[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE 2010 CENSUS: PARTICIPATION OF HARD TO COUNT COMMUNITIES IN NON-
RESPONSE FOLLOW-UP
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFORMATION POLICY,
CENSUS, AND NATIONAL ARCHIVES
of the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 30, 2010
__________
Serial No. 111-116
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
http://www.oversight.house.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
64-923 PDF WASHINGTON : 2011
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman
PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania DARRELL E. ISSA, California
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York DAN BURTON, Indiana
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland JOHN L. MICA, Florida
DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
DIANE E. WATSON, California LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina
JIM COOPER, Tennessee BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia JIM JORDAN, Ohio
MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah
Columbia AARON SCHOCK, Illinois
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri
DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois ANH ``JOSEPH'' CAO, Louisiana
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
PETER WELCH, Vermont
BILL FOSTER, Illinois
JACKIE SPEIER, California
STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio
JUDY CHU, Ohio
Ron Stroman, Staff Director
Michael McCarthy, Deputy Staff Director
Carla Hultberg, Chief Clerk
Larry Brady, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives
WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri, Chairman
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
Columbia JOHN L. MICA, Florida
DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah
STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
JUDY CHU, California
Darryl Piggee, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on April 30, 2010................................... 1
Statement of:
Ross, Dr. Robert, president, California Endowment; Gina
Montoya, chief administrative officer, MALDEF; and John
Cho, actor................................................. 90
Cho, John................................................ 97
Montoya, Gina............................................ 94
Ross, Dr. Robert......................................... 90
Villaraigosa, Antonio, mayor, city of Los Angeles, CA; Mona
Pasquil, former Acting Lieutenant Governor, State of
California; John A. Perez, speaker of the Assembly, State
of California; Dr. Robert Groves, Director, U.S. Census
Bureau; and Robert Goldenkoff, Director, Strategic Issues,
GAO........................................................ 10
Goldenkoff, Robert....................................... 49
Groves, Dr. Robert....................................... 40
Pasquil, Mona............................................ 23
Perez, John A............................................ 31
Villaraigosa, Antonio.................................... 10
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Chaffetz, Hon. Jason, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Utah, information concerning San Bernardino
American News.............................................. 74
Cho, John, actor, prepared statement of...................... 99
Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Missouri, prepared statement of................... 3
Goldenkoff, Robert, Director, Strategic Issues, GAO, prepared
statement of............................................... 51
Groves, Dr. Robert, Director, U.S. Census Bureau, prepared
statement of............................................... 43
Pasquil, Mona, former Acting Lieutenant Governor, State of
California, prepared statement of.......................... 26
Perez, John A., speaker of the Assembly, State of California,
prepared statement of...................................... 34
Richardson, Hon. Laura, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, prepared statement of................. 84
Ross, Dr. Robert, president, California Endowment, prepared
statement of............................................... 92
Villaraigosa, Antonio, mayor, city of Los Angeles, CA,
prepared statement of...................................... 13
Watson, Hon. Diane E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, prepared statement of................. 108
THE 2010 CENSUS: PARTICIPATION OF HARD TO COUNT COMMUNITIES IN NON-
RESPONSE FOLLOW-UP
----------
FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2010
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and
National Archives,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Los Angeles, CA.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in the
Center of Healthy Communities, the California Endowment, 1000
North Alameda Street, Los Angeles, CA, Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Clay, Watson, Chu, and Chaffetz.
Also present: Representative Waters.
Staff present: Darryl Piggee, staff director/counsel; Jean
Gosa, clerk; Yvette Cravins, counsel; Frank Davis and Anthony
Clark, professional staff members; and Charisma Williams, staff
assistant.
Mr. Clay. The Oversight and Government Reform Committee
will now come to order. Without objection, the chair and
ranking minority member will have 5 minutes to make opening
statements, followed by opening statements not to exceed 3
minutes by any other Member who seeks recognition. And without
objection, Members and witnesses may have 5 legislative days to
submit a written statement or extraneous materials for the
record.
Welcome to today's oversight hearing entitled,
``Participation of Hard-to-Count Communities in Non-Response
Follow-Up.'' The hearing will examine ways to encourage
participation in the door-to-door enumeration process known as
Non-Response Follow-Up [NRFU]. It will allow those who live in
hard to count communities to hear from trusted voices about the
importance of being counted.
I want to take a moment to thank our hosts, the California
Endowment, for providing us with this impressive location for
our hearing today. The Endowment is a leader in California
census outreach, raising more than $10 million to promote
census participation among hard to count communities throughout
the State. We are grateful for all of your considerable efforts
to make this hearing happen today. Thank you.
We would also like to thank the many other individuals and
organizations that assisted in the planning for this hearing,
including the Los Angeles Mayor's Office and Voto Latino. Thank
you also.
Previous decennial censuses have under counted certain
populations, such as African-Americans, Latinos, and other
historically under represented groups. In both the 1990 and
2000 censuses, the net under count rate was higher for people
who were American Indian, Asian, Black, or Hispanic than it was
for the overall population.
Reasons for this difference include fear of government and
outsiders, limited knowledge of English, mobile people and
households, and irregular household members.
Besides determining legislative districts, census data
allocates more than $400 billion in Federal appropriations
annually to States and local communities. Each person who is
not counted costs each community at least $1,500 a year,
assistance that should be going to education, health care,
transportation, emergency services, and other essential local
programs. People who live in these areas are not only
traditionally more skeptical of the census but also more in
need of the resources that are allocated as a result of the
once-a-decade count.
Los Angeles, CA is the hardest to count county in the
United States, with more than 4 million residents living in
hard to count areas. The city and county of Los Angeles are
comprised of all of the characteristics of hard to count areas,
such as complex households, communication/language barriers,
mobility, non-traditional addresses, lack of cooperation and
distrust, and poverty and employment status.
The door to door enumeration starts tomorrow. Local census
takers will visit households that did not mail back a census
form. All census takers carry an official badge and a shoulder
bag, both with the Department of Commerce seal, and a binder.
During a visit, census takers will show identification and hand
respondents an information sheet explaining that their answers
are confidential. The census taker will complete the
questionnaire, which should take about 10 minutes.
We would like those who live in hard to count areas and who
have not mailed back their forms to know that they can
participate in the census, that they can trust the
confidentiality of the census, that a correct count is crucial
to their community, and that they can and should cooperate with
the census workers who will be knocking on their doors
beginning tomorrow.
I now yield to the distinguished ranking minority member,
Mr. Chaffetz of Utah.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Chaffetz. Thank you and thank you, Chairman Clay, for
holding this important hearing. I appreciate all of you being
here. This is a critical time and juncture with the census.
Literally hundreds of thousands of people, one of the most--
this massive effort from coast to coast to go out and count the
people who have yet to fill out their census forms.
I want the people here in the United States to have great
comfort, safety and security in filling out this information.
It will not be used for any other purposes, law enforcement or
otherwise. It is something that we do as part of the U.S.
Constitution. Every 10 years, we fan out across this country
and count every man, woman, and child that we can find. And I
would encourage every person, whether they are a homeless
person, whatever it might be, to make sure that they get
counted. It's simple. It's safe. It's easy.
I also want to thank all of those enumerators, the people
that are participating in the census. The education, the
massive undertaking has been very, very impressive to date. We
appreciate those people participating and going and talking to
friends and neighbors and people that they've never met before.
I appreciate the work of Dr. Groves in the Census Bureau. It is
a massive undertaking, but please have the safety and security
of filling this information out. It's vitally important to the
function of government within this country. It provides us a
lot of valuable information and again, I just thank the
chairman for holding this important hearing and look forward to
hearing from our witnesses and the challenges that we have in
trying to make sure that everybody is counted. Nobody is under
counted, nobody is over counted. We're not guessing, but we
actually go out and get the right count done.
So again, I thank Chairman Clay and look forward to
participating.
Mr. Clay. Thank you so much. Now I'd like to turn to my
friend and colleague, Congresswoman Judy Chu.
Ms. Chu. Thank you so much, Chairman Clay, and thank you
for bringing this hearing to Los Angeles County, my county,
where my district is, District 32. I understand that this is
one of the few field hearings that you're having and so I feel
very, very grateful because Los Angeles County is indeed an
under counted county and we need all the help that we can get.
We need all the encouragement that we can get to make people
answer the doors when the enumerators come.
This is a very diverse county and we have people from all
walks of life. We have many immigrants from all over the world
and as a former member of the Race and Ethnic Advisory
Committee to the 2000 census, I'm intimately familiar with the
barriers that there are to an accurate census. I know that
people think that it's too complicated to do a census, but this
one is actually the shortest one in history. This one actually
has enumerators who speak all different languages, including
bilingual questionnaires and bilingual questionnaire assistance
centers, and most importantly, this census protects people from
any invasion of privacy and people will be sent to jail or have
great fines if they share any information that comes from the
census to any official person, including the police or
immigration officials.
So there is everything to gain. There's nothing to lose. In
fact, $400 million of Federal moneys rides on an accurate
census. We don't want Los Angeles County to lose out versus all
the other counties out there. We should get our fair share. So
I encourage everybody to answer the door when the enumerator
comes.
Mr. Clay. Thank you so much, Congresswoman. Let me now
recognize my friend and colleague who started with me in
Congress who we will miss after this Congress ends, and I've
known her for more than our time in Congress, but Congresswoman
Diane Watson.
Ms. Watson. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the
ranking member, Mr. Chaffetz. I want you to know we provided
you today some of our best weather and one of our nicest
locations in downtown Los Angeles.
Mr. Clay. I thought the mayor ordered up this weather.
Ms. Watson. Of course, along with him, yes. Always Mayor
Villaraigosa is graciously providing for all of our guests that
come into the city and I just join him--better put that in real
quickly. Thank you so much for bringing the hearing, the
subcommittee hearing here. As you know, at this moment--or you
don't know, I have about 30 people, Mr. Mayor, in my office
being trained. And we have one of the trainers and these are
people who came out of one of our job fairs and we just sent
them over to be enumerators and they were hired and they're
being trained in the office as we speak.
And as you know, this is the non-response followup which
begins tomorrow for the 2010 census. And as a proud member, Mr.
Chairman, of this subcommittee, as we discussed the preparation
for the 2010 census, I want to thank you and our ranking member
for coming here to Los Angeles and this is a critically
important national endeavor and for allowing me to join with my
colleagues today.
I want to also thank today's witnesses for being here to
lend us your insight and to encourage each and every person in
Los Angeles to be part of the count. I want to congratulate
you, Mr. Speaker. The Honorable Perez and I were with Speaker
Emeritus in Washington, DC, the day before yesterday and
yesterday she left. Congratulations to you.
In California, 3 out of 10 households still need to be
counted. So when the census knocks on your door, please answer.
Answering their questions is easy. It's important and it's
safe. These census takers will have an official badge and a
shoulder bag bearing the seal of the U.S. Department of
Commerce. They will show identification and a sheet that
confirms and explains that all answers are one hundred percent,
as has just been said, confidential, so that everyone knows
participating in the census is completely safe. You need have
no fear.
Participating in the census is also an important civic
duty. The population numbers derived from the 2010 census will
affect our communities and our State for the next 10 years.
Census data is used to determine our share of Federal funding
and the boundaries of congressional and local election
districts.
I'm coterminous with Congresswoman Chu. I am the 33rd
Congressional District. I go further west and almost go to the
ocean where Jane Harmon's district is. But you'll always know
the 33rd by looking to the hills and seeing Hollywood. That is
the 33rd Congressional District of which I'm very proud.
Unfortunately, Los Angeles is the hardest to count county
in the United States which is why it is so important that the
2010 census has the most successful, non-response followup in
history. Each person who is missed in the census costs the
community at least $1,500 a year, money that could go toward
our schools, Mr. Mayor, as you know, our health care, our
transportation, which is so necessary in this basin, and
emergency services and jobs.
And I understand the government just called a press
conference about jobs at City Hall and all that press left my
press conference which was up in Hollywood and we were
announcing the dedication of the Johnny Grant Post Office. And
I looked around and all of them had left. And so jobs, jobs,
jobs becomes the focus, but you know, we're going to see jobs
in the Hollywood area because we're putting Johnny Grant's name
on the building on May 10th and people are going to come. We're
going to have a star there and they're going to come and
they're going to eat there. They're going to buy trinkets and
souvenirs there. So we're talking about jobs as well.
Especially during this time of extreme economic hardship,
it's important that our count is accurate so that the people of
Los Angeles get the money they need and deserve. Historically,
the census has had a tendency to under count minorities and I,
in my district, Congresswoman Chu, have had about a double
digit under count, somewhere around 10 to 11 percent.
And so we find that those that are hard to count have
language barriers, their children, and people that are living
below the poverty line. Without an accurate count, not only do
we lose out on important Federal funds, but we lose the
opportunity to gain a true picture of the wonderful diversities
and complexities of our Nation. That is why it is so important
for people to participate with census counters if they come to
your door and if they come while you're out, they will leave a
telephone number. You can call to have your information taken
over the phone. So get counted and let your voice be heard.
