From: Census2000 &lt;Census2000(a)ccmc.org&gt; Administration Spells Out Need for Extra Census Funds As Senate Appropriators Meet to Consider Fiscal Year 2000 Request President Clinton has sent to Congress specific proposals to revise his original fiscal year 2000 (FY2000) budget request for the 2000 census and several other federal programs. In a written statement, the President said the Census Bureau needs $1.723 billion more than his original request of $2.78 billion next year to count the population without relying on statistical sampling. The President cited a January Supreme Court ruling that federal law bars such methods for purposes of congressional apportionment. The extra money brings the total FY2000 budget request for Census 2000 to $4.5 billion. The Senate appropriations committee is scheduled to consider the funding bill today. The bulk of the extra $1.7 billion is needed for non-response follow-up, when census enumerators visit households that don't mail back their census forms. In order to comply with the Supreme Court decision, enumerators must visit all 45 million households the Bureau estimates will not mail back a questionnaire. The increased field workload will cost an extra $1.45 billion. This amount includes money to hire more temporary workers and extend their training; a recheck of an estimated 7.6 million housing units reported as vacant, as well interviews to gather information missing from returned questionnaires; enhanced procedures for counting people who have no usual residence at soup kitchens and shelters; and a pre-census quality check of rural areas without city-style addresses. The additional funds also will cover more supplies, materials, telephones, and other infrastructure needs to support a larger workforce (+$234 million); keeping the four data processing centers open longer to accommodate the expanded field operation (+$102 million); additional advertising and promotion, including more materials for schools, nonprofit groups, and local governments (+$88 million); and several other new efforts to improve address lists and data collection. The Bureau says it will save $214 million by reducing the size of the post-census quality check survey (called the Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation program) from 750,000 households under its original plan to 300,000 households. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), co-chair of the Congressional Census Caucus and the senior Democrat on the House census oversight panel, said the President's revised Census 2000 budget request represented a "true lose-lose proposition." Taxpayers must pay more, she said, "for a less accurate count." Coincidentally, the President also asked for additional FY2000 funds for several other programs covered under the same budget account that covers the Census Bureau. The $2.5 billion worth of changes in the Administration's total FY2000 budget request includes an extra $264 million for improved security at U.S. embassies overseas and $230 for the Immigration and Naturalization Service's detention and deportation program. The State Department and the Justice Department (which houses the INS) must compete for funds against other activities covered under the Commerce, Justice, and State, The Judiciary, and Related Agencies appropriations bill. The Census Bureau is an agency of the Commerce Department. The President proposed to pay for the $2.5 billion he requested by accelerating a 1997 tax change affecting individuals with annual incomes over $150,000 and by slowing federal payments to the states for "welfare to work" programs. Census Monitoring Board news: The Presidential appointees of the Census Monitoring Board sent an interim report to Congress yesterday "that documents significant bipartisan support throughout the country for the Census Bureau's plan" to correct undercounts and overcounts using statistical sampling methods, according to a press release announcing the report. The three members who issued the document (there is one vacancy on the panel's Presidential side) compiled letters from state and local officials in support of the Bureau's plan to conduct a 300,000-household post-enumeration survey to account for people missed in the direct count. The report will be available on the Presidential members' Web site www.cmbp.gov <http://www.cmbp.gov> in the near future. Meanwhile, Kenneth Blackwell, the Board's Republican co-chair, said he would not step down from the Board despite his appointment as chairman of Steve Forbes's campaign for the presidency. In a June 3 letter, House Census Subcommittee Chairman Dan Miller (R-FL) asked Mr. Blackwell to resign, saying he was concerned about "the appearance of incompatibility of the two roles." Calling Mr. Blackwell "a rising star in our party," Rep. Miller accused Democrats of "politiciz[ing] the census at every opportunity." He distinguished Mr. Blackwell's new campaign position from the appointment of the Board's former Democratic co-chair, Tony Coelho, as general chairman of Vice President Albert Gore's presidential campaign, since Mr. Coelho would be "running the [Gore campaign's] day-to-day operations." Mr. Coelho resigned from the Board last month. Rep. Miller said that his call for Mr. Blackwell's resignation "has more to do with politics than reality" because "Democrats will use [Mr. Blackwell's campaign position] as a political weapon to distract the public from the real problems with the 2000 census." In his reply of June 3, Mr. Blackwell said he "left politics at the door" in carrying out his Monitoring Board duties, and noted that the Board had issued a joint report to Congress last April. "[I]t would be counter-productive for me to abandon the process," Mr. Blackwell wrote. "I am uniquely positioned to address the principal problem that exists in the 2000 Census - counting real people where they actually live." Not satisfied with Mr. Blackwell's decision to remain on the Board, Rep. Carolyn Maloney wrote to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) this week, urging them to seek the co-chairman's resignation. Senator Lott appointed two of the Monitoring Board's eight members; Rep. Hastert's predecessor, former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), also named two members. The President appointed four members and must now fill the vacancy left by Mr. Coelho's resignation. Upcoming news: The House Subcommittee on the Census held a hearing yesterday to review several proposals affecting the way prisoners, members of the armed forces, and Americans living overseas are counted in the census. Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) advocated a "sense of the Congress" resolution in support of counting all Americans living overseas. The Census Bureau plans to count members of the armed forces, federal civilian employees, and their dependents stationed overseas at their "home of record," as it did in 1990, for purposes of congressional apportionment only. Subcommittee member Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) urged the Bureau to count military personnel stationed in the U.S. at their "home of record" (the place where the service member enlisted), as well, at least for apportionment purposes. The Bureau counts military personnel at the place where they usually live and sleep at the time of the census (called "usual place of residence"), a long-standing policy that determines where all persons are counted. Rep. Mark Green (R-WI) urged the subcommittee to consider his bill (H.R. 1632) to require that inmates serving their time in an out-of-state facility be counted as residents of the state that pays more than half the cost of their incarceration. The Census 2000 Initiative will provide a more complete summary of the proceedings next week. The Initiative also will report on a Justice Department memorandum concerning the effect of a provision in the 1996 immigration reform law on the confidentiality of citizenship or immigration data collected in the census. Prepared at the request of the Commerce Department's general counsel, the analysis concludes that a provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 does not override section 9(a) of the Census Act (title 13, United States Code), which protects individual census responses from all other government agencies, the courts, and private individuals. Questions about the information contained in this News Alert may be directed to TerriAnn Lowenthal at 202/484-2270 or, by e-mail at &lt;terriann2k(a)aol.com&gt;om>. For copies of previous News Alerts and other information, use our web site www.census2000.org <http://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 &lt;Census2000(a)ccmc.org&gt; or 202/326-8700. Please feel free to circulate this information to colleagues and other interested individuals.