[Senate Hearing 111-148]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 111-148
MAKING THE CENSUS COUNT IN URBAN AMERICA
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICES,
AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE
of the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
of the
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
FIELD HEARING IN PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
MAY 11, 2009
__________
Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
----------
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
51-025 PDF WASHINGTON : 2009
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800;
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Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
MARK PRYOR, Arkansas GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
JON TESTER, Montana
ROLAND W. BURRIS, Illinois
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Brandon L. Milhorn, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT INFORMATION,
FEDERAL SERVICES, AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada
ROLAND W. BURRIS, Illinois
John Kilvington, Staff Director
Velvet Johnson, Professional Staff Member
Bryan Parker, Staff Director and General Counsel to the Minority
Deirdre G. Armstrong, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statement:
Page
Senator Carper............................................... 1
WITNESSES
Monday May 11, 2009
Hon. Michael A. Nutter, Mayor, City of Philadelphia.............. 3
Hon. Michael N. Castle, a U.S. Representative in Congress from
the State of Delaware.......................................... 6
Hon. James Baker, Mayor, City of Wilmington...................... 9
Camille Cates Barnett, Managing Director, City of Philadelphia... 12
Thomas Mesenbourg, Acting Director, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S.
Department of Commerce......................................... 23
Norman Bristol Colon, Executive Director, Governor's Advisory
Commission on Latino Affairs, Office of Governor Edward G.
Rendell........................................................ 25
Patricia A. Coulter, President and CEO, Urban League of
Philadelphia................................................... 28
Wanda M. Lopez, Executive Director, Governor's Advisory Council
on Hispanic Affairs............................................ 30
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Baker, Hon. James:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 45
Barnett, Camille Cates:
Testimony.................................................... 12
Prepared statement........................................... 47
Castle, Hon. Michael N.:
Testimony.................................................... 6
Colon, Norman Bristol:
Testimony.................................................... 25
Prepared statement........................................... 58
Coulter, Patricia A.:
Testimony.................................................... 28
Prepared statement........................................... 66
Lopez, Wanda M.:
Testimony.................................................... 30
Prepared statement........................................... 69
Mesenbourg, Thomas:
Testimony.................................................... 23
Prepared statement........................................... 52
Nutter, Hon. Michael:
Testimony.................................................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 41
APPENDIX
James White, Policy Coordinator of the Philadelphia Association
of Community Development Corporations, prepared statement...... 71
MAKING THE CENSUS COUNT IN URBAN AMERICA
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MONDAY, MAY 11, 2009
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management,
Government Information, Federal Services,
and International Security,
of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Philadelphia, PA
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in
Kirby Auditorium, National Constitution Center, Philadelphia,
PA, Hon. Thomas R. Carper, Chairman of the Subcommittee,
presiding.
Present: Senator Carper and Representative Castle.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Welcome. It is an honor to be here at the
National Constitution Center. I am Tom Carper, and I Chair a
Subcommittee in the U.S. Senate that has jurisdiction over,
among other things, the U.S. Census. And it is great that we
are here at the Constitution Center because among the duties
that are spelled out in the Constitution for us to undertake on
an ongoing basis is every 10 years to conduct a Census and to
count as best as we can the number of people who live in this
country.
Earlier this morning, back in our home State, I and former
Governor Castle visited a public school in our State. And as a
congressman, he still visits a lot of our schools, as do I. And
we held a town hall meeting, Mayor, right in your city, my
city, where we had the fourth and fifth graders from Kuumba
Academy, K through 5, a charter school, who came and was good
enough to open up their school. And we had a great 60 minutes
on the Constitution. And among the things that they learned was
that in the Constitution, it actually says every 10 years you
count the people that we have.
The kids asked great questions about why do we do this.
What if somebody died the day before you do the count or after
you do the count? What if a baby was born? Do you count people
in jail? Do you count people that are homeless? How do you do
all that? Great questions from fourth and fifth graders.
We are honored today to have the Mayor of Philadelphia,
Michael Nutter. Mayor, welcome.