It's up to all of us to make sure that Los Angeles is
completely counted and with the leadership of our mayor and
those who are our witnesses today, I know that we will have the
best count ever here in the Los Angeles area.
Thank you and I yield back.
Mr. Clay. Thank you so much, Congresswoman Watson, for that
opening statement. And without further ado, I will now
introduce our first panel and our first witness will be the
mayor of the city of Los Angeles, the Honorable Antonio
Villaraigosa.
Mr. Villaraigosa is the 41st mayor of Los Angeles. The
mayor began his distinguished career as an advocate for social
justice and leader of unionization efforts. In 1994, he began
his political career as a member of the California State
Assembly, then ascended to assembly speaker, and further was
elected as a council member for Los Angeles' 14th District. He
was elected as mayor of Los Angeles in 2005 and re-elected in
2009 to continue education reform, job creation, and the green
L.A. program.
Welcome, Mr. Mayor. I know you're on a tight schedule, but
we will get to you.
Next, we will hear from a former Acting Lieutenant Governor
of the State of California, the Honorable Mona Pasquil. Ms.
Pasquil, a mere 4 days ago, became the former Lieutenant
Governor of California. Prior to her appointment on November 4,
2009, she served as chief of staff to former Lieutenant
Governor John Garamendi who happens to be a colleague of ours
now. And she has served as a senior advisor and strategist in
numerous State and Federal Government offices, political
campaigns, and private companies. Ms. Pasquil has dedicated
herself to mentoring youth, speaking about against domestic
violence against women and children, and serving as a trail
blazer for California Filipinos and all Asian Pacific
Islanders. Thank you for being here.
After Ms. Pasquil, we will hear from the speaker of the
California Assembly, the Honorable John A. Perez. Mr. Perez was
elected in 2008 to represent the 46th Assembly District. He has
spent much of his lifetime fighting for the rights of workers
with an emphasis on health care and better wages. He is a long-
time advocate for the lesbian and gay community serving on both
the Clinton and Bush Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and
AIDS. In January 2010, he made history as the first openly gay
speaker of the California Assembly. And welcome and thank you
for being here.
And next we will hear from the Director of the U.S. Census
Bureau, Dr. Robert Groves. Dr. Groves began his tenure as
Director in 2009. Dr. Groves has a bachelor's degree from
Dartmouth College and master's degrees in statistics and
sociology from the University of Michigan, where he also earned
his doctorate. Dr. Groves has testified on numerous occasions
and is well qualified to lead the census effort in 2010.
And after Dr. Groves, we will hear from Mr. Robert
Goldenkoff, Director of Strategic Issues at the U.S. Government
Accountability Office. Mr. Goldenkoff has over 20 years of
program evaluation experience with the GAO. He is responsible
for reviewing the decennial census. He is the co-author of,
``Federal Jobs, the Ultimate Guide.'' He received his BA and
MBA degrees from George Washington University and was a
Presidential Management Fellow. And I thank all of our
witnesses for appearing today and look forward to your
testimony.
It is the policy of the Oversight and Government Reform
Committee to swear in all witnesses before you testify. I'd
like to ask you all to please stand and raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Clay. Thank you, you may be seated and let the record
reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative and I
ask that each witness now give a brief summary of their
testimony and please try to limit your summary to 5 minutes and
your complete written statement will be included in the hearing
record.
Mr. Mayor, if I may delay your testimony one more time to
recognize my long-time friend and colleague who represents Los
Angeles, Representative Maxine Waters. And thank you for being
here. If you'd like to make an opening statement, you can. If
not, we'll go on.
Ms. Waters. Go right ahead.
Mr. Clay. Thank you so much. Yes, ma'am.
Mr. Mayor, you may proceed.
STATEMENTS OF ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA, MAYOR, CITY OF LOS ANGELES,
CA; MONA PASQUIL, FORMER ACTING LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, STATE OF
CALIFORNIA; JOHN A. PEREZ, SPEAKER OF THE ASSEMBLY, STATE OF
CALIFORNIA; DR. ROBERT GROVES, DIRECTOR, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU;
AND ROBERT GOLDENKOFF, DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC ISSUES, GAO
STATEMENT OF ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA
Mr. Villaraigosa. I'm always willing to defer to my friend
and colleague, Congresswoman Waters. It's great to see you as
always, a great advocate for housing and the safety net, and of
course, Congresswoman Watson, who I've known since the 1990's
when--well, actually before I was elected to the State Assembly
and served with her in the California Legislature and watched
her as the President of the School Board. We're going to miss
you, as you go on to a new chapter in your life. And
Congresswoman Chu and I who have probably known each other the
longest, about 30 years I think, we grew up in the civil rights
movement and we're very proud to have these three
Representatives. And Congressman Chaffetz, it's good to see you
from the State of Utah and we're happy to have you here.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for allowing me the honor to make a
presentation today. Let me say just how proud I am to be here
with long-time friends and a family member. The speaker is my
first cousin and so I'm very proud of him and our family and he
will have important things to say as well.
I want to welcome you all to the city of Los Angeles. It's
more than fitting that you have chosen to hold this hearing
here, arguably the most diverse city, not just in the United
States of America, but the world. Present among the more than 4
million Angelenos are 140 nationalities and ethnicities
speaking some 224 different languages. The city is 46 percent
foreign born. We have the largest African-American, Latino and
Asian middle classes in this city.
It is also fitting that you're holding this hearing at a
critical juncture of the census process. I don't have to remind
you that tomorrow on May 1st, U.S. census workers will begin
knocking on the doors of those Angelenos whose forms were not
received through the mail. I am calling on every resident who
has not yet submitted their census form to cooperate fully with
enumerator who will be deployed by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Enumerators are sworn to protect the confidentiality and will
carry an official badge, as you well know, and yet
notwithstanding that there are still some who are unwilling to
cooperate and hesitant to share information with these
individuals.
Therefore, to reach these residents who have not yet been
counted, we're spreading the message that the answers to the
questionnaire will not be shared with any government agency by
law. We need to meet the fear of losing the right to privacy
head on with the simple fact that by taking 10 minutes of their
time to fill out this form, they will be framing the next 10
years.
Mr. Chairman, Members, in 2000, 76,800 Angelenos did not
return their forms, second highest under count in the United
States. As a result of that under count, we lost more than $200
million directly just to the City Municipal Government. The
county lost about $1 billion. The school district lost a few
hundred million dollars. So just by virtue of not filling out
that census form, we were hit with a pretty big penalty as a
result. So we have said to our residents, it's important to
engage every Angeleno to participate in mailing back the form.
Our actions moving forward in the enumeration phase have to be
to cooperate, cooperate, cooperate, first of all, to reach the
homes of as many Angelenos as possible.
My office, with the Census Bureau, has partnered with city
agencies to update and add 266,374 new addresses to the master
address file. This has been a battle, a battle that we have
been willing to take on because we know just how important it
is to ascertain the appropriate number of addresses. We've
challenged the exclusion of 12,379 unique addresses. Look, this
is a city where not everybody lives in the conventional three-
bedroom home with a pool and a front yard and a back yard. Many
people live on top of a business. They live in garages. They
live in places that historically might not be the places where
one would think someone would live. And so we're finding that
the information that this has helped us make sure that people
aren't slipping through the cracks.
The city will generate tens of millions of dollars during
the next 10 years if we have a more accurate census and
Congresswoman Watson, you talked about this year's census. This
year's census is already our most successful. We're leading
virtually every major city in the United States of America of
the size, the top 10 cities, in this count. But that's not good
enough. I think we're at 68 percent as I understand it. But the
county is at 70 percent and the State is at 72 and we're below
the national average right now. So even though we're 46 percent
foreign born, and even though we have the demographic groups
that historically have been the most under counted, we're
moving hard and fast.
Tomorrow, there will be a big march, a march for
immigration reform. We will have our enumerators there. We will
be present, sharing the message that not only does your vote
count, but we need to count you so that you can get the
services that you pay your taxes for.
In addition to that, we've worked with the philanthropic
community and raised what is essentially a couple of million
dollars and free TV in hard money from philanthropic community
to expand our outreach effort. We're counting the homeless in
an unprecedented way where we've distributed socks to the
homeless all over the city and we launched six feeding programs
where the U.S. Census Bureau counted thousands of additional
homeless residents who might otherwise have been missed. And
last, at the heart of our successful strategy, is a city-wide
grass roots movement.
A couple of weeks ago I had a day of service that I do very
regularly. Tomorrow, we will have another one where we engaged
a big part of the couple of thousand of volunteers, 3,000
volunteers that we had in the outreach for the census. So we've
got community leaders from different sectors all focused on
this effort. We're building upon the success of our field plan
with the addition of 30 part-time employees from a highly
successful Summer Night Lights Program for 30 days. It's called
the 30/30 Initiative which will strategically place teams out
in the most under counted communities.
What we've done is working with the philanthropic
communities, identified the census tracts where we have the
highest number of people who aren't returning their forms and
we're sending our teams into those communities. So thanks to
the advancement project and the other canvassers, we've been
able to really enjoy some success, but we've got to do a lot
more and we want to suggest that we review the census
advertising strategy to determine whether it was as effective
as possible in reaching other county communities and assess
whether 3 days is sufficient to truly count accurately the
number of homeless in the city. Although we've been more
successful with that effort, again, we think we need more time.
So thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, for
allowing me to be here with you today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Villaraigosa follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Clay. Thank you much, Mr. Mayor, especially for your
steadfastness and your vigilance to make your city one of the
top participants in the 2010 census. I appreciate that. I'm
sure Dr. Groves will have a response for some of the issues
that you raise. Right now we'll go to Ms. Pasquil.
STATEMENT OF MONA PASQUIL
Ms. Pasquil. Good afternoon, Chairman Clay and members of
the subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me here to testify
today and thank you especially for holding this hearing in Los
Angeles as part of the kickoff to the non-response followup
phase of the U.S. census 2010. This is truly a monumental
effort and it's critical that we take advantage of every
possible opportunity to remind the public how important
participating in the census is.
The challenge of this next phase, the door-to-door canvass
promises to be particularly daunting. We must work together to
engage the least engaged. We must work together to gain the
trust of those who have the most to fear. We must work together
to educate those who are least likely to participate, but often
those who have the most to lose.
We must work together to make sure every single person,
every Californian and all those in our great State are counted.
This phase is critical because folks need to remember that it's
100 percent confidential. We need to make sure that message
gets out. Thank you so much for being here because that, in
fact, does help us. Californians, I urge you, if a census taker
knocks on your door, please answer.
It's my pleasure to be here today with the panelists,
especially to be with Mr. Perez, our speaker, who will discuss
the State's efforts during the non-response followup and make
recommendations for the Census Bureau and Congress to consider.
In 2000, California was extremely successful in
implementing the first-of-its-kind, statewide, multi-lingual,
and culturally appropriate, outreach effort. We spent $24.7
million on our census effort, an investment that enabled us to
achieve a mail participation rate of 73 percent. This was the
first time in history that California's response rate outpaced
that of the entire country, which came in at 72 percent.
For the 2010 census, California and many other States did
not have the surplus funds to spend on a comprehensive outreach
effort, and the Federal Government has played a very critical
role, taking many of the best programs innovated in California
and replicating them nationally. In California, we've also
experienced the good fortune of having private foundations that
have been willing to step forward and invest over $9 million in
outreach, including the California Endowment, the organization
serving as our host today.
However, from our success in 2000, we knew that the State
would need to play an active role in ensuring that a fully
functional ``intergovernmental'' effort was coordinated and
implemented. To that end, the State's role has focused on
convening, coordinating, and collaborating, our very own CCC.
With our very limited budget, California has invested $1
million to fund the 13 hardest to count counties and help them
coordinate their grassroots outreach efforts. These 13 counties
have 80 percent of the hardest to count population in the State
and have been asked to convene, coordinate, and collaborate
with local community partners in their areas to ensure that
outreach efforts are effectively focused and not duplicated.
You will hear more about how counties used these funds from
panelists who will speak later.
Our outreach in 2000 was focused around three critical
elements. Trusted messengers. These are people who the hard to
count populations are most likely to trust. Questionnaire
Assistance Centers, staffed by trusted messengers from the
community and placed in locations in the community where the
staff can help people fill out their forms. Microtargeted Media
Outreach and locally created messages. We learned in 2000 that
culturally appropriate ethnic media outlets are the best places
to get the census message out. Mainstream media, whether it be
traditional or new, it is not, especially at this point in the
census, the best substitute for local media targeting. We need
to hear from our trusted messengers in our own voice in our own
message.
Again, because of the limitations of State funding, many of
these elements have been driven by efforts from the Federal
level. Both the Los Angeles Regional Census Center and the
Seattle Regional Census Center have done a great job in hiring
partner specialists and assistants, all from the community.
