funding categories for the Census Bureau.  The Periodics account covers activities that support census operations, such as mapping and address list development, as well as other mandated censuses of business establishments and local governments.  The total FY01 request for the Periodics account, including Census 2000 activities, is $542 million.  The second main funding category for the Bureau is Salaries and Expenses (S & E), which covers ongoing surveys (such as the Current Population Survey) to collect important demographic, economic, and social data.  The President proposed $174 million for the S & E account, about $34 million more than the current year's allocation. Congressional hearing scheduled: The House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Census will hold an oversight hearing on February 8, to review the status of preparations for Census 2000.  Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt will testify.  The hearing begins at 2:00 p.m. in room 2247 Rayburn House Office Building. Census operations update: Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt helped kick-off Census 2000 by visiting the first household to be counted in the Alaskan Native Village of Unalakleet on January 20.  The Bureau enumerates remote areas in Alaska two months before the majority of households receive their census forms because the residents of many villages disperse to hunt and fish when the spring thaw arrives. Moving final preparations into high gear, Dr. Prewitt launched a nationwide campaign to recruit temporary workers.  The Bureau hopes to build a pool of 3 million qualified applicants, from which it will hire about 500,000 people to fill 860,000 positions over the course of census operations.  (Some workers will be asked to perform more than one job.)  The goal, the director said at a January 6th press conference, "is to have a pool of local people who are familiar with their communities and committed to a successful count in their own neighborhoods."  Dr. Prewitt also announced that the Bureau had opened all 520 local census offices, with help from the General Services Administration.  Individuals interested in applying for a census job may call a toll-free number, 1-888-325-7733.  Pay rates range from $8.25 to $18.50 per hour, depending on the type of work and the location. Commerce Secretary William Daley joined Dr. Prewitt at a January 11th press event to launch "How America Knows What America Needs," a two-part campaign to boost grassroots participation in the census.  Dr. Prewitt called upon people "to transform what in its nature is a civic event into what could and should be the nation's first major civic ceremony of the new century." The first component challenges communities to improve their mail-back rate by at least five percent over 1990.  Called "'90 Plus Five," the program's goal is a 70 percent nationwide mail response rate.  Only 65 percent of all households returned their census forms in 1990; the Bureau's Census 2000 plan assumes a 61 percent mail-back rate.  Beginning on March 27, the Census Bureau will post mail response rates for every jurisdiction in the country on its web site.  The response rates will be updated daily, through April 11.  The highest elected official in each jurisdiction may sign up to participate in "'90 Plus Five" via the Internet at www.hakwan.com <http://www.hakwan.com> or by calling toll-free, 1-877-642-5926. The campaign's second part, "Because You Count," will encourage households that do not mail back a form to cooperate with enumerators during the "nonresponse follow-up" operation.  This second component also targets households in rural areas where census workers deliver questionnaires in person and verify the address and location on a map.  The operation is called "update/leave enumeration." State activities update: Debate over the use of census numbers corrected on the basis of a quality-check survey (called the Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation, or ACE, survey) continued in state houses, as legislatures reconvened last month.  On January 21, the Utah House of Representatives passed House Bill 201, prohibiting the use of "statistically adjusted population data" for drawing congressional, state legislative, and state school board district boundaries.  The measure is now pending before the Senate Rules Committee.  In Virginia, a bill (HB 1486) pending before the House Privileges and Elections Committee would require the use of unadjusted census figures for congressional, state, and local redistricting.  The committee may consider the proposal as early as this week. Census Monitoring Board vacancy filled: President Clinton appointed California's Lieutenant Governor, Cruz M. Bustamante, to fill a vacancy on the eight-member Census Monitoring Board.  Prior to his 1998 election as lieutenant governor, Mr. Bustamante was Speaker of the California State Assembly and the first Latino elected to statewide office there in more than 120 years.  He spearheaded the successful effort to establish the California Complete Count Committee, to help promote census participation in the nation's most populous state.  The legislature approved an unprecedented $25 million to fund the committee's activities. Mr. Bustamante assumed a spot on the Board left vacant when former co-chair Tony Coelho resigned last spring to head Vice President Gore's presidential campaign.  The panel was created in late 1997 to observe and monitor all aspects of Census 2000.  The President appoints four members of the Board; Congressional Republican leaders appoint the other four members. Press briefing on census 'long form': The Census 2000 Initiative sponsored a press briefing in Washington, DC on February 2, to highlight the importance of information collected in the census.  Jacqueline Byers (National Association of Counties), David Crowe (National Association of Home Builders and the Housing Statistics Users Group), and Deborah Weinstein (Children's Defense Fund) explained how local governments and businesses, the housing and mortgage banking industries, and educators and children's advocates use census data to assess community needs, target fiscal resources, and plan for future growth. Seventeen percent of households (one in six) will receive the Census 2000 long form.  According to the Census Bureau, the long form will take 40 minutes, on average, to complete.  It includes 52 questions covering topics such as educational level, income, ancestry, housing conditions, commuting patterns, disability, veteran's status, and employment.  For more information on the long form, see the Fact Sheet on our web site at www.census2000.org/facts/long.html <http://www.census2000.org/facts/long.html>. Stakeholder activities: On January 13, the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC) unveiled an instructional video highlighting the importance of census participation for Asian Pacific Americans.  Bill Lann Lee, Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, and Robert J. Shapiro, Commerce Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, joined NAPALC Executive Director Karen Narasaki at a Washington, DC press conference to discuss census education and promotion activities targeting Asian Pacific American communities.  The in-language video, produced in eleven different Asian and Pacific Islander languages and dialects, was produced with a grant from AT&T. 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.. For copies of previous News Alerts and other information, use our web site www.census2000.org <http://www.census2000.org>. Please feel free to circulate this information to colleagues and other interested individuals.