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(a)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