California specifically focused on the hardest to count
census tracts and the under count from 1990 where engaging all
those CBOs, trusted messengers, before making placement
decisions. As a result, an analysis was conducted by the State
after the 2000 census that found that tracts with the QACs
funded by the California Complete Count Committee had
populations that were hard to count in 1990, including high
proportions of African-Americans, Hispanics, renters, persons
below the poverty level and linguistically isolated households.
These tracts improved their mail response by an impressive
8 percentage points higher than the census 2000. So while we
applaud the commitment from the Bureau, this committee should
also recognize that until the U.S. Census Bureau has the legal
standing and authority to directly invest in State and local
governments and community-based organizations, the taxpayers
will not receive the greatest return possible on their
investment.
The last critical factor from 2000 was the use of micro-
targeted messages. We know that the U.S. Census Bureau spent
over $340 million for their integrated communications campaign
that included multi-lingual creative advertising, and ethnic
market media buys in addition to the main street market ads and
other buys. We know from California's multi-lingual advertising
efforts in 2000, that it's the locally created advertising
content is what proves to be more effective than the ethnic
advertisements created at a national level. For example, the
bilingual ad copy created for Latinos in South Beach, Miami,
will not be as effective as they are here in Los Angeles.
Commercials created for communities of color in Philadelphia
may not resonate in the East Bay.
Locally created content is just as important as the local
ethnic media buys themselves. To help the enumeration process
particularly now we would therefore respectfully request that
the U.S. Census Bureau media contractors allow Regional
Directors to have greater input, not only with regard to local
media buys, but in also crafting the actual creative message.
Our State has tried to address the lack of locally created
advertising content by investing a small amount of funding to
engage over 60 ethnic media outlets to place ads in 60 to 70
census tracts with the lowest participation rate. Each ethnic
media outlet has received a very small investment to allow them
to create their very own targeted culturally and geographically
specific advertisements. The Ford Foundation also believes in
very localized, targeting creativity and has funded the same
organization to implement these efforts in other States. It's
not too late to apply this and other lessons learned because we
want and encourage a stronger participation. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Pasquil follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Clay. Thank you so much, Lieutenant Governor and thank
you for pointing out the importance of the communications
campaign.
Mr. Speaker Perez, you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF JOHN A. PEREZ
Mr. Perez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank you
and your colleagues on the subcommittee for hosting this
hearing here in Los Angeles. I join Mayor Villaraigosa and Ms.
Pasquil in complimenting you on that. This is a very important
venue for us.
Tomorrow, as has been noted, we begin the labor-intensive
process of the non-response followup, to reach those who,
unfortunately, did not return the census forms that were mailed
out to their homes.
In California, 3 out of 10 homes still need to be counted.
Our State poses a particularly daunting challenge. We represent
12 percent of the Nation's population, but we represent 30
percent of its hard to count populations. Los Angeles County is
the single largest hardest to count jurisdiction in the United
States. And I represent one of the hardest to count districts
in the State legislature, with only a 64 percent response rate,
although that number actually represents an improvement over
2000.
This door to door canvass is an effort unlike any other
undertaken by our government. The goal is simple. Count every
single person. The scope of the process, however, is
staggering. Thousands of workers in California alone are
knocking on doors of every household that failed to mail back
their census form. The census is vital to the efficient
operation of California government. The under count from the
2000 census has cost the State government alone, not including
local governments and special districts, it has cost State
government alone $1.2 billion on an annualized basis, money
that could have alleviated at least some of the budget
shortfalls that we've faced over the past several years.
I'd like to take this opportunity to remind all
Californians that an accurate count is very important to our
State. So when a census taker knocks on your door, please open
your door, please fill out the form, please engage in this
process.
This is one of the reasons why the Members of the
Legislature have been working so hard on census education.
We've encouraged our Members of the Legislature to include
census pitches in all of their community events and make sure
that they schedule events in hard to count areas. Encourage
Members to talk to trusted messengers in low mail response rate
communities about the importance of the census.
We've recorded PSAs, built Web sites, and created Webinairs
for State and local elected officials. As an illustration of
the challenge, Los Angeles Daily News ran a story earlier this
week about the challenges of NRFU within the Latino community.
The story talked about a family that had failed to return its
census form. The irony in the story was that this family had a
sign on their lawn encouraging their neighbors to participate
in the census.
So how do we confront this challenge? First, it's
particularly critical that during this phase that we build the
process from the bottom up rather than the top down. The
challenge is not merely to get a few extra percentage of
response rate in the mailback process. The challenge is to get
every single one of the least likely to participate to actually
join in this effort.
Using trusted local messengers with tailored messages must
be more than just a slogan. It must be the reality of the work
that we engage in.
Ms. Pasquil mentioned the State's investment to develop
these types of messages in some of the hardest to count tracts
in California. I would reiterate that this is only the start.
The U.S. Census Bureau should allow its Regional Directors to
have greater input, not only into the local media buys, but
into the actual creative messaging during the NRFU process.
Second, during this phase, the Bureau needs to continue to
engage community-based organizations. One of the most critical
components of California's efforts are being funded by the
private foundations. They're supporting their own canvass
operations to coincide with NRFU to make sure local, trusted
messengers are directly contacting residents to make sure that
when the census takers knock on the door, the door is answered.
Third, this local tailoring needs to extend beyond just
media programs and actually reach those in the field collecting
forms. Each community has its own challenges. For example, the
practice of hotbedding is a military term referring to the
practice of assigning two or even three crew members sharing
the same bunk, sleeping in shifts. This same practice had been
adopted by some in the immigrant community here in Los Angeles.
In reaching these individuals, census takers already have to
overcome language barriers and trust issues. Even after
overcoming these barriers and trust issues, convincing the
resident to open their door, many times they're unaware of the
practice of hotbedding and may fail to count everyone who
resides at that address resulting in further under count. This
is just one example. I'm sure every member of the committee can
cite different unique challenges in their own home States and
districts.
Fourth, we need to make sure that as we identify
communities that continue to lag in their response rate, we use
a very detailed lens. Two examples come from California's API
community. On a macro level, response rates from the API
community here in Los Angeles have generally been high.
However, that rate is not uniform and could easily miss the
fact that the response rates within Korea Town are low. Failure
to recognize this disparity could result in that community's
numbers not being accurately reflected in the NRFU.
In Fresno County, there's a small, but vibrant Hmong
community, however, due to their relatively small percentage of
the population, they could easily go undetected by the National
Census Bureau. Doing so would particularly be damaging to the
goal of counting every person as the Hmong community and thus,
the most effective messages needed to reach this community are
distinct from the messages that are effective in other API
communities.
Looking forward, there are several recommendations that I'd
like to make from the State's perspective which I expand on in
my written testimony. I want to briefly summarize, if I may,
some of these suggestions.
First, build on outreach successes of this year's census by
recruiting and retaining large pools of outreach specialists.
Second, Congress needs to find a funding mechanism to support
local and CBO efforts. Third, the census must finally end the
confusing practice of forcing Latinos to identify themselves as
White, Black, American Indian, Cajun, or other. Questions 8 and
9 on the form should be combined with Hispanic, Latino, or
Spanish origin added as a sixth racial category.
Finally, recognize that State and local governments cannot
be treated uniformly and we must recalibrate our efforts
accordingly. With that, I'd once again like to thank the
committee for coming to California to talk about the next
phases of the census and I'd like to remind everybody in the
community of the importance of participating in the census
process. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Perez follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you for your
recommendations. We will certainly take them into account when
we do a complete assessment of the 2010 census. I appreciate
it.
You may be invited back.
Dr. Groves, you're recognized.
STATEMENT OF DR. ROBERT GROVES
Dr. Groves. Thank you, Chairman Clay, Members Chaffetz,
Chu, Watson and Waters, I'm happy to be here. It's nice to be
out of Washington, in fact, in southern California.
When I entered my position in July 2009, one of the biggest
uncertainties that I reported to you was the uncertain
cooperation of the American public. This uncertainty arose
because we had seen steadily declining response rates in every
survey we had done and surveys done outside of the Census
Bureau.
I'm happy to say that with some assurance right now, that
uncertainty was removed by the American public in their returns
of the mailback portion of the census. The 72 percent rate
equalled our Nation's effort in 2000 and this is truly a moment
to thank our fellow residents of this country for their civic
engagement.
I also want to note that this success, the success of the
American public here is partly due in no small part, I should
say, to the support of this committee and fellow Members of
Congress and especially the over 200,000 census partners. These
are smaller organizations spread throughout this country, the
grassroots organizations that the previous speakers have
mentioned. I've talked to hundreds, if not thousands of these
people across the country. Their creativity is just incredible.
They have hung door hangers describing the census on literally
millions of houses in this country. They've had census fairs.
They have sponsored poster contests.
I just came back from Crenshaw High School where we
announced the winners of PSA contests that high school kids had
made. All of the message there is positive for the census. They
are indeed the true heroes in my mind of the 2010 census.
They're not being paid. They're not visibly honored by their
locales. They're not becoming famous in this endeavor. They're
working to help their neighborhoods because they believe a fair
count is in the interest of their group and their neighborhood
and their city.
I want to thank them publicly for this and I hope and pray
they have just a little energy left, because we're only halfway
through this wonderful thing called the census.
We now move into the next phase of the 2010 census. We will
knock on the doors of 48 million households that didn't mail
back their form or whoever received a form given the
operational strategies of the Census Bureau. This begins
tomorrow.
Right now, as we speak, there are 600,000 people spread
over 35,000 locations in the country getting trained. They're
actually some of them right now are taking practice interviews.
This is a big moment for us. On Tuesday, we fingerprinted, we
have 1.2 million fingerprint sets to do FBI checks on them to
make sure the American public is safe in this endeavor.
Our challenge therefore over the last 3 months was building
up this applicant pool. We hire locally so that our census
takers capture the local diversity of the community and have
the language skills that several people have mentioned already.
I can report to my delight that this work force is in place
in all but three of the local census offices, 3 of the 500
across the country and we have at least 2 qualified recruits
for every position we're filling.
I can tell you this applicant pool came in much faster than
we ever imagined it would be. We hit our goals quite a long
time ago. In most of the local census offices, the ratio of
qualified applicants to the jobs is a four to one ratio. This
is, no doubt, a reflection of the unemployment rate throughout
the country and we are the indirect beneficiary of the hard
times we're all going through.
Here in Los Angeles, the regional staff has hired more
enumerators in these hard to count tracts because those tracts
will take more time. They have bigger work loads. They also
require more effort to enumerate. The local census offices have
created some charts. If you go to our offices in L.A. you'll
see them. They're called Tract at a Glance Chart. They
summarize, they give a profile of the census tract on one page
with graphical representations to help people deploy the right
work force in areas where there are high concentrations of
apartment complexes. Over the past few weeks, crew leaders have
searched the internet to get phone numbers for apartment
managers and rental offices to help facilitate entry. Crew
leaders plan to call ahead to contact property management
companies to get advanced assistance in those areas.
In high-risk areas throughout the city and the county, or
high-crime areas, we are identifying the best way to enumerate
them. Often this is in a group enumeration and
disproportionately in daylight hours, on weekends. These are
just a few of the ways that the L.A. Regional Staff is trying
to tailor their operations to meet the challenges they face.
I want to assure you that our job at this point is to reach
everyone that has not yet participated in the 2010 census. In
some cases I want to note that this will mean we're going to
call on a house that has already returned the questionnaire. We
ask for the patience of those people who do that.
Questionnaires are still coming in as I speak. We're still
getting returns. Some of those we were not able to cross off
the list before someone has to go out and visit, so we ask
people to be patient and cooperate with our folks when we call
on their houses.
We will not end this phase until we have a disposition on
all 48 million households that we haven't yet enumerated. We
will not quit, therefore, until we get 100 percent response
rate.
I want to note just to update the committee that we have
completed six other operations since the address canvassing
phase in 2009. The committee noted rightly that operation had
an overrun in it. I'm proud to note that all of these other
operations since that time have been on budget and on time. We
have completed these successfully.
We do, however, have an internal risk that remains and I
must alert you to this. When I arrived in July 2009, one of the
highest internal risks was the late software development of a
critical system called the Paper-based Operation Control
System, that's a mouthful. In every testimony I believe I've
given in this committee, I've reiterated my concerns about this
program. We are not out of the woods, but I am happy to report
that last week for us was the maximum load on this system. We
had to print out every assignment area for these 600,000
enumerators. We were sweating a little over the weekend, but we
successfully completed that. This is a testament, by the way,
to the commitment of our staff. This is not a well-loved
software system in the Census Bureau right now, but it is
performing at the level that we need to finish the census in my
belief.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, we have, I believe,
successfully completed the first half of the census, but we
have another half to go. We need the help of local partners in
a special way right now. The message must be that it is a safe
thing to do, to open your door to a census taker who is
carrying one of these badges around their necks and holding one
of these black briefcases, that it's a safe thing to do, that
we're making it as easy as possible. We come to you and we ask
the questions. It should take just a few minutes.
