From: Census2000 &lt;Census2000(a)ccmc.org&gt; Funding Tops List of Census Concerns As Congress Tackles Fiscal Year 2000 Spending Bills Operational Update: Address List Appeal Process Set With Congress returning to work in Washington, D.C. this week, the schedule for considering the appropriations bills that will fund Census 2000 operations next year is still unclear. The Senate Committee on Appropriations approved its version of the Fiscal Year 2000 Commerce, Justice, and State, The Judiciary and Related Agencies Appropriations bill (S. 1217) last month, but Senate leaders have not announced a date for the full Senate to consider the measure. The committee-approved bill allocates $2.789 billion for census operations but does not include an extra $1.723 billion the Administration requested on June 1 to pay for its revised census plan. The Senate Appropriations Committee modified the amount of money each of its 13 subcommittees can spend on non-mandatory programs in fiscal year 2000 (FY00). The committee increased the discretionary spending limit for the Commerce-Justice-State account from $28 billion to $29.5 billion, still about $4 billion less than the current year's (FY99) funding level of $33.3 billion for that account. In the House, the appropriations Commerce-Justice-State subcommittee has tentative plans to consider its version of the spending bill during the week of July 19. The panel, chaired by Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY), has not released a draft bill. Census long form still topic of debate: When the Senate takes up the FY00 spending bill that covers the Census Bureau, Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) may offer an amendment to add questions on marital status to the census short form. The senator is circulating a draft amendment that would require the Census Bureau to collect information on respondents' marital status, their age when married, and previous marriages from all households in the 2000 census. Senator Brownback was a member of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, which oversees the census, in the 105th Congress (1997 - 98). Three years before each census, the Census Bureau must report to Congress the topics it will cover on the census forms. It must report the actual questions it will include on the short and long forms two years before the census starts. The Bureau notified Congress in March 1997 that it would include a question on marital status only on the long form, which goes to one in six households (about 17 percent of all households). Information on marital status is needed to administer federal programs but is not required for areas as small as census blocks, the smallest geographic unit for reporting data collected from 100 percent of the nation's homes. The 1990 census asked about marital status on the short form that goes to all households. In 2000 the census will include one question asking long form respondents if they are or have ever been married, or are currently widowed, separated, or divorced. Private contractors have already started printing the more than 120 million questionnaires that are needed for the 2000 census. More legislative news: Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), the senior Democrat on the census oversight subcommittee, has introduced legislation to require a "special census" in 2003 of private American citizens living overseas. Rep. Maloney said that while it was too late to include Americans living abroad in the 2000 census, she was "impressed by the patriotic desire, organization, and planning ...overseas Americans have devoted to being counted." The "Census of Americans Abroad Act" (H.R. 2444) was referred to the Committee on Government Reform. Last month, the census subcommittee held a hearing on proposals to count all Americans living abroad in the census. Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) introduced a resolution (H. Con. Res. 129) expressing the "sense of the Congress" that Americans living overseas should be counted in the 2000 census. The Census Bureau will use administrative records from the Defense Department and other federal agencies to count military personnel and federal civilian employees stationed overseas in the 2000 census for congressional apportionment purposes only. Final rules set for address list appeals: The Census Address List Appeals Office, an independent office established by the Office of Management and Budget, has issued final rules governing pre-census challenges to the census address lists under the Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA) program. The rules provide a final opportunity for local and Tribal governments that participated in address development activities (the LUCA program) to challenge the address list for their jurisdiction before the census starts in March 2000. Localities may appeal Census Bureau decisions not to accept additional addresses or corrections submitted during the LUCA process. The rules were published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, June 30, 1999, and can be found in Vol. 64, No. 125, Part V, pp. 35548-35558. The rules, entitled "Procedures for Participating in the Census Bureau Reconciliation and the Office of Management and Budget Appeal Processes for the Development of the Census 2000 Address List," are also available through the National Archives and Records Administration web site at www.nara.gov/fedreg <http://www.nara.gov/fedreg>. Stakeholders may also contact Mr. Phil Fulton, director of the Appeals Office, for more information at 202/208-4613. Congressional staff changes: Thomas Hofeller, staff director of the House Subcommittee on the Census, is leaving the subcommittee to oversee post-2000 census redistricting efforts for the Republican National Committee. Mr. Hofeller, a seasoned redistricting expert for the GOP, assumed the top staff position when the census panel was created in early 1998. The subcommittee's deputy staff director, Thomas Brierton, has been named "Acting Director." Mr. Brierton's congressional experience includes legislative work for Rep. (now Speaker) J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL). Florida Rep. Dan Miller chairs the census oversight panel. 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 . Please direct all requests to receive News Alerts, and all changes in address/phone/fax/e-mail, to the Census 2000 Initiative at Census2000(a)ccmc.org or 202/326-8700. Please feel free to circulate this information to colleagues and other interested individuals.