Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 11:29:51 -0400 From: Keri Monihan <kmonihan(a)ccmc.org> Controversy Over Census Methods Continues As Appropriators Consider FY99 Funding House Census Chairman Questions Qualifications Of Census Bureau Director Nominee The House and Senate appropriations panels took their first steps this week toward crafting bills to fund the Census Bureau in the fiscal year starting on October 1, 1998. The Fiscal Year 1999 Commerce, Justice, State, and The Judiciary Appropriations bill was approved by the Senate's subcommittee and full appropriations panel while only the counterpart House subcommittee completed its work before legislators headed home for the July 4th break. The Senate committee allocated $848 million for 2000 census preparations, the amount requested by the President. Subcommittee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-NH) indicated at the June 23 subcommittee 'mark-up' that the final debate over the use of sampling methods would be put off until next year. He also criticized the Census Bureau's report to Congress earlier this year, which spelled out the Bureau's plan for taking a census without sampling. The House subcommittee that funds the Census Bureau, chaired by Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY), allocated $956 million for the 2000 census, which includes $4 million for the Census Monitoring Board. However, only half of that amount would be available for the Census Bureau to spend through March 31, 1999. The remaining $476 million cannot be spent until the President, by March 15, formally requests the funds and gives a cost estimate for completion of the census. Congress then has until March 31 to pass legislation allowing the Bureau to spend the remaining funds. The bill does not specify what will happen if Congress and the President fail to agree on releasing the funds by that date. The subcommittee's senior Democrat, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV), expressed "dismay" at the bill's provisions. He argued that it violated last year's agreement between congressional Republican leaders and the White House to put pressure on both sides to resolve the sampling issue by subjecting the entire appropriations bill to another funding vote in March, 1999. Rep. Mollohan said that the President would insist on upholding the agreed-upon procedure or push for a resolution of the sampling controversy this Fall. ------------- Census Bureau Director update: As expected, on June 23, the President nominated Dr. Kenneth Prewitt, president of the Social Science Research Council, to be the next head of the Census Bureau. The nomination will go before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, chaired by Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN). Commerce Secretary William Daley called Dr. Prewitt "one of this nation's most distinguished social scientists and experienced executives and he called upon the Senate to consider the nomination quickly. Dr. Prewitt, speaking at a press conference announcing his selection, said it is "unfortunate that Census 2000 has become prey to partisan disagreements." He pledged to work closely with Congress to "establish in principle and in fact that the Census Bureau is a nonpartisan agency obligated by law and guided by professional traditions to present the most accurate statistics technically possible, at a reasonable cost." He did not indicate in his prepared remarks whether he supported the use of sampling in the census. In a statement on the House floor that evening, census oversight Chairman Dan Miller (R-FL) questioned Dr. Prewitt's qualifications for the position. He said that Dr. Prewitt received the nomination only because he met the President's "litmus test" of support for sampling, and suggested that the nominee did not have the management experience to "lead a huge organization at a time of crisis. ...[h]e ran a think tank, and that is it." Rep. Miller went on to say: "The Census Bureau needs a General Schwarzkopf, not a Professor Sherman Klunk, to save the census." In a separate written statement, the chairman said he hoped that if Dr. Prewitt is confirmed, he will "demonstrate some independence from the political handlers in the Clinton Administration." Rep. Miller also defended his subcommittee staff director, Thomas Hofeller, from charges made by some Members of Congress that Mr. Hofeller had injected racial politics into the debate over sampling. Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL), a member of the census subcommittee, called a quote by Mr. Hofeller in a recent column by David Broder (see June 22 News Alert) "reprehensible" and "race-laden" and he called upon Chairman Miller to repudiate the statement. Rep. Miller responded that Mr. Hofeller's quote was taken out of context and that his staff director had assisted minorities in gaining political representation through the redistricting process. ----------------- Census Monitoring Board update: The Census Monitoring Board will hold its second meeting on July 8. The location and time for the meeting have not been announced. The Board's co-chairs have appointed their respective top staffers. Fred Asbell, executive director for Republican co-chair Kenneth Blackwell, most recently has worked in the international telecommunications arena. He served in senior staff positions at the Department of Labor during the Reagan Administration and in Congress, and also has held several senior positions at the Republican National Committee and the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. Mark Johnson, appointed by Democratic co-chair Tony Coelho, just completed a stint as U.S. Deputy Commissioner General at World Expo '98 in Lisbon, Portugal, where he also directed the American Pavilion under Commissioner General Coelho. He has worked in journalism and in Congress, and directed communications at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the mid-1980s. -------------------- Legal update: A federal court in Virginia is set to hear oral arguments in a second case challenging the constitutionality of sampling in the census. A three-judge U.S. District Court panel will take up Glavin v. Clinton on August 7, at 10 a.m., at the federal courthouse in Roanoke, Virginia (Poff Federal Building, 210 Franklin Rd., S.W.). The lawsuit was filed in February by Matthew Glavin, president of the Atlanta-based Southeastern Legal Foundation, Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA), and other individual plaintiffs. Several counties have moved to join the sampling opponents in the case, while other cities, states, counties and Members of Congress have asked to intervene on the government's side. ----------------- Executive Branch activities: William G. Barron, Jr., deputy commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), has been named Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs, the number-two position in the Department's Economic and Statistics Administration which oversees the Census Bureau. Mr. Barron, who spent 30 years as a career civil servant at BLS, will focus on budget and management issues affecting the 2000 census. ------------------ The Press Beat: The Detroit Free Press (6/15/98), Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (6/14/98), and The Buffalo News (6/15/98) have published editorials in support of the Census Bureau's plan for the 2000 census. We encourage stakeholders to speak with journalists in their communities about the importance of an accurate and cost-effective census. 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 Keri Monihan at <kmonihan(a)ccmc.org> or 202/326-8728. Please feel free to circulate this information to colleagues and other interested individuals.