I thank the committee for its on-going support. It's been
crucial to the success of the census thus far and I appreciate
it and welcome your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Groves follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Clay. Thank you so much, Dr. Groves.
Mr. Goldenkoff, you are batting clean up. You're recognized
for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT GOLDENKOFF
Mr. Goldenkoff. Thank you, Chairman Clay, and members of
the subcommittee. I am pleased to be here today at the Center
for Healthy Communities in Los Angeles to discuss the
importance of census participation.
As you know, the U.S. Census Bureau goes to great lengths
to secure a complete and accurate enumeration of the more than
300 million people that live in our country. Last month, the
Census Bureau mailed out questionnaires to around 120 million
households, and hand delivered 12 million questionnaires mainly
in rural localities, as well as in the hurricane-affected areas
along the Gulf Coast. Tomorrow, the Bureau will shift into the
next phase of the census when it will launch its massive non-
response followup effort with the roughly 48 million households
that did not mail back their census forms.
As part of that effort, more than 600,000 enumerators will
fan out across the country contacting each nonresponding
housing unit, as many as six times in an effort to ensure that
everyone is counted. In my remarks this afternoon, I will focus
on first the Bureau's preparedness for non-response followup in
terms of workload and staffing levels; second, why it is
critical for Angelenos and others across the country to
cooperate with enumerator during followup; and third, the key
steps the Bureau needs to take moving forward to ensure that
non-response followup is timely and accurate. The bottom line
is that to be heard Angelenos must be counted.
Nationally, based on workload and staffing levels, the
Bureau appears to be well positioned to implement non-response
followup. When the Bureau determined the non-response followup
workload on April 19th, the National response rate was 63.2
percent which is consistent with the Census Bureau's
expectations. The response rate for the city of Los Angeles was
61.4 percent and L.A. County was 64.7 percent. In terms of
staffing, the Bureau met its goals both nationally, as well as
for L.A.
Participation in the census is critical because it has
decade-long implications for individuals, communities, and
States. For example, census data are used to apportion House
seats, redraw the boundaries of congressional and local
election districts, and help ensure compliance with civil
rights and other laws. A complete count also helps ensure that
L.A. and other areas obtain their fair share of Federal
assistance. This is because more than $400 billion is
distributed each year through formula grants that allocate
money based at least in part on census and related population
data. The grants include Medicaid, highway planning and
construction, Head Start, and the Children's Health Insurance
Program.
According to a recent study by the Brookings Institute in
fiscal year 2008, Federal assistance programs distributed $19.8
billion in total program expenditures or almost $2,000 for each
person in L.A. County. At the same time, local governments in
the private sector use census data for planning and investment
decisions and to better tailor the services they provide.
For example, census data can inform such questions as where
should the next elementary school be built in L.A.? Are L.A.'s
mass transit systems reaching the people most likely to use
mass transit? And where should the supermarket chain locate its
next store?
Following up on nonresponding households is a daunting task
and L.A. presents its own challenges and opportunities. For
example, a planning data base the Bureau developed help to
target its resources placed L.A. County first on a list of the
top 50 U.S. counties with the highest number of people living
in hard to count areas based on data from the 2000 census.
Factors contributing to the areas hard to count challenges
include poverty, unemployment, and language barriers.
To help address these challenges in L.A. and elsewhere, it
will be crucial for the Bureau to engage local government,
neighborhood organizations, clergy, and other trusted voices in
the community to pave the way for enumerators and build support
for the census. It will also be important for the Bureau to
tract various production, quality, and other indicators as
planned to help ensure non-response followup stays on track as
well as to have plans and personnel in place to quickly address
any operational issues that might arise.
Importantly, census participation is safe. The
confidentiality of one's answers are protected by law and
cannot be shared with anyone including law enforcement people
or tax collection agencies.
In summary, participation in the census is a quick, easy,
and confidential act that has lasting impact on States, cities,
neighborhoods, and ultimately individuals right here in Los
Angeles and all across America. However, the benefits that can
accrue from a complete and accurate head count will only occur
if Angelenos cooperate with enumerators when they knock on area
doors in the days ahead.
This concludes my remarks and I'll be happy to answer any
questions that the subcommittee might have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Goldenkoff follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Clay. Thank you so much, Mr. Goldenkoff. I thank the
entire panel for their testimony.
Now we will move to the question period for Members under
the 5-minute rule and I will yield 5 minutes to the
gentlewoman, Congresswoman Waters.
Ms. Waters. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to
thank you for coming to my city to hold this most important
hearing and I'd like to thank you for breaking the rules so
that I could participate being that I'm not a member of the
committee or the subcommittee.
I'd like to thank you for assembling such an impressive
panel here today with all of our leadership.
Mr. Mayor, I'd like to thank you for taking time out to be
here. And of course, our Acting Governor, Lieutenant Governor,
the Honorable Pasquil, and our new speaker of the California
State Assembly, and of course, Dr. Groves and Mr. Goldenkoff.
It is very impressive to see the numbers. It's been
indicated the mail back response nationally is 63.2 percent, in
L.A. City, 61.4 percent, L.A. County, 64.7 percent, and that we
have literally exceeded the goals. And that this is considered
to be successful.
I'm worried, however, about the pockets of challenge that
is referenced by everybody. Let me just preface the question.
You heard from both our mayor and from our speaker that they
could have used similar assistance from the Census Bureau, from
Congress, from the Federal Government in doing their job and I
think they're absolutely correct. We should not have to depend
on foundations and others. This is government work. And I'm
hopeful that perhaps in the next census that will be taken into
account.
I also see the goals that you had set for what you
described as success. Now I want to know where are these
pockets of challenge, for example, in L.A. County? Where are
they and what does that mean for reapportionment? For example,
if they are where we suspect they are in the poorest community
and communities of color, Latin communities, African-American
communities, Asian communities, then this has implications for
reapportionment. So where would you identify them publicly on
the record and then tell me, Mr. Groves, how you plan to
address this under count in these challenged areas?
Dr. Groves. Thank you for that question. First of all,
you're absolutely right and it's important to note that
although the mailback return rate or the participation rate, as
we call it, met or exceeded our expectations, throughout the
entire country there are pockets. We've analyzed those. In
fact, every day of this process I was watching the pockets
develop. We tried to intervene at various ways with more
advertising of those pockets.
When we analyzed what are the biggest drivers on the lack
of return, our data show that they are neighborhoods that are
disproportionately rental housing, disproportionately poor
people, disproportionately----
Ms. Waters. I don't want to interrupt you. I just have so
much time. Where are they in Los Angeles? Identify these areas.
Mr. Villaraigosa. I can tell you where they are in the
city.
Ms. Waters. OK, in the city.
Mr. Villaraigosa. We have four clusters that we're focusing
on. One of them is the area that you represent.
Ms. Waters. Where is that?
Mr. Villaraigosa. South L.A. in the following ZIP Codes:
90011, 90007, 90037, 90003, 90044, 90001, 90008. So that's
South L.A. The four clusters, the other clusters are Boyle
Heights, 90033, 90022, 90063, 90023; the Hollywood Echo Park
area which Congresswoman Watson represents part of Hollywood,
90029, 90028, 90027, 38, 46, and 26. And then in the central
city, Korea Town area, 90057, 90005, 90020, 90017, 90006,
90004, 90019. Those are the areas that we've identified.
One of the things I want to say, when I was speaker of the
Assembly, there actually was money in the State coffers so I
was the individual that actually allocated the money that Mona
Pasquil talks about. This time around there was no money for
that and so the million dollars that you talked about, we were
$23 million down. The city last 10 years ago had more money and
they allocated more money for this effort than we were able to
do. We did this on a shoestring. And as the Congresswoman says,
if there's something to say here, if there hadn't been the
philanthropic and community organizations and by the way, we
have 37 nationalities that have the largest population here. We
focused on those communities, but on the many communities that
make up L.A. If we had not had those partners, this would have
been an abject failure.
My office was the coordinator, without question, but the
philanthropic organizations, the community organizations, they
are what has put us in the position where we're doing better
than last time, but not as well as we need to do. We lost too
much money last time around. Too many people are not getting
counted. We're looking at the real possibility of losing a
congressional seat if there's an under count here. So there's a
lot at stake and I think the Congresswoman makes a really
strong point here.
Cities--we're the ones that engage in this. Cities need a
bigger partnership than we're getting to do this effort. I do
want to say that our local Census Bureau folks, I don't know
where Jamie is--here he is, he's been very responsive, again on
a shoestring budget, but we've got to have more resources to do
this work.
Ms. Waters. Thank you. I think my time is up, Mr. Chairman,
but I'm hopeful that we can find out what the effort is going
to be to deal with these challenged areas. Do they double up on
enumerators? Do they do additional media work? I hope that in
this discussion we can discover that.
Mr. Clay. I think we will get a response from the Bureau on
that and before I move on to Mr. Chaffetz, let me ask unanimous
consent of the committee to allow Representative Waters to
serve on this committee. Thank you. So ordered.
Representative Chaffetz.
Mr. Chaffetz. Thank you again all for your testimony. I
need you to know that I was most impressed with the mayor's
testimony. It was no coincidence that he mentioned Eva Langoria
in his written testimony, so I'll give him kudos for that.
Maybe if we can just go down the table. You all mentioned
things, but maybe if the first three of our witnesses here, I
want to be crystal clear, particularly with the Census
Director, Members of Congress here, what is the No. 1 thing
that you need the Census Bureau to do in your personal opinion,
what is the No. 1 thing you want to see the Census Bureau do to
make sure that they maximize the participation in the
enumeration?
Mr. Villaraigosa. I associate my comments with some of what
I heard Ms. Pasquil and the speakers speak to. I think if I had
to pick one thing, we need more resources to do this. And I did
mention 3 days to count the homeless--we have the largest
homeless population in the United States of America. So to put
cookie cutter, you know, deadlines on everybody, we've a more
daunting task here with the numbers of homeless people that we
have in the city.
Mr. Chaffetz. Thank you.
Ms. Pasquil. Agreed. Resources, funding. It's critical in
this phase to reach out to people, but in their language and in
the best way possible. The messaging and how you convince the
least engaged is really dependent upon the crafting of that
message and it must be done locally and we need the resources.
Mr. Chaffetz. Do you feel that they don't have enough
personnel? Is your concern that they don't have enough
enumerators there ready to go starting tomorrow?
Ms. Pasquil. Enumerators, but also the messaging for local
advertising.
Mr. Perez. If I may?
Mr. Villaraigosa. Before you do, Mr. Speaker, I have
another commitment to be at. We have 15,000 people at the
Sports Arena.
Mr. Clay. Mr. Mayor, we understand and we appreciate your
time and your dedication to this effort. Thank you.
Mr. Perez. If I may followup on Ms. Pasquil's statement. We
should not give short shrift to the notion that we have to have
very specific messaging to different sub-communities. The Asian
Pacific Islander community is tremendously diverse. It is
diverse within itself and it is diverse in different geographic
areas. The same is true for the Latino community. Oftentimes
there are different levels of appreciation of that. When we do
the API community, we often understand at least the basics that
there are different languages in which we must communicate. We
fail to appreciate sometimes the difference in using language
within the Latino community. That is a huge challenge and only
by engaging local message designs can we most effectively
address that.
The issue of trust is huge. When a message isn't crafted in
a way that is best suited to the audience, it undermines the
trust that is so essential. I've got to tell you, there's one
issue that I'm concerned about that we haven't talked about and
that is the unknown under count. Households that respond and
therefore not captured in the NRFU, but we have under counted
who is in their house because they are fearful of disclosing
that they had more people in their residence than their lease
or their rental agreement allows for.
I talked about hotbedding. In parts of my District, it is
not uncommon to find two, three, and sometimes four people
sharing a bed on shifts. To the extent that those folks may
have responded to the written survey, I am fearful that they
may have under reported residents within their own households
and this absolutely gets to the question of apportionment and
reapportionment that Congresswoman Waters so very clearly
raised for us today.
Ms. Pasquil. Sir, I have an example we might share as well
with the community from San Bernardino American News, but it's
a local ad and it's with the group of the New American Media
that we have worked with to reach out to our various
communities, but it goes out to, it's by our own young people.
In the messaging, it looks familiar and it is familiar and
people will look at it.
Mr. Chaffetz. Mr. Chairman, if it's OK I'd like to ask
unanimous consent that we insert that into the record.
Mr. Clay. Without objection. The San Bernardino----
Ms. Pasquil. American News.
