********** C E N S U S 2 0 0 0 B U L L E T I N ********** Vol. 3 - No. 5 March 17, 1999 The following is the text of a letter from Commerce Secretary William M. Daley sent yesterday (March 16) to U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform, and U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the ranking member of the same committee, regarding the administration's position on seven bills related to Census 2000: "Tomorrow, the Government Reform Committee is scheduled to mark up seven bills related to the conduct of the Decennial Census in 2000. While I know we share a common goal of ensuring that Census 2000 is the most accurate and cost-effective Decennial possible, the Department of Commerce must strongly oppose legislation that would mandate a post census local review, require the printing of short census forms in 34 languages, and mandate a second mailing of census forms. "According to the Director of the Census Bureau, Kenneth Prewitt, and the professionals at the Census Bureau, these three bills would reduce the accuracy and seriously disrupt the schedule of Census 2000. Based on the attached detailed analysis of the legislation provided by Dr. Prewitt, if this legislation were presented to the President, I would recommend that he veto it. "The Census Bureau is already working on many of the issues that these and the other four bills address. For example, the Census Bureau is not designed to manage a grant program, but it is working to increase partnerships with local governments and tribal and non-profit organizations to increase participation in Census 2000. In addition, we expect to seek additional funding for a variety of other activities. And we would appreciate assistance in making it possible for more individuals to take temporary census jobs without losing their government benefits. "Thank you for this opportunity to present our views on the legislation under consideration by your Committee. I look forward to continuing to work with you and other members of Congress to ensure that Census 2000 is the most accurate census possible." Sincerely, William M. Daley (signed) Attachment (see attached file below) _____________________________________________________________________ For further information about Census 2000 Bulletins, contact J. Paul Wyatt of the Public Information Office on 301-457-3052 (fax: 301-457-3670; e-mail: pwyatt(a)census.gov). MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY FROM: Kenneth Prewitt Director, Bureau of the Census SUBJECT: Census Bureau Position on Bills Concerning 2000 Census As you are aware, seven bills concerning the 2000 census have recently been approved by the Subcommittee on the Census and are pending before the Committee on Government Reform for consideration. At your request, this memorandum presents the Census Bureau's analysis of those bills. While I understand that these bills were introduced with a view to improving the 2000 Census, their consequences for an orderly, timely and accurate census in 2000 are just short of disastrous. The Bureau is at a stage in the process where several of the changes to the Operational Plan proposed by Chairman Miller would seriously undermine the ability of the Bureau to complete an accurate and timely census. Were these bills to become law, the Congress would either have to significantly delay the starting day of Census 2000 or require the Census Bureau to field an operational plan which in our judgement would decrease accuracy levels. The Census Bureau believes that the plan presented to the Administration and the Congress will achieve the most accurate results possible in the time frame available for planning and implementing Census 2000. Further, the Census Bureau does not believe that the Subcommittee bills will reduce the differential undercounts as effectively as will the Operational Plan that we have presented. The bill with the most serious potential consequences is H.R. 472, the "Local Census Quality Check Act." It would mandate an operational change to the Census 2000 Plan which is neither timely, effective, nor cost-efficient and would return us to inadequate 1990 operations that have now been substantially improved upon. Since the Bureau recognizes the importance of local government participation, we have established a program of local participation in address accuracy and boundary readjustments which we believe is superior to the 1990 Post Census Local Review (PCLR) program. The Census 2000 Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA) vastly expands both the interaction between local governmental units and the Bureau and the time local governments are given to verify and correct addresses and boundaries. To date, twice as many local governments are participating in LUCA compared to PCLR in 1990. Notably, these governments cover 85 percent of all addresses in the country. In addition, our plan includes a program to validate the boundaries for every local and tribal government in the United States and a new construction program that will resolve most of the address problems uncovered in the 1990 PCLR. This new program which is currently being reviewed by our outside advisory groups, will give local governments the opportunity to add new housing units to the census Master Address File up to Census Day, April 1, 2000. We strongly believe that the Census Bureau's current plan is more efficient, more effective, more timely, and will produce greater accuracy in the time frame