Dr. Camille Barnett, welcome. You should be welcoming us
because this is your city. This is a great place, by the way,
and I am delighted to be here with our mayor. Both the
congressman and I live in the City of Wilmington. Jim Baker is
our mayor.
Mayor, it is great to be here with you, as always.
I want to welcome one and all, including our audience, to
the latest in a long series of hearings that our Subcommittee
has held on the preparations for the 2010 Census. Today's
hearing will focus on the challenges associated with accurately
and cost-effectively counting America's cities. My thanks again
to Mayor Nutter and to the National Constitution Center for
hosting us.
The 2010 Census is rapidly approaching with Census Day now
less than a year away. On April 1, 2010, one of my favorite
days of the year--but on April 1, 2010, the Census Bureau will
embark upon what many have described as the largest peacetime
mobilization in American history. With a $15 billion budget and
an army of 1.3 million Census takers, the Census Bureau has the
great responsibility to ensure that nearly 300 million
residents of our country are correctly counted.
Finding and counting nearly 300 million individuals in the
correct location is clearly a daunting task. Census taking has
become even more challenging in recent years as our Nation's
population has grown steadily larger, more diverse, and
increasingly difficult to find. These challenges are compounded
by the fact that, for a number of reasons, people have become
more reluctant than they have been in the past to participate
in the Census.
During the last Census in 2000, significant progress was
made in improving response rates and reducing the number of
Americans who went uncounted. Despite this success,
undercounting remained a problem in some communities. The
Census Bureau's own data revealed that in 2000, some 6.4
million people were missed and another 3.1 million were counted
twice, producing a net undercount of some 3.3 million people.
Here in Philadelphia, the 2000 Census failed to count more
than 19,000 residents. And in my home State of Delaware, more
than 7,000 people living in New Castle County, home to the City
of Wilmington, our largest city, were missed.
What makes these errors particularly problematic is their
impact on a number of historically, hard to count populations.
Minorities, renters and children, for example, are more likely
to be undercounted by the Census, while more affluent groups,
such as college students and individuals with vacation homes,
are more likely to be counted more than once. In 2000, Asians
were missed nearly twice as often as whites, African Americans
missed nearly three times as often, and Hispanics were missed
four times as often.
Reaching out to those who historically are hard to count is
even more important when you consider that for every 1 percent
of the population that does not respond to the Census, the
Census will have to spend about $90 million to go door-to-door
in an effort to try to count every single person.
An inaccurate 2010 Census will also leave many States
without their fair share of Federal dollars. The undercounting
that occurred in Delaware in 2000 likely cost the State about
$1 million in Federal funding. At a time when localities are so
desperate for funds, leaders like Mayor Nutter and Mayor Baker,
are forced to raise taxes and fees, and consider difficult
budget cuts. Making sure that all communities get the money
that they deserve from the Federal Government should be a
priority. And by virtue of your presence here today, you are
demonstrating that it is indeed a priority.
Finally, because Census data is used to apportion seats in
the U.S. House of Representatives, inaccuracy results in
undercounted communities being underrepresented in Washington.
So, as the Census Bureau begins its final preparation for
2010, we need to make sure that it is reaching out aggressively
to historically undercounted groups. With less than a year
until Census Day and the confirmation of our next Census
Director, hopefully just a couple of weeks away, we look
forward to the testimony of our witnesses and learning how
Congress can best partner with the Census Bureau as it works
for achieving its goals of a complete and accurate Census in
2010.
Normally, I would call on Congressman Castle to make his
statement at this time. But the mayor of Philadelphia, Mayor
Nutter, is in a tight schedule. We promised to get him out the
door by 4 o'clock this afternoon--no, I am kidding. [Laughter.]
We promised to get him out the door by about 1:20. So I am
going to yield to him and ask him to say whatever he would like
to say. And we are honored that you are here. Delighted to be
in your city. We know you are going through a tough time here,
as we are, just about everywhere. We wish you well and look
forward to working with you going forth.
Mayor Nutter.
STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL NUTTER,\1\ MAYOR, CITY OF
PHILADELPHIA
Mayor Nutter. Mr. Chairman, Senator Carper, thank you so
much for this wonderful opportunity and, of course, for the
accommodation with regard to schedule. I teased Congressman
Castle when we were in the back that I will be pretty brief and
I will yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from
Delaware. And so, I will move on, but I do really appreciate
this opportunity to speak on such an important issue.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mayor Nutter appears in the Appendix
on page 41.
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Mayor Baker, thank you so much for your great leadership
and work. And I also I want to welcome our Managing Director,
Camille Barnett, as well.
For the record, good afternoon. My name is Michael Nutter,
Mayor of the City of Philadelphia. I would like to thank you
for this opportunity to speak about the difficult challenges
faced by the City of Philadelphia in trying to ensure an
accurate population count in the 2010 Decennial Census.
A 1999 survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors estimated
that Philadelphia stands to forego $2,263 in Federal and State
funding for every person not counted in the Census. Given
Philadelphia's current fiscal crisis, with a $1.4 billion
deficit over the next 5 years, it is imperative that we get the
2010 Census count right.
Getting an accurate population count means the Census
Bureau must count every single person living in the City of
Philadelphia by April 1, 2010. With a population of well over
1.4 million as of 2008, based on the most recent Census Bureau
estimates, that is a daunting, enormous task. The two biggest
challenges, as we see it, facing the Census Bureau for
Philadelphia are the following: One, locating and contacting
every household residing in the city regardless of their living
situation and, two, once they are contacted, encouraging them
to accurately respond to and return their Census forms.
Accurate address listings are critical to the success of
this process. As you know, the Census Bureau uses a master
address file based on the list of addresses from the U.S.
Postal Service. Under the Local Update of Census Addresses
(LUCA) program, local governments are afforded an opportunity
to review the master address file for errors and omissions and
to submit address corrections. The Philadelphia City Planning
Commission began working with the Census Bureau on this process
back in November 2007.
Most Philadelphians live in traditional housing units which
will be easy to count. However, as a result of the policies
incentivizing the conversion of vacant and deteriorated
commercial and industrial buildings to multi-family residential
properties, a substantial number of Philadelphian residents now
live in non-traditional structures. We need to ensure that the
addresses for all of these additional and sometimes hard-to-
find units are recorded in the Census Bureau's master address
file.
In addition, the City Planning Commission matches the
Census Bureau's master address file against a combined file of
other city address records. In April 2008, the city submitted
to the Census Bureau almost 56,000 additional addresses not
listed in the master address file. This represents roughly 10
percent of all city addresses. We are working to review and
update all city records of new housing developments to ensure
the master address file is the most accurate and complete
postal mail address list possible.
The downturn in the economy also likely presents challenges
to obtaining a complete population count. The displacement of
people through job loss, mortgage foreclosures and housing
abandonment will complicate the enumeration process. While
Philadelphia has not seen the great increase in foreclosures
experienced by other parts of the country, in some parts of our
city it may be difficult for address canvassers to accurately
identify occupied housing units amidst foreclosed properties.
In neighborhoods that are plagued with vacant and abandoned
structures, it will be difficult to get Census enumerators to
follow up on Census forms that are not returned.
As I mentioned earlier, getting an accurate population
count is dependent not only on contacting all residents but
also on making sure they return their Census forms. Research by
the Census Bureau notes that, traditionally, hard-to-count
populations include economically disadvantaged populations;
groups with high poverty rates; high unemployment and low
educational attainment levels and linguistically isolated
populations; and foreign-born populations with limited English-
speaking skills living in ethnic enclaves. Based on this
research, African Americans are disproportionately represented
in the economically disadvantaged category and Latinos are
disproportionately represented in the linguistically isolated
category.
Reaching these disadvantaged populations to get an accurate
and complete count will be difficult not only because of
language barriers but also because of suspicion over how these
data will be used. Therefore, significant and continuous
outreach efforts are needed to educate Philadelphia's African
American, Latino, and other disadvantaged communities about the
importance of the 2010 Census.