Mr. Clay. American News shall be entered into the record.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Chaffetz. And one final question, I know my time is up,
but Dr. Groves, what is the one thing that you would ask of the
local community leaders in helping the census execute and with
that, after he answers, I'll yield back the balance of my time.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Groves. I hope we keep the dialog, first of all, but
the one thing to answer quickly, looking ahead is the trusted
voice, the confidentiality message we think is the most crucial
now. For those who chose not to fill out the questionnaire some
of them are afraid. And trusted voices locally can deliver that
message a lot more effectively than somebody from Washington,
DC. So that's my hope.
Mr. Clay. Thank you so much. We will now go to
Congresswoman Judy Chu, 5 minutes.
Ms. Chu. Well, thank you for coming out and in particular
our elected and appointed leaders. Chairman Clay, this is a
very distinguished group and I thank you. It shows how much you
care about the census that you are here for this particular
hearing.
Let me ask this. I think there are some people out there
that say well, ``what is in it for me? Why should I even put in
this little tiny bit of effort to fill out the census form?''
Can you give an example of where a greater response in the
census would make a difference in a person's life here in L.A.
County?
Ms. Pasquil. Schools. We've been going to schools and the
Complete Count Committee, all the members have been going to
schools and to neighborhoods and have talked about money for
schools, money for hot lunch programs, money for hospitals.
When you bring it forward in a very personal level where you
talk about this is not just about yes, it's all about Los
Angeles in this country, but when you talk to people, when
these trusted messengers talk about how it personally affects
our families that has been the most compelling, particularly
the young people that we've been working with to reach out.
Mr. Perez. I would associate myself with those comments.
And I would remind you that for the State alone it's a $1.2
billion annualized loss. So when you look at the devastating
cuts that we've had to make in education, in transportation, in
housing investment, those are all tied to the ability for us to
leverage for that Federal return that is so significantly based
on our response rate to the census.
People in California are generally frustrated that we don't
get back as high a return on our Federal tax dollars as we
think we're entitled to, 78 cents on the dollar. The single,
easiest way to increase our return on Federal money is to fill
out the census accurately and completely so we get our full
share.
Ms. Chu. Dr. Groves, I think there's still some people out
there that just don't trust the census. And don't trust that it
truly is private. What kind of training is there for the
enumerators to keep the information private?
Dr. Groves. That is one of the cornerstones of the
training. There are two cornerstones with regard to the
treatment of folks that they will visit. One is that they treat
everyone with respect and since we hire locally, that helps a
little I think.
The second thing is this pledge of a confidentiality. A
wonderful--if you read the history of censuses, you become an
admirer of the Founding Fathers in a new way. They knew this
country was going to be a country of immigrants and they set
the foundation for a set of strong laws that Congresses have
passed over the years to protect these answers from any use by
an enforcement agency. These are really strong laws. It's one
of the proudest things I think we can all say as residents
because mainly new immigrants come from countries where central
governments have been oppressive and they need assurance that
their answers will be protected and we have those laws. That's
a message we need to deliver nationally and the message has to
be matched by local trusted leaders. That's the only way it
works, I think.
Ms. Chu. And the penalty for not adhering to this law?
Dr. Groves. If I would breach that law as an employee of
the Census Bureau, I'd go to prison for 5 years and I would
have a $250,000 fine. And by the way, this is a lifetime oath.
When I leave this office, I'll still be obligated by that law.
Ms. Chu. And has this ever been breached by a census
worker?
Dr. Groves. To our knowledge, we have no individual cases.
The laws have changed over the years, but under the current
legislation, I don't have examples of that to give you.
Ms. Chu. So nobody has ever been reported to the
immigration officials then?
Dr. Groves. Never to my knowledge.
Ms. Chu. Thank you.
Dr. Groves. Nor to any other enforcement agency at the
local, State, or national level.
Ms. Chu. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Clay. Thank you. Representative Watson, you're
recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Watson. Yes, I also want to add my thanks to all the
witnesses. This has been very helpful, very informative.
I noticed something that occurred. Those of us who are in
Congress, we have a residence in Washington, DC. I got a census
form in my mailbox in my apartment building and I made it out,
but it says ``other.'' Now this is not a vacation home. I am
not traveling. I am here to work. So I would hope that the form
does not count me twice because I filled out the form for my
home where four people live. So I did write where it said
``other'', Dr. Groves, I am a Member of Congress, this is
temporary, etc. How is that handled?
Dr. Groves. Congresswoman, it's interesting. I've had a lot
of conversations with your colleagues about this issue over the
past few weeks. So we count people where they usually live.
Each of us has to make this calculus. Many Members of Congress
are usually living in Washington, but a lot of Members of
Congress are at home for 3 days a week or at least 2 days a
week. That may be you. So we ask that you fill it out where you
usually live.
And then there are two special questions this year that I'm
quite hopeful about. We asked you to say do you sometimes live
somewhere else? There's a little check box. We're going to
followup on you, perhaps, because we probably mailed it, if you
have a residence here, we probably mailed you a form here as
well. And we're going to make sure that you're not duplicated.
So you can check up on us to see if we followed up properly.
That's our intent.
Ms. Watson. We're having this discussion, but you might
want to go ahead, Maxine----
Ms. Waters. No, no, no. I don't want to take your time, but
I got four in my Washington, DC, condo and I got three more in
Los Angeles. I started to fill them all out.
Ms. Watson. I have an apartment in Arlington, VA and I
would not want my personage to be counted in Arlington, VA. I'd
rather have it counted in Los Angeles where the need is the
greatest. So I wish there would be special attention. She
received four and I don't know how many people live in the
residence.
Ms. Waters. One.
Ms. Watson. One. So we really need to sort that out. That
might be a problem. There are 435 of us sitting in the House
and 100 over in the Senate and if that happened with the
majority, we really would have over counted some places and
under counted in others. So I just raise that as something that
was a concern to me.
Dr. Groves. On March 1, 1790 this discussion was held and
some of the Founding Fathers who were Members of Congress at
that time had to sort through this, although the transportation
was a little different at that time, I must admit. And they
decided that everyone would be counted where they usually live
and it turns out every 10 years since 1790, we've tried to do
that as faithfully as possible. I acknowledge the complications
for those of us who have multiple residences. It's a challenge
to us every decade to make sure we don't get duplicate counts
and that's why we added those questions.
Ms. Watson. Thank you. The 1980 census I called the
Director to my office and particularly the Regional because I
noticed something. I had my own legislative office on a very
busy main street, but above all of those street level
businesses were apartments where people were living. And I
noticed that you never see the occupants until the weekend and
I see them playing in the parking lot, playing over at the
school grounds on a Sunday and so on, so I suggested that we
particularly go out on the weekends and go to places, because
the people up there over the liquor store were hotbedding and
there were different people living in one bedroom, hotbedding
and counting two people.
So I suggested that the enumerators not look like they're
official, but dress like the people who are playing on the
parking lot and the kids who are playing on the school grounds.
And don't carry that clipboard. Go out and talk with people and
find out where they live. So I don't know if that's being
followed up on, but I just want to say this, the city of Los
Angeles has on any given night between 70,000 and 90,000
homeless and I think we're doing the job by sending out people
to count and having their address be at the closest center
around, but that becomes a real issue.
People now are sleeping on the sidewalks. They're living on
the sidewalk and so the approach to them and I was up there at
a post office and very--shall I say peculiar behavior, so we
need to approach them with people who really understand who the
homeless population actually is. And we might get closer to a
more accurate count if we send out people well trained.
By the way, I just told you they were training in my office
and I was really appreciative of 20 or 30 of these people, the
enumerators.
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Representative Watson.
Let me ask, Dr. Groves, can you show the subcommittee a few
media clips that the Bureau has developed to encourage trust
and inform the various communities about NRFU?
Dr. Groves. I'd be happy to do that with the cooperation of
the wonderful technology in this room, it looks like we're all
set up.
Let me tell you something about the messaging. We started
the advertising for the non-response followup stage on April
26th. It's different messaging than we had in prior
commercials. The messaging before was if you have this form,
fill it out. Now we're showing videos with census takers in
mind and they have these black briefcases that I have a copy of
here and they're wearing this badge. The whole messaging is
about be nice to this person when they come, open your door. So
I don't know whether we're ready to show some of these. I don't
know how to do this.
Mr. Clay. I'll go on to my next question. Let me ask
Speaker Perez----
Dr. Groves. Looks like we're getting close, Congressman.
Mr. Clay. Are you ready? OK.
[Video was played.]
Mr. Clay. Just one? Apparently, they're having technical
difficulties. Let me continue with the questioning, until they
get it together.
Let me ask----
Dr. Groves. We've got one in Korean coming up. 0
[Video was played.]
Mr. Clay. OK, we get it. Thank you so much. Let me ask and
I appreciate the commercial. Let me ask Speaker Perez, do you
believe concerns regarding recent immigration legislation in
Arizona will have a detrimental effect on the census efforts in
California, particularly the NRFU door to door efforts?
Mr. Perez. I'm fearful that unless we do an aggressive job
of communicating using trusted messengers that may be an
impediment. I will tell you that I am sure that it will be an
impediment in the State of Arizona. For somebody that opened
their door in that environment, I think it is a very, very
challenging proposition. Here in Los Angeles, we have a huge
challenge with making sure that we reinforce the messaging that
we have been delivering about the confidentiality of the census
process.
I will tell you in my office I convened meetings with all
the religious leaders in my District, to have them engaged in
the process of talking to people about the confidentiality. It
is going to be a huge challenge for us. I think it's incumbent
upon the Bureau to find special resources to deliver the
message of confidentiality very directly as we move forward in
this NRFU period, otherwise, we absolutely run the risk of
having a greater under count than would otherwise be the case.
Mr. Clay. Thank you for your response.
Mr. Goldenkoff, according to your testimony, have the
glitches in the paper processing system been worked out and--go
ahead.
Mr. Goldenkoff. Not yet, but the Bureau is going to great
lengths to correct them. They're working with the different
companies that supply the different application systems, but
it's still a risk area and time will tell. So far the Bureau
has been able to do what needs to be done so far, but it is a
frustrating system for the people who have to use it and we'll
have to see what happens when the enumerators go into the field
next week and how well it performs then.
Mr. Clay. And that involves the tabulations. Is it
tabulations?
Mr. Goldenkoff. No, it's more the--it's operational support
on a day to day basis. Basically, it marries the 600,000
enumerators with the 48 million housing units that need to be
followed up on. It provides progress reports and tells them
where to go and how fast they're doing it. It's more of a
management tool than tabulation.
Mr. Clay. OK. Final question, how do the dollars expended
upon NRFU 2010 compare with the past efforts?
Mr. Goldenkoff. It is more in terms of total dollars, but
it's a lower percentage of the overall cost of the census. I
don't have those figures directly in front of me. It was a
little bit over $2 billion for 2010 non-response followup.
Mr. Clay. OK.
Mr. Goldenkoff. The total cost of the census was $14.7
billion.
Mr. Clay. Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Perez. Mr. Chairman, if you would allow me to just
briefly expand on the answer to a previous question? One of the
things I was struck by is that as we've increased our response
rate over 2000 here in California, in particular, Los Angeles,
there is one area that I think is a particular concern. The
overall response rate for English-speaking Latinos is on the
rise as compared to 2000, but for Spanish-speaking Latinos,
it's on decline. So getting back to the question that you
asked, that already decreased rate of response amongst Spanish-
speaking Latinos, coupled with concerns over what has been
happening in the immigration debate in Arizona and how it's
translated into an overall sense of heightened tension is very
concerning.
We see these patterns whenever there is an economic
downturn of increased inner-group tension. But here we have the
confluence of that and the timing of the census which causes
great concern for us. And that again speaks to the need of us
doing an extra special outreach program in this NRFU period.
Mr. Clay. And the Bureau's effort should be targeted?
Mr. Perez. It should be and it shouldn't just be a
translation of a message. This gets to the point that Ms.
Pasquil and I were trying to make. There is a difference
between translating a message into a specific language and
actually crafting a message to a specific community. When you
saw those two ads I didn't understand the words that were
spoken, but they were the exact same ad in Korean and Japanese.
It is my very clear sense from them that the message was the
same message. I think we would probably benefit from a more
nuanced message targeted to each of the communities
differently.
If you look at the response rate between the Japanese-
American community here in Los Angeles and the Korean-American
community, very different response rates. So what are the
underlying cultural issues impacting people's level of trust,
people's level of sense that it is proper and safe to interact
in this process? So language in and of itself isn't the
solution. Messaging has to be crafted in a way that maximizes
the way to people's participation.
Mr. Clay. And then begs that the Bureau make the extra
effort to target those communities.
Ms. Pasquil, any closing remarks?
Ms. Pasquil. And you can do that by allowing your Regional
Officers to do that and work directly with the communities and
the local media creative and buyers.
Ms. Waters. Mr. Chairman, I still did not hear what was
going to be done that was different for these challenged areas?
I did hear the compliment that was paid to elected officials to
say that we needed to use our voices, but Mr. Groves, that's
not enough. Aside from sending the enumerators out, what are
you doing that's different and special in the challenges areas?