mandated for us by law than would the proposal in H.R. 472. The Bureau is also deeply concerned about H.R. 929, the "2000 Census Language Barrier Removal Act." This bill would require the Secretary of Commerce to print the Census 2000 short form in at least 33 languages other than English. The Census Bureau would have to send a questionnaire in one of these languages upon request. Were H.R. 929 to become law, the entire census questionnaire workflow for receipt, image capture, transcription, and key-from-paper would have to be modified. We would have to renegotiate our largest contracts — including nearly 20 printing contracts; the contracts for the Telephone Questionnaire Assistance program; Data Capture and, Data Capture Service Centers. An extensive amount of planning and evaluation has gone into developing a system for mailing a precensus letter to 120 million households and for announcing the availability of questionnaires in six languages including English, which account for 99 percent of all households in the U.S. The wording on this pre-census letter has been carefully designed to minimize confusion and maximize cooperation. If H.R. 929 became law, we would have to figure out how to announce the availability of forms in another 27 languages, which may be of concern to approximately one million households, without confusing the remaining 119 million households. Let me emphasize that the Bureau welcomes interest in this most difficult area. Currently, we plan to be as linguistically friendly as we possibly can. We are not indifferent to the 1 percent of U.S. households, which speak not just another 27 languages but rather as many as 130 or more languages. To reach them, we have developed an integrated language program that involves 15,000 paid temporary staff positions in the Questionnaire Assistance Centers, drawn from a wide range of language communities, and will prepare 15 million assistance guides in several dozen languages. We have also included a language focus in our partnership agreements with community organizations. The third bill that concerns the Bureau is H.R. 928, the "2000 Census Mail Outreach Improvement Act." This bill would require the Secretary of Commerce to conduct a second mailing by sending replacement questionnaires either to all households in the original mailing (a "blanket" mailing), or to each household not responding to the original mailing (a "targeted" mailing). The Bureau has decided not to implement either a blanket or targeted second mailing. After thorough analysis, much deliberation, and an evaluation of our Dress Rehearsal experience, we concluded that the value of a second mailing is substantially outweighed by the risks that it introduces in other census operations. We originally considered conducting a targeted second mailing, but printing vendors informed us they would require at least a month to send a second mailing targeted only to nonresponding housing units. A targeted second mailing would, thus, have significantly delayed the start of the nonresponse followup operation. Our experience and research indicate that the longer the delay between Census Day and the start of nonresponse followup, the more inaccuracies are introduced to the census data. We also considered a blanket second mailing, that is, mailing a second questionnaire to every housing unit, whether or not we had received a response to the original mailing. A National Academy of Sciences panel advised us that a blanket second mailing could reduce the accuracy of the census because of duplication. We nevertheless tested a blanket mailing in Dress Rehearsal. While it did increase the overall mail response rate, the evaluations indicate that about 40 percent of the households that mailed back a second questionnaire had also mailed back the initial questionnaire. Thus, the Dress Rehearsal processing had to be extended three weeks to handle the complexity introduced by the large volume of duplicate forms. For Census 2000, a work load of this magnitude would significantly delay data processing operations and potentially introduce significant errors into the data. In addition, our dress rehearsal experience indicated that the public was confused by the second mailing. The fourth bill that causes the Bureau concern is H.R. 1009, the "2000 Census Community Participation Enhancement Act." This bill would provide for grants to units of general local government, tribal organizations, and public and private nonprofit organizations. The Census Bureau has a commitment to fostering the productive involvement of local communities in Census 2000, and to this end, it has launched the Partnership Program, the Complete Count Committees, the Local Update of Census Address Program, the Census in the Schools Program, and more. And we welcome initiatives that would provide additional resources to units of general local government, tribal organizations, and public or private nonprofit organizations that could be directed to increasing participation rates in Census 2000. However, the Census Bureau is not equipped to manage a competitive grant program at this late stage in the decennial cycle. All of our human and financial resources are properly focused on the sequence of activities set forth in our Operational Plan, as submitted to the Census Subcommittee in January 1999 and updated on February 23, 1999. Based on nearly 20 years of experience in the private foundation sector, I speak with some knowledge about the complexities