Because of the diversity of Philadelphia's foreign-born
population, outreach efforts must also be multilingual. The
Census Bureau must ensure that adequate multilingual Census
materials and enumerators are available to assist the various
foreign-speaking communities. They must also work with local
partners to allay the concerns of foreign-born residents who
may fear reporting to the INS, or deportation, or others who
are just suspicious of government.
To respond to these challenges and achieve an accurate
count, we are developing a comprehensive approach to improve on
the city's 2000 Census response rate of 56 percent. The basic
elements of this plan include, (1) issuing a mayoral executive
order which will engage city departments and agencies in the
planning and execution of outreach plans; (2) developing a
citywide campaign, such as the Complete Count Committee, which
will target education, marketing and outreach to hard-to-count
populations; (3) establish a multicultural network on Census
2010, which will guide our efforts to reach immigrant and
newcomer communities. This initiative will also target the LGBT
community and populations in the city with high concentrations
of undocumented residents. And last, work closely with our
local school district to promote the Census Teaching Guide
throughout our neighborhood schools.
We will, of course, continue our diligent efforts to ensure
that the master address file is complete, accurate and includes
all newly constructed and converted housing units so that
Census forms are properly delivered; cooperate with
institutions of higher education, city correctional officials
and housing providers for elderly, ill or other disadvantaged
populations to accurately record all group quarters'
population, since many people living in the latter situation
may also be eligible for programmatic assistance; and support
comprehensive follow-up by Census enumerators to count the
residents of neighborhoods most seriously impacted by the
economic recession and property foreclosures.
Finally, it is critical that the Census Bureau begin to
make partnership funds and other resources available to local
communities for increasing public awareness about the upcoming
Census. It is only through communication and public
consciousness raising that we can hope to have a successful,
accurate count.
In closing, the City of Philadelphia and my entire
administration pledges to work closely with our local Census
Bureau office to overcome the challenges I have described today
and obtain a complete count in the 2010 Census.
Thank you very much.
Senator Carper. Mayor, thank you very much for an excellent
statement. Obviously, the City of Philadelphia has a great deal
at stake in terms of getting an accurate account. And from what
I have heard, what we have heard here this afternoon, a lot of
the things that need to be done to ensure that we count here in
Philadelphia, to the best of our ability, every single person,
I think we are well underway.
Mayor Nutter. Thank you.
Senator Carper. I know we promised we would excuse you so
you can head on. I know you have an 1:30 engagement. You are
good to come. These are tough times for government. We wish you
the very best----
Mayor Nutter. Thank you.
Senator Carper [continuing]. And look forward to working
with you going forward.
Mayor Nutter. Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with
you and, of course, Congressman Castle as well. The partnership
and relationship between Philadelphia and, of course,
Wilmington, Pennsylvania and Delaware is very strong. Thank
you.
Senator Carper. Congressman Castle, before I turn to you, I
understand there is a 3-minute video that is being prepared to
be shown.
Can somebody tell me whether or not we are ready to roll
that now?
[Video played.]
Senator Carper. Well, I sure am glad I do not have to
follow that. That was great. But a man who is up to the task of
following that video, and any video I can think of, is our dean
of the Delaware delegation in the U.S. House of
Representatives, former lieutenant governor, and my friend,
Congressman Mike Castle.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL N. CASTLE, A U.S.
REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE STATE OF DELAWARE
Mr. Castle. Well, thank you, Senator Carper. I am very
pleased to be here. I am not a member of this Subcommittee. In
fact, I am not even a member of the Senate. So, I am very
pleased to be able to be here with you and to be able to share
some thoughts with our distinguished panelists we are going to
hear from today, and to talk about the Census a little bit.
It is very interesting that we are in the Constitution
Center, the basic structure by which our government is run, and
Census is who we are. And this next Census is vitally
important. They are all vitally important, but this next Census
is vitally important. I think lessons have been learned from
past Census difficulties, and I appreciate what I have been
reading and hearing about some of the programs.