Mr. Clay. And let me followup on that, reclaiming the time,
and Dr. Groves, hasn't the Bureau held back funds to deal with
the issues raised by Speaker Perez and others to target
specific groups during NRFU?
Dr. Groves. We have, I think the first answer is that we
have targeted those areas, trying to use local media as much as
possible. I admit there's--it's frustrating that you can't do
everything you want to do. Everything you say I agree with, by
the way.
Ms. Waters. We've got some specific ZIP Codes that were
showing these areas. What is going to be done to get to those
ZIP Codes? It cannot be generic. It cannot be the kind of video
buys that you've done in the past. How are you going to get
down into those communities? Excuse me, will you yield for a
minute for the gentle lady?
Ms. Watson. I'm looking in the back. I see Danny Bakewell,
publisher of the Sentinal and you're now, if I understand
president of the Black Publishers Association. A paper like
that, that comes right into our community and read within the
community, might be helpful to invest in for them to present
the message in a way that will reach those who cannot be
reached in other ways.
So I would suggest using the press in these areas that
become pockets where it's hard to count. And let me just ask if
I may, Mr. Chairman, if you will make a comment when the time
for the public to comment, is there going to be a time for the
public to comment?
Mr. Clay. We've got another panel that we're going to
invite.
Ms. Watson. I was just asking for some suggestions.
Ms. Waters. I'm reclaiming my time that was yielded to me
by the chairman. I did not have an opportunity to get into some
questions about the lawsuit that has been levied against the
Census Bureau about the way you do hiring. Let me just say that
I at one point in time recognized that there was going to be
some difficulty getting these forms back in from challenged
areas in my District, so I held a census Town Hall meeting for
the purposes of hiring at Southwest College. We had 300 people
there. I started to call them and out of almost 100 calls that
I've made, I've found only two people who had been hired. These
were people who came directly from the community.
Now, the lawsuit that has been levied is a lawsuit because
you do it a little bit differently than the civil rights law
says we can do in the Census Bureau. The question of have you
ever been arrested as opposed to have you ever been convicted
appears to be utilized by the Census Bureau and if one has been
arrested, it appears that they just get thrown out of the
window, that those in that group do not get hired. We talked
about the fingerprint and the FBI and all of that.
But if I ask you about public housing projects in East L.A.
and in South Central Los Angeles and you told me that there was
a terrific under count and I asked you who would you hire to go
into those areas, if you hired people who have ever been
arrested, based on your forms, you're going to have great
difficulty in getting the kind of response that we need because
unfortunately Latinos and Blacks are disproportionately
arrested and even convicted in some cases. But the arrest
records of young Blacks and Latinos is so disproportionate, but
it is predicted that living in certain communities, by the time
you're 17, 18 years old, you're going to have been arrested.
You're going to have been stopped by the police and you're
going to get arrested. If nothing happened, they let you go.
But I would like to ask, there are public housing projects,
particularly in East L.A., downtown and South Central, we need
to see what those responses are. And I think they're probably
going to be a lot less than the average is nationally, L.A. or
for the State. And then I want to know whether or not you can
shore up the work that's being done with some of those
applications that have been thrown aside from people who live
in those areas and who came from those areas who tried to get
jobs. Because if you're talking about trying to do something
about the under count, the challenge there, you've got to do
something different.
It can't be that elected officials are going to say you
guys don't know what you're doing, you better go out there.
Nobody is paying any attention to that. And the ads certainly
are not going to do it. They were not culturally significant.
We've got Cinco de Mayo coming up. Juneteenth will be coming
up. You don't factor that kind of stuff into it.
Tell me what you're going to do and if you don't know what
you're going to do beside what you've already said, maybe you
should let some of us give you suggestions like I'm trying to
give you now about how to get Nickerson Gardens counted.
Mr. Clay. Before Dr. Groves answers, let me share with the
committee the struggle that the Bureau has had as well as I
with the minority party on this committee about qualification
for employment and how they demanded a list of what kind of
infractions hirees could have and could not have, what kind of
crimes they committed and they demanded a listing. And we
struggled with it for a couple of months until the Bureau came
out with a list. And that was the demand--they came out with a
list of which crimes were allowable to even be detained for.
And which kinds of crimes were not allowable for people who
would be temporary workers in the census.
Ms. Waters. But if you've been arrested and you've
committed no crime, you were arrested, but you were let go, you
should be eligible for a job.
Mr. Clay. And that's why I brought it to the minority's
attention that you're going to exclude numerous people from
certain communities because as you said, young Black males,
young Hispanic males, are all the time being pulled over, being
stopped, being detained.
Ms. Waters. These are your challenged communities. What are
they going to do about it, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Clay. I'll let Dr. Groves tell you what he did.
Mr. Perez. Mr. Chairman, may I ask to be excused? I have an
event at a community hospital that I have to get to.
Mr. Clay. Yes, sir. Mr. Perez.
Mr. Perez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Clay. It's been a pleasure having you too. Thank you
for your attendance.
We're about to wind it up if Dr. Groves can answer the
question.
Dr. Groves. I share the concerns of recruitment in every
area. If you think about where the workload exists now, these
are areas throughout the country where the issues you bring up
are salient.
I can say that with the restriction of hiring within these
areas, within the local Census Office areas, we have been
successful in recruiting a team that fulfills our workload
needs.
The process that we went through, as the chairman noted,
was one that was revised, reviewed by the Office of General
Counsel, by OPM, by EEOC. We've tried to walk that narrow line
and it's a very difficult thing to do to hire locally and
indigenously because we know that works better. And then also
at the same time to assure the American public that we have a
screening process that puts pretty salient in our viewpoint
their safety, that we can assure them that we've reviewed the
backgrounds of these people and that they can be assured that
when someone knocks on the door, they have been reviewed in a
way that we follow. I understand the limits----
Ms. Waters. Mr. Groves, that's why you have a lawsuit.
You're in violation of civil rights laws in a way that you did
this hiring. I appreciate what you're saying, but you still
can't tell me how you're going to get these challenged areas
counted?
Did you put more resources into them?
Dr. Groves. Yes.
Ms. Waters. How?
Dr. Groves. We put more human resources into them. We put
more media resources into them.
Ms. Waters. So what did you do in terms of the way you
hired enumerators, did you double them up to go into these
areas?
Dr. Groves. We made them proportional to the workload. And
these areas that you're talking about have hot--by the very
fact that we're talking about them having bigger workloads than
others.
Ms. Waters. Yes, but if they have bigger workloads, have
you accommodated that?
Mr. Clay. And also, Mr. Groves, hasn't the Bureau held back
funds to deal with the issues raised?
Dr. Groves. Absolutely.
Ms. Waters. Mr. Chairman, I would hope they would
specifically identify, first of all, public housing projects
all over the country, whether we're talking about Los Angeles
or New Jersey or Harlem----
Mr. Clay. St. Louis.
Ms. Waters. St. Louis, that's right. All about Crossgrove
Village in St. Louis. Is Richardson Gardens still there? And
tell us what has happened with them and how you have doubled up
your resources? It's not clear to me, if there are
extraordinary workloads to be done, you would have accommodated
that in the regular work that you do, so if that didn't get it,
that means you've got to do even more and so we want to know
how you did that, with the enumerators you're sending in, how
much different than what you've done already. We want to know
whether or not you asked the local newspapers to do special
editions and to distribute them door to door because a lot of
people, poor people don't buy newspapers.
We want to ask how you targeted these additional resources
that you've held back in ways that will do extraordinary work.
When can we get that, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Clay. The Director will respond verbatim, question by
question in writing.
Ms. Waters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Clay. If there are no other questions for this panel
this panel is dismissed. Thank you all for your testimony and
we will call up the second panel.
[Off the record.]
Mr. Clay. The statement submitted by Congresswoman Laura
Richardson for this subcommittee shall be submitted for the
record. And without objection, so ordered.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Laura Richardson follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Clay. I will now introduce our next panel. Our first
witness will be Dr. Robert Ross, president of the California
Endowment and our host for this field hearing.
I also want to recognize that our host has done a
magnificent job of training, of conducting a training seminar
for census workers right down the hall today. So thank you for
your efforts to conduct a full and accurate census for Los
Angeles County.
Dr. Ross has been president and CEO of the California
Endowment since September 2000. During his tenure, the
Foundation has worked to increase access to health care for all
children, strengthen the community health centers, improve
health services for farm workers and ex-offender populations
and to strengthen the pipeline for bringing racial and ethnic
diversity to the health professions.
The Endowment has led 2010 census outreach efforts in the
State of California raising more than $10 million to promote
the importance of participating in the census. Dr. Ross is a
Diplomat of the American Academy of Pediatrics and received his
undergraduate, in Public Administration. Medical degrees from
the University of Pennsylvania. Thank you for being here today
and for opening up this wonderful facility to the subcommittee,
Dr. Ross. We appreciate it.
Dr. Ross. Thank you.
Mr. Clay. Our next witness will be, we will hear from Ms.
Gina Montoya, chief administrative officer of the Mexican-
American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Ms. Montoya is
responsible for revamping MALDEF's communication and
technology. Ms. Montoya brings nearly 20 years of experience in
nonprofit management and legislative experience to MALDEF. She
has served as the chief of staff with two mayors and a State
Senator. Founded in 1968, MALDEF is the Nation's leading Latino
civil rights organization, often described as the law firm of
the Latino community. MALDEF promotes social change through
education, advocacy, employment and political access. And thank
you for being here, Ms. Montoya.
Our next witness will be Mr. John Cho. Mr. Cho is a Korean-
American actor and musician currently starring in the ABC
television drama Flash Forward as FBI Agent Noh. Mr. Cho
appeared in the 11th Star Trek film as a young Lieutenant Sulu
and I'm a big Star Trek fan so I am so glad to have you here.
His comedic and dramatic credits include the Harold and Kumar
series and the 1999 best picture Oscar winner, American Beauty.
He has appeared on a variety of shows at East West Players, the
Nation's preeminent Asian-American theater troop. Born in
Seoul, South Korea and lives in Los Angeles, Mr. Cho began
acting while studying English literature at the University of
California at Berkeley. He resides here in Los Angeles and I
thank all of our witnesses for appearing today and look forward
to their testimony.
It is the policy of the subcommittee to swear in all
witnesses. I would ask you to stand and raise your right hands,
please.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Clay. Thank you. You may be seated. And let the record
reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative.
We'll start with the testimony. Dr. Ross, you may begin.
STATEMENTS OF DR. ROBERT ROSS, PRESIDENT, CALIFORNIA ENDOWMENT;
GINA MONTOYA, CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER, MALDEF; AND JOHN
CHO, ACTOR
STATEMENT OF DR. ROBERT ROSS
Dr. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I can be brief in my
remarks. Most of the remarks that I prepared had already been
reiterated or mentioned in the previous panel which was an
excellent panel.
I'll just make a couple of comments. I do want to
acknowledge our trio of terrific congressional Representatives
that were here today, Congresswoman Waters, and Congresswoman
Watson, and Congresswoman Chu. You have been warriors for
social justice in under served and voices in this community.
We're just so thrilled to benefit from your leadership and have
you here today.
A couple of comments just to reiterate and underscore the
comments of the previous panel. A successful census count is
important to the building of healthy communities and may seem
odd that a president of a health foundation and its burdens are
concerned about this, but this is what it means to the State of
California if we don't have a good census count. First of all,
even though a grade of 90 percent is typically a good grade in
a math class, I wish my son had ever achieved a 90 in any math
test in his academic career, but a 10 percent under count in
the State of California means a loss of $40 billion over a 10-
year period to the State.
And in those $40 billion are resources where programs like
the Children's Health Insurance Program, SCHP, mental health
services, alcohol and drug treatment services, community health
centers and community clinics, the MediCal programs, all of
these programs are driven in heavy doses by formula funding and
what's used to calculate that formula funding are census
figures. This is why an under count is so critically,
critically important to this community and this is why I think
the mayor was leaving here today to go to the Sports Arena
where literally tens of thousands of Los Angelenos who can't
get health care are standing in line, hopefully waiting for
someone to provide with some charitable health care because, in
part, we're not receiving our fair share of Federal resources.
So this is how this issue is hitting us in the face today, just
a few miles from there, are many Angelenos that are not
receiving the kind of health care they need.
On the solutions side, I really appreciated the line of
questioning from our Congresswoman, it's a two-legged stool, it
takes two steps in tandem. One is the community organizations
that know the communities, where to find the under counted
populations, are trusted by the community. Remember in the year
2000, $23 million in State funding supporting these community-
based organizations so they had the capacity and the
infrastructure to walk the neighborhoods and get these counts
done. This year, that dollar figure from the State because of
the State funding crisis is down to $1 million or less than $2
million which is why the philanthropic community stepped in to
try to--not make up for all the losses, but at least for some
of that. And we've been able to support this effort with $4
million from our own Board of Directors headed toward an
accurate census count.