of managing competitive grant programs, made even more complex if they have a matching provision. It takes expertise to design, manage, monitor, and assess such programs, and it would be imprudent for the Congress to presume that the Census Bureau has or could quickly acquire that expertise. Moreover, there could be tens of thousands of applications. Either the amount of funds available per awardee would be so low as to raise questions about the sincerity of this effort, or there would be many more losers than winners. Either outcome places the Bureau in an untenable position. We will need strong partnerships even with those governments and local organizations that were not successful in the competition, but disappointment on their part could easily undermine what has become a very healthy partnership. Two additional bills have been introduced and voted through Subcommittee for full committee consideration: H.R. 1010 and H.R. 683. The Bureau does not have serious concerns about either of these two bills, so long as their implementation in their final form does not impose major changes to the existing operational plan. H.R. 1010 would authorize $300 million for FY 2000 to carry out promotional, outreach, and marketing activities in connection with Census 2000. It would effectively triple the Census Bureau's current projected paid advertising budget. We strongly agree that the advertising and promotion budgets will need to be increased. Currently, we are reviewing our advertising and marketing efforts in order to produce the most effective results. In our operational plan for a census using traditional census-taking methods, which we submitted to the Congress on January 14, 1999, we noted that we plan to expand our Partnership Program and expand and enhance the paid advertising and promotion program. Both of these programs are geared toward greater public awareness of Census 2000, which in turn should lead to greater public response and cooperation. Specifically, we plan to expand the Partnership Program to increase Bureau partnership staffing and assistance. This expansion will allow the Bureau to form additional partnerships with both non-governmental organizations that represent historically hard-to-enumerate groups and with governmental entities, including tribal governments, that have not yet taken the opportunity to be included in the partnership program. Already, more than 10,000 partnership agreements have been signed. The expanded program includes "in-kind" funding to support partners by providing services, such as printing locally designed promotional materials for Census 2000. Moreover, we plan to expand and enhance paid advertising and promotion by developing and implementing additional advertising messages. One additional message, which we will use before Census Day, will target information about community benefits to areas with historically low participation in the census. Another message will seek the public's cooperation with enumerators during the nonresponse followup operation. This is increasingly important now that we must make follow-up visits to 45 million housing units, instead of 30 million. Nontraditional advertising methods also would be pursued. Fact sheets and promotional materials will be available on a larger scale with the expanded program. And finally, we plan to conduct special publicity events that would bring the Census 2000 message to communities across the Nation. As you can see, H.R. 1010 has the potential to assist the Bureau in these endeavors. We also plan to expand the "Census in the Schools" program to allow all schools to participate instead of only those in selected areas. We have just learned that the committee intends to markup H.R. 1058 without benefit of a Subcommittee hearing. The Census Bureau has not had an opportunity to analyze H.R. 1058 but would ask that the committee help us ensure we receive full funding necessary to meet the objective of 100% participation. H.R. 683, the "Decennial Census Improvement Act of 1999," would allow recipients of any Federally funded benefits, including welfare recipients, veterans, American Indians, and others to take temporary census jobs without losing their Federal benefits. We appreciate any effort to help broaden the potential applicant pool for temporary census jobs. Hiring the numbers of workers we will need to conduct Census 2000 will be a monumental challenge and we will need all the help we can get. We have already secured from the Office of Personnel Management a waiver for the Federal civilian and military retirees, similar to the 1990 waiver. We have also secured a waiver from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for recipients of public housing and American Indian housing assistance. It is our understanding that individual states and American Indian tribes would have the authority to determine how income from working for the Census Bureau would be counted for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, consistent with the new welfare reform law. We are working closely with the states to bring welfare recipients into our workforce and, indeed, to look for other ways that would make it easier for people to come to work for us. We have already hired some 3,500 welfare recipients to work on our address-listing and Dress Rehearsal programs. This is the largest number of welfare- to-work employees in any agency or department of the federal government. Thank you for the opportunity to comment.