I did go to the opening of the Census office outside of
Wilmington, Delaware and feel that the people I spoke to there
were well prepared to move forward. And I think we have good
people working in this. And I think some of the comments being
made today by our panelists are extraordinarily important.
I mean, we need to understand the significance of the
Census. We hear about earmarks, for example, in terms of
Federal funding. But the bottom line is that most Federal
funding for programs is done by population, not by earmarks. It
is done by how many people may live in a State or how many
people live in a city. And the decision is made that you get
such a percentage of dollars, whatever that may be.
You heard Mayor Nutter. I am not sure I got the figure
exactly right, but I think he said $2,363 for every person not
counted in terms of dollars lost in various programming. That
is fundamentally accurate, even if my number is not quite
right, because money is lost because people are not accurately
counted. And when you are a city such as we have represented in
this panel, you lose money from the Federal Government; you
lose money from the State government. They are also dependent
upon the Census checks.
The various cities in making decisions about where services
are going to be are impacted by Census numbers. Businesses make
decisions in terms of location, businesses, nonprofits,
whatever. There is just a lot of dependency upon the Census in
terms of where we are going as far as the future is concerned.
The issue of suspicion was raised by Mayor Nutter. Why
don't people send back this form? There are a variety of
reasons. I think they are all self-apparent, but we need to
review them. One is that the people may not be here legally.
They may not be properly entered into the United States of
America or they may have a relative who is in that position and
they make the decision of not sending in any forms to the
Federal Government.
In reality, the Census has nothing to do with that and does
not cross over into immigration issues, and that should not be
a problem. But, nonetheless, it is a problem in the minds of a
lot of people. In fact, I saw something in the newspaper this
morning about a Hispanic group that was urging people not to
fill in the Census form for that very reason. That needs to be
discouraged.
He mentioned language as an issue, and that could be a
problem. If people do not speak the language, and they receive
a form in a language they do not speak, they may not want to go
about getting it into their language, be it Spanish or
something else. As a result, that form is not filled in.
Somebody may have a problem in their background. Perhaps
they committed a crime or something. They are nervous about
anything coming from the government. They are not inclined to
fill in forms in these particular circumstances. Somebody else
might be illiterate. They just may not understand what it is
they received. It is nice that we have the mailing addresses,
and I think the Census is doing a great job of doing that, but
people simply do not want to necessarily respond in that
particular circumstance. They do not quite know what to do, and
they just go ahead and throw it out.
Then there are those who just do not care. Everyone of us
probably, I know I have, have gotten forms in the mail and
said, oh, the heck with this, and you throw it away because you
just do not feel like fooling with it. I hope we do not do this
with the Census checks. I try not to do that, by the way. But I
hope we do not do that. So there are a lot of reasons, and
there are probably others, why people do not necessarily
respond to the initial mailing.
Then you get into the whole circumstance of how much we
have to pay in order to get people to go out into
neighborhoods, to knock on doors. But all the reasons that I
have already given you, in many instances, apply to a person
coming to the door. They still may not want to be helpful and
cooperative. Perhaps the person answering the door could be
counted, but perhaps there are eight other people living there
that never somehow get brought into it. So that is an issue as
well.
So we need to do a lot. I think that the Census people are
doing a great job. Some of the programs that we probably are
going to hear about today, the Be Counted program, which makes
Census questionnaires available at various public forums, as I
understand it, is an important program. And the questionnaire
assistance centers are important as well, so people can
necessarily get help in getting their questions answered.
We have already heard something--I will not reiterate
them--of people not counted, of dollars lost as a result of
that. And I know that is a concern of Mayor Baker's as well as
Mayor Nutter's, and it should be of all of us. That is an
issue. And often, these are the very people who need the most
help, by the way. And so, for that reason, we need to make sure
that they are counted and we are moving forward.
I think we are all in this together. Now, I believe this
country is best served by the fact that we count each and every
person who is here and make sure the various division of money
pursuant to Census and decisions made by other groups is
followed up as a result of that.
For those of you who know Delaware, you realize that we
only have one member of Congress. That is why the senator can
call me the dean of the Delaware delegation. I am not remotely
concerned about getting a second member of Congress. We have to
almost get an increase of 400,000, or something of that nature.
But I am very concerned that in Delaware, in Pennsylvania, and
in every State in this country, we need, if possible, to count
every single person. And, hopefully, today's session that
Senator Carper has called will help do that, will dissuade
people that this is problematic in any way, and will encourage
everyone to get involved in doing something which I think is
going to be a tremendous help in the governance and the fair
apportionment of many different programs in this country.
I thank you for the time, Senator.
Senator Carper. Congressman Castle, thanks so much. That
was a great statement. And thank you very much for making time
to be here. I was just thinking if we could maybe annex one
county of Pennsylvania, get another 400,000 people, where you
would have some company in our delegation there in the House.
But I do not know. We will have to negotiate with the mayor and
Governor Rendell.
Mr. Baker has been our mayor in Wilmington, where the
congressman and I live, for over 8 years now. He and I both
spent some time, in our younger part of our lives, in Ohio. I
think he was born in Fostoria, and later on served in the Air
Force. We were both veterans. And I appreciate and salute him
for his service to our country. Elected to Wilmington City
Council.
What year was it?
Mayor Baker. In 1972.
Senator Carper. One of the youngest ever elected to city
council in the history of our State. I do not know if they had
those child labor laws then, but he started at an early age,
and became the first African American, I think in the history
of our city and the history of our State, to be elected as
president of Wilmington City Council.
He has been a mayor for 8 years. We have had 8 good years
under his leadership. And they are challenging now, as they are
for Mayor Nutter and for all other kinds of people, but in
terms of actually balancing our budget and running surpluses in
terms of trying to make sure a lot more folks who wanted to be
homeowners got to be homeowners, and expanding our business
opportunities. And he does a great job down on the river front
of the Christina River. We are just very pleased to be
represented and led by him in the City of Wilmington.
I am going to call on Mayor Baker, and then I will
introduce Dr. Barnett.
Mayor Baker, thank you so much for joining us today.
Mayor Baker. Thank you very much.
Senator Carper. We should have carpooled up here, the three
of us. Congressman Castle and I joke about doing that a lot.
Mayor Baker. Well, you guys keep changing positions, so I
do not know how long that is going to work.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES BAKER,\1\ MAYOR, CITY OF WILMINGTON
Mayor Baker. Thank you very much, Senator Carper. And it is
good to see you, Representative Castle. I feel like we are
still in Delaware, actually, talking to each other.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mayor Baker appears in the Appendix
on page 45.
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Senator Carper. Well, this used to be Delaware.
Mayor Baker. I know.
Senator Carper. I tell people this used to be Delaware----
Mayor Baker. The three counties, the lower counties, used
to be part of Delaware.
Senator Carper. You gave Pennsylvania its independence.
Mayor Baker. One time I put in a bill to succeed from
Delaware and go to Pennsylvania, but they would not let it
pass.
But anyway, I appreciate you having me here this afternoon,
to talk about the Census and how important it is. And I think
Mayor Nutter hit most of the salient points as to why, but I
will just go through some of the issues of Wilmington.
For example, our population is 65 percent non-white. We
have 20 percent in terms of the population being below the
poverty level. Twenty-six percent of our population is 17 years
or younger. And the city's Hispanic population has increased 41
percent since 1990 to 2000, and it continues to grow. And the
other problem is that it is not just from one Hispanic group;
there are a variety of different ethnic Hispanics from
different countries that are coming to our city also.
We also suffer from illegal conversions, which I think the
mayor was talking about, people living in places that they
ordinarily would not be living in, and also illegally. And
there is a significant homeless population which has a
transitory population to it. And we also have people that move
by large numbers within short periods of time, such as 6 months
in a location, at a residence or an apartment, and then they
move to another location. And then within a year, our
population in the city shifts dramatically from 6 months to a
year, and that keeps continuously transferring people in and
out