The second piece that you heard from the first panel is
trusted ethnic media. And so if there are resources to answer
the Congresswoman's question, if there are resources to get at
those under counted communities, those are the two pieces that
demand and require more targeted critical support. The
community-based organizations in those neighborhoods, trusted
by the community, highly function in those neighborhoods and in
those community organizations, and No. 2, ethnic media. The
ethnic media has to be supported in terms of getting the
messages out in their newspapers and radio and other forms of
communication. So I would underscore those two points.
And anything you can do, Chairman Clay, in your committee
to support the efforts of the Census Bureau to use those two
vehicles to really get at these under counted communities over
the next several months, we'd be happy to do anything we can do
to support the efforts of bringing those folks together. But
you have our full support and I want to thank you for
leadership in raising this issue with the American public.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Ross follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Clay. Thank you so much, Dr. Ross. You certainly can be
assured that this subcommittee will work with the Members that
are here today, especially Representatives Chu and Waters and
Watson who have taken such a keen interest in the census,
especially with us having a full count of all communities
throughout this country. I appreciate your testimony, Dr. Ross.
Ms. Montoya, you're recognized.
STATEMENT OF GINA MONTOYA
Ms. Montoya. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, members
of the subcommittee and guests, thank you for inviting the
Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund [MALDEF],
to testify at this hearing to examine ways to increase
participation in non-response followup. MALDEF appreciates this
opportunity to present to the subcommittee information about
our efforts to date and efforts for the enumeration phase,
specifically as we target the hard to count Latino population
throughout America.
MALDEF is committed to an accurate and complete census
count to ensure Latino communities receive their fair share of
public funds and political representation. We have regional
Census Directors across the Nation who have led our efforts to
raise awareness and encourage participation and ensure a more
accurate count in nearly every high Latino population area that
is identified as a hard to count area.
With the challenges of the current unparalleled level of
distrust in the immigrant community, with workplace raids,
family separation, the Nation's economic downturn, and what was
a growing senseless boycott buzz early in the campaign, MALDEF
has met the challenge with a multi-faceted outreach strategy
that has endeavored to counteract the apathy in some cases,
uncertainty, mostly, much fear and even anger that surrounds
the notion of sharing personal information about our families.
In addition to the thousands of community hearings,
presentations and town halls, church meetings, conferences,
festivals, schools and door to door canvassing, MALDEF has
deployed a multi-million dollar, multi-media strategy to
complement and augment our outreach in targeted high Latino
population areas. Our outreach efforts have incorporated face
to face, television, radio, print, and the internet. MALDEF's
regional Census Directors, the national Census Director, the
president and general counsel, regional counsel, and nearly
every MALDEF employee have instructed, provided materials,
answered questions, and led the difficult work of calming the
fears and concerns of America's hardest to count Latinos in
persuading, encouraging, and convincing them to participate.
We have enjoyed the support and participation of
celebrities, electeds, the clergy, and numerous trusted
messengers, known and beloved internationally, nationally, and
regionally, including a $3.5 media campaign with Eva Longoria
Parker that played in all of the largest markets across America
and two very well known in our community actors and a very
famous balladeer, who is an older gentleman of ill health, who
is beloved in our community and that's had a tremendous impact
as well.
Our strategy to reach millions of Latinos has integrated a
grass roots campaign with a multi-media campaign, and a strong
community education campaign. Some of the elements of our
community education campaign have been to include inserts in
the largest Spanish speaking newspapers. This is our motto and
our image for the MALDEF's census campaign, [in Spanish] fear
does not count, because that's the greatest emotion that we're
facing in our communities as they--actually, fear opening the
door to someone who appears, who may appear to be from the
government. That along with very simple messaging on how
important, safe, and easy it is to participate, this sort of
fundamental messaging has been very effective in our community.
It went out in half a million newspapers across the country as
an insert in daily newspapers.
The palm card bilingual is also a very effective tool as we
passed out these in the millions across the country at events.
And our newest enumeration flyer is again a bilingual message,
a very important--I'll get to that in a moment. We also did
something that works in our community. We did a comic novela
that is in Spanish and in English by a very well known artist.
He's in 50 syndicated newspapers across the country. The
Spanish is dated more for the first phase. The English version
actually has the enumeration message of how you identify
someone who comes to your door and how to feel safe when that
person does come to your door. Very effective tool, also used
as inserts and at community events.
So this very brief overview describes MALDEF's activities
to date, probably 10 percent of what we've actually done.
MALDEF's outreach plans for the enumeration phase have begun
with a launch of a series of national days of action to conduct
door to door canvassing in concert with Spanish language media
for even greater outreach as it plays on local and national
newscasts. We have created an enumeration phase, bilingual
information flyer, which I just showed you that informs people
of the safety and confidentiality of this phase, how to
identify an enumerator and critically important to show with
our hard to count communities is the cautionary message that
enumerators will never ask for and one should never show Social
Security cards, credit cards, immigration documents, home
titles, rental agreements, etc.
For the first phase, MALDEF created an 8-minute
informational, instructional DVD and we're creating a new one
for the enumeration phase. These have been and will be
distributed nationally and played in waiting rooms of
government offices, social service centers, clinics, churches,
consulates and schools, etc. We've created about 6,000 of those
and we intend to distribute those across the country as well.
We also plan TV, radio, and print media outreach for this
phase specifically. So to wrap, our enumerator phase and our
folks have been out for weeks now canvassing door to door, that
face to face contact, our individual staff persons and
volunteers may not be well known in the community, but they're
a warm face, they're a friendly face. They speak the language,
were culturally sensitive. We know the fears that they're
feeling and so they open the door and they agree and they
pledge to participate. And so we're going in front of the
enumeration phase that launches officially tomorrow to tell
them they're coming because you didn't do this, now
participate, and do your civic role.
We also did media language rollouts in indigenous languages
because in the labor camps of California, you have farm workers
who don't speak Spanish or English. They speak their own
obscure--in California or in the U.S. indigenous language. We
did those in four separate native Mexican languages. Very
effective. We're playing those in little supermarkets, ice
cream trucks, and they play on radio in the Central Valley in
San Diego, in Los Angeles and in Phoenix.
MALDEF's view of participation as a civil right of all is
the motivation behind our outreach efforts. Our recommendations
are simplistic and in line with everyone else's here. We need a
major, massive purchase of Spanish language, this is
specifically for our community, television and radio time in
high Latino population areas, especially in Arizona.
With what has occurred there in the middle of a national
census in a State whose census response rate was already below
the national average is inconsistent with our national
constitutional imperative of completing a full count of U.S.
residents. We need an army of trusted, religious, and celebrity
messengers on TV and radio and we also need to conduct an
intensive media outreach campaign to inform the Colonia
residents of south Texas, another very, very heavily impacted,
confused crowd. They were willing and then it's like you're not
going to get it in the mail. We're going to come to your door.
Confusing messages don't help, but we're trying to work
together to get in front of that to say ``look, the plan
changed'' or ``it's different than what we thought.'' ``We're
going to be there with you.'' ``Please participate,'' and
they're eager to participate. We haven't found people to be
abruptly antagonistic about the census necessarily. They just
want more information and they want to know that it's
confidential. And having that legal piece about the
confidentiality has been an incredible boost to our messaging
effort. That carries an impact that's very different than what
they're used to in their home countries. So it means something
to hear that. A person who violates that confidentiality may
spend up to 5 years in prison. That's very important.
Another very popular element that works in our community is
the telethon on Spanish language television. Telethons allow
individuals to call in and ask questions anonymously and that's
a very popular modality for our community. They trust the
figures that deliver the news day in and day out and along with
trusted community messengers, answering phones, telethons are a
very effective way of getting those questions answered.
Again, the purchase of print ads in large and small daily
and weekly periodicals, especially the Spanish-speaking
magazines and newspapers, and especially Catholic newspapers
are very effective in our communities.
Thank you.
Mr. Clay. Thank you so much, Ms. Montoya.
We will now hear from Mr. Cho. You're batting clean up.
STATEMENT OF JOHN CHO
Mr. Cho. Good afternoon, Chairman Clay, and members of the
subcommittee. I want to thank you for the opportunity to
testify at today's hearing on an issue I consider vital. As an
actor who has been in many youth oriented films, the phrase I
hear most from Asian American kids is ``thanks for
representing,'' something I'm sure you hear. Because there are
relatively few Asian actors in film and television, my presence
makes them feel seen and heard by the entertainment industry
that they support with their time, viewership and dollars.
A generation ago, I felt a similar pride watching George
Takei on the bridge of the Enterprise in the original Star Trek
series. In a small way, his presence made me feel that I was a
legitimate part of the larger American culture, something I
didn't always feel growing up as a Korean immigrant.
I am speaking here today because the census, much more than
appearing on television, is a real opportunity to represent our
respective communities.
Thanks to the Asian Pacific Legal Center for this bit of
data, over 5 million Asian Americans and 280,000 Pacific
Islanders live in California. We make up roughly 14 to 15
percent of the Golden State.
Paul Ong in UCLA's Urban Planning Department estimates that
150,000 to 175,000 Asian American Pacific Islanders in
California were missed and not accounted for during census
2000. To put that into perspective, that's like missing the
entire city of Pasadena to the tune of roughly $2.1 billion in
appropriations lost over the course of a decade.
Being counted ensures that your community receives the
dollars it deserves and needs to provide services like
education, health care, and voting rights. So I want to urge
those listening to open their doors to the census workers,
secure in the knowledge that they are federally prohibited from
sharing their data or otherwise invading your privacy. They are
forbidden from collecting Social Security Numbers and cannot
ask or determine whether you are an undocumented resident.
And I want to say particularly to the sons and daughters in
families where English is not the primary language, please
assist your parents. As a junior high school student I helped
my parents fill out FEMA forms when our home was damaged in the
Whittier earthquake. And I know there are kids out there who do
much more; children who translate in the emergency rooms, who
translate principals' notes, Medicare and tax forms, and
translate customer orders for their family run businesses.
Your parents might be reluctant to allow strangers into
their home. I know that's the way mine are, but it's time for
you to step up and explain to them how important an opportunity
this is, and how easy it is. In doing so, you will be
representing your family, your race, culture, and neighborhood.
So thank you for allowing me to speak. Asian Americans have
been historically under counted in the census and it's a
privilege to be a part of the effort to accurately portray the
composition of our country.
And finally, I want to say to those who have already sent
in their forms, and those who plan to cooperate with the
enumerators who will be coming to their doors, ``thank you for
representing.''
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cho follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Cho, for that perfect and powerful
message and for you representing, too.
At this point we will go into the 5-minute question period
and we will begin this time with Ms. Chu.
Ms. Chu. Ms. Montoya, your array of programs for the census
are just very, very impressive, particularly since they're so
culturally specific. You use forums that are familiar to the
communities like the novelas to reach out to them.
I was wondering where you got the funding for that?
Ms. Montoya. We have been very fortunate to receive
national philanthropic funding. We received funding from the
California Community Foundation for a very innovative Internet
Web application that actually incorporates a game for texting
to youth, that they can then link on to a Web site that shows
the United States of America and how people are pledging to
participate, that in turn, gives the participant a 25-song iPod
card which is pretty interesting, pretty neat and innovative.
The Ford Foundation, the House Foundation, the Joyce
Foundation, we have operations all across America, so some of
our funding is specific, for example, in Chicago and it's
mostly foundation support.
Ms. Chu. How has the coordination with the Census Bureau
been?
Ms. Montoya. The coordination in Los Angeles has been
great. The coordination has been varied in other parts of the
country. The coordination here in Los Angeles--we actually have
a very close relationship with them and we share a lot of
information, so it's good to have that relationship to be able
to share information as it's occurring in real time so that we
can spot react and be proactive.
Ms. Chu. You mentioned the Arizona law, but are you going
to be doing something to address that going forward?
Ms. Montoya. Relative to the census?
Ms. Chu. Yes.
Ms. Montoya. It has actually had the impact of encouraging,
especially young people, especially students to volunteer in
greater numbers. And so we're working very closely with them to
help message correctly to negate the great amount of fear. Some
of the homes that we've gone to previously are now empty and
that's of great concern and it's a tragedy really. As you know,
MALDEF had its press conference yesterday and we do intend to
bring a lawsuit.
Ms. Chu. And Mr. Cho, what might have made your parents
more likely to open up the door to an enumerator?
Mr. Cho. I think the message that would have been useful
for my parents to hear is that it's safe, the information is
safe, but also the emotional message that would have helped
would be this is a way to ensure your children's future. I
believe that an accurate count is the beginning of ensuring
rights for their children and I think that message would have
been something that would have been very powerful for people
like my parents.
Ms. Chu. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Congresswoman. Congresswoman Waters,
you're recognized.
Ms. Waters. Thank you very much. I would like to thank our
witnesses for appearing here today, sharing with us your
thoughts about the census and sharing with us actual activities
that you're involved in.
Ms. Montoya, you identified several sources of funding,
mostly foundations. Do you get any funding from the U.S. Census
Bureau at all?
Ms. Montoya. MALDEF is prohibited or we have by our
charter, as a nonprofit organization, we do not accept
government funding at all at any level of government.
Ms. Waters. How much have you organized in private
foundation money?
Ms. Montoya. About $1.2 million.
Ms. Waters. I beg your pardon?
Ms. Montoya. $1.2 million.
Ms. Waters. So you're continuing some of the challenging
areas that were identified today, some of those ZIP Codes, the
ZIP Codes that you need to be paying attention to, how do you
plan to up the activities, what does it take?
Ms. Montoya. Well, we were out there today. Our census
staff and volunteers, today was one of our national working
days on the census and so we were in several of those ZIP Codes
today with little armies of students and volunteers to go door
to door, to knock on those doors to share that message. And
again, I want to reiterate how important it is to have that
face to face contact. It isn't so challenging once people
understand the good that can come from the census, that it's
safe, that it benefits your community in all of these many
ways, and in some instances we tell people MALDEF will be there
to protect you, if you are violated in any way.
Ms. Waters. Do you screen your volunteers the way the U.S.
Census Bureau screens volunteers?
Ms. Montoya. No, we do not and I've taken complaints from
various community groups throughout the State that are very
distressed, and throughout the Nation actually, are very
distressed about the conflict in what the Department of Justice
evidently approves for a hiring process, and what the U.S.
Census Bureau has restricted itself in terms of hiring. It's
been very frustrating and very disappointing to people who
thought they might have an opportunity to be helpful.
Ms. Waters. Including volunteers and others to help do this
work, have you run into the kind of problems that the Census
Bureau, by the way that it acts, would have you believe that
they have to work so hard to keep these bad people from being
employed? Do you run into these bad people out there who we say
``no way can we let you work with us.'' Is that a problem at
all?
Ms. Montoya. No, it hasn't been. We do a very intensive
training. We provide everyone with the message points that
they're to do.
Mr. Clay. Ms. Montoya, can I ask you to speak directly into
the mic, so we can get the recording?
Ms. Montoya. Of course. So to answer your question, in
short, no, we have not. We invite people to volunteer. We do
not screen them in that manner. We do provide a training and we
do a lot of role playing to make sure that they have the
messaging right. We provide them with those message points and
it's a very brief interaction, actually, that they're doing
door to door and our Census Regional Directors are on top of
all of it as we go door to door canvassing.
Ms. Waters. Thank you. Perhaps we can get you to train the
U.S. Census Bureau on how to do this. They obviously do it
differently.
Dr. Ross, thank you for allowing us to be in this beautiful
space here and your participation--have you received any
requests from other ethnic organizations to do the kind of work
Ms. Montoya has been doing? Those were wonderful materials that
were produced there. They are so appropriate for the outreach
that they are doing. I haven't seen that in the Black
community, in the Asian community. I haven't seen it anywhere.
I've just seen it here.
Have you had any requests for assistance?
Dr. Ross. In fact, Congresswoman, we've had more requests
than we could handle. There's a group of actually 10
foundations in the State of California with about $16 million
in funds. We're funding over 200 organizations across the
State. The majority of them, ethnic organizations, many of them
African-American organizations, and we've got more requests
than we can handle.
Ms. Waters. Any from the NAACP? Someone was here today from
the NAACP. Did they request funding?
Dr. Ross. We did get a request from the State Chapter which
we could not accommodate, but I think we're funding a local
NAACP Chapter, but I can get back to you with exact funding on
that. But I would say the following is at the stage that we're
at now, using a comment that Mr. Cho might be familiar with,
now that we have information about the specific information and
data about the under counted ZIP Codes, we all need to go into
work drive on those under counted ZIP Codes.
And actually, we've had good cooperation from the local
Census Bureau representative, Mr. Jaime Christy, but if there
are, in fact, resources available, Federal resources available,
particularly to focus on those under counted areas, we can all
get in one room with maps about these under counted areas, then
perhaps we can target all these more assertively and
strategically in combination with Federal dollars and see if we
can get more bang for the buck. But we've had far more requests
for funding these organizations than we've been able to handle.
And in fact, Congresswoman, as we've had budget planning
for our budget last year, we didn't have any money set aside
for census outreach because we didn't see it as the nature of
our business. Our grantees are usually health centers and
hospital and mental health providers and so now we find
ourselves in the business of trying to make up for what State
government has not been able to do. But I can tell you we've
had far more requests than we have been able to handle.
Ms. Waters. You're absolutely right, and as I said earlier
today, the government should pay for this count and this is the
responsibility, a constitutional responsibility of the
government to pay for this count. However, for those
foundations and organizations who take it upon themselves
because they understand what it means in terms of resources to
communities, we're very appreciative for that, very, very
appreciative for doing this kind of work.
So Dr. Ross, since you've entered into it already, let me
just say that for the communities for which I'm going to be
working with the chairman and the Bureau to take a very, very
close look at, in the Los Angeles area, we have a number of
organizations in these areas, whether we're talking about--
there were several ZIP Codes that they named today, but you
have the Watts Gang Task Force and we will see what we can do
looking at what kind of resources they have in government.
We're going to look and see if you'd like to again align
yourself with, but including seeing what you can do to help us
out. Appreciate that.
Dr. Ross. Be happy to.
Ms. Waters. Thank you. Let me just say, someone was talking
about young people assisting parents. It's a very effective way
of working. As a matter of fact, what I think a lot of people
are beginning to understand is it was a very effective
operation in the Obama campaign with the older Jewish community
in Florida. What they did was they asked the young people to go
in and work with them and to talk with them about the issues
and no one had really done that before. And sometimes, there
was a matter of translation, but other times it was a matter of
just understanding the issues a little bit better. And they
created a whole data base and it worked wonderfully well.
Now what you said here today is right on, but you're not
going to see that in a census media because again, what they do
is not culturally sensitive. They act to reach out, but the ads
were basically American ads that were translated, rather than
being culturally sensitive language that everybody has been
referring to here today.
How we get them to do that kind of work, I don't know. But
it surely is missing and based on what we saw today, people are
not going to open their door simply because it says be friendly
and kind to your census taker. It just doesn't get it. So I'm
hoping, Mr. Chairman, we can try one more time to see if in
this last stage that we can get them to be more culturally
sensitive with the dollars that may be available to help with
this push.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Clay. Thank you. Let me ask Dr. Ross, you know,
California is home to 10 of the 50 counties in the Nation that
have been identified as being the hardest to count. Can you
tell us your outreach efforts in these 10 hardest to count
counties? As a matter of fact, the census tract that we are
situated in today where the California Endowment is located,
had a mailback rate of 57 percent.
What kind of outreach efforts do you see being needed, to
get as close as we can to a full count?
Dr. Ross. The 200 organizations, the coalition of
philanthropic organizations as identified across the State,
represents a wide swath of African-American, Latino, Asian
Pacific Islander-led organizations. So local, for example, it
might be the community coalition or SCOPE or the California
Alliance here in Los Angeles. These organizations that have
worked in these communities, know these neighborhoods
intimately, know the issues intimately and I think at this
point what I would welcome and certainly would be in support
of, we can work with the Foundation, but also with the Census
Bureau on this is let's get a war room set up, let's get the
maps on the wall, let's get some numbers and data and targets
up there and let's really make the next several months of this
campaign to put the private sector funding in support with the
community-based organization and advocacy organization
leadership, organizations like MALDEF, like the NAACP, like
Asian Pacific American Legal Center. And let's get all in one
boat and each rowing in the same direction about how it is
we're going to get those better numbers coming out of those ZIP
Codes and out of those neighborhoods.
There are elements of that sort already underway, but I
think we need to move with a sense of urgency and a sense of
collaboration and a sense of real team work and hopefully, I
think based on the folks we've been working with, folks are
really able to do that and I think if the Census Bureau asserts
that kind of leadership in this next phase, we'll be there in
support. The private sector will be there in support, and the
community-based organizations, the ethnic organizations, the
trusted messages, and the trusted messengers, will all be in
support. But I think the next several months are going to be
absolutely critical.
Mr. Clay. It seems like there has to be a buy in of the
Census Bureau with the Regional Director really being the
coordinator of this effort and an active participant that's
directing these resources toward this effort.
Dr. Ross. And we found that the Regional Coordinator has
been responsive and has been supportive, but let's get a sense
of urgency over these next several months.
Mr. Clay. As you say at warp speed.
Ms. Montoya.
Ms. Montoya. If I may, I just passed along a DVD of the 8-
minute informational instruction that we created that we're now
going to transfer into the enumeration phase message. I'm not
certain that they'll be able to play it, but just so that you
get a contrast of how significantly different our own messaging
is. I'm not certain that they'll be able to play it, but
perhaps just a few seconds of it.
Mr. Clay. We'll continue with the questions.
Mr. Cho, do you believe that government distrust still
exists and hampers the ability to fully count the Asian
community or do you attribute that to additional factors? What
can we do to allay the fears? Just like you connected to young
people in your testimony and showed how?
Mr. Cho. I'm not an expert, but yes, I do believe
government mistrust is a problem. I know my father was a
preacher for many years in Glendale, CA which is a few miles
away. And he had a largely immigrant congregation. My
experience was that whenever there were any issues with the
congregant's legal problems, school problems, police problems,
they would come to him first. Then they would respond. They
would go to him for counsel, because they came from countries
and communities where there was a less incentive trust with
essential government, so that certainly is an attitude that
needs to be combatted and to be dealt with, absolutely.
Mr. Clay. Thank you. Are we ready for the video? No, you're
not sure.
Representative Watson, you may ask.
Ms. Watson. I have been informed that most of the clusters
are in my District, the 33rd District. And I wanted to describe
the boundaries of it so you'll be really clear. We go from 79th
Street out south all the way up to that Hollywood sign and then
we go all the way over to where the 134 and the 5 intersect at
Riverside. And then we take in the University of Southern
California and go on down.
It is the most diverse district in the State and maybe the
most diverse in the country and there are certain kinds of
cultural pockets that I don't know who you address. I have a
big Armenian community up in Hollywood.
Mr. Clay. Really?
Ms. Watson. Oh yes, yes.
Mr. Clay. We'll play it now.
Ms. Watson. Just filling in time.
[Video was played.]
Ms. Montoya. That's just an example. You see how starkly
different that is, but that resonates in our community because
those are real people and those are the people that we've
focused our efforts on, the hard to count Latino population.
Yes, some of us live on pretty little streets like the
commercial and that's perfectly fine, but we all answered right
away. Now we're at the second layer, at the really hard to
count population and that's who these folks represent.
Ms. Waters. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Clay. Yes.
Ms. Waters. One of the things that I noticed about the
Census Bureau was a 30-second ad. You don't hear about anything
in 30 seconds. It's gone like that. And I noticed what you just
showed us was longer than any 30 seconds and even though I did
not understand all of the words, it sure looked good.
Ms. Montoya. Thank you. Well, we were also blessed to hire
a two-time Emmy award winning international journalist, but
thank you very much. It is an 8-minute--that's why we play it
in waiting rooms across the country.
We also have the 30 second spots, but this is our 8 minute.
Mr. Clay. Representative Watson.
Ms. Watson. What I find is that with all of the languages
that are spoken, the translation from one language, say
Japanese to English is not always accurate, but there are words
that are not translatable. The actions are. And so what we need
to do is see that we have moneys, Mr. Chairman, into these
various ethnic and these pockets and let them come up with what
will reach them, you see.
You know, you look at scripts on TV and you'll see a Black
person speaking. I say, ``they would never speak this way in a
certain place. Who's writing the scripts?'' You know
immediately. And so I think what is so catchy about this is
that people on the streets are speaking to each other. And I
think if we were to direct that money that's in reserve to a
responsible organization like MALDEF in the Hispanic community,
if we were to direct it to people who can then come up, write a
little script, have people who look like them speaking, I think
that would make a difference.
Ms. Montoya. Much agreed.
Mr. Clay. Thank you so much. Let me wrap up this hearing,
but thank the California Endowment for their hospitality. Let
me also thank my colleagues who helped make this hearing what
it was today, to help us heighten the awareness throughout this
community and throughout this country and over the last year or
two, they have tolerated me and put up with me in our
persistence in getting to this. And what we will do is when we
go back to Washington next week, we will draft a letter to
Director Groves asking him to actually come together with
groups here in this community and across America to bring those
extra resources, to bring it to the regional level so that we
can collaborate. Who better knows than those Regional Directors
what are really needed. And we have to get this right. We have
to get it right.
So let me conclude by saying thank you to this panel and
thank you for your involvement in the census. We appreciate it.
That concludes the hearing. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 4:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[The prepared statement of Hon. Diane E. Watson and
additional information submitted for the hearing record
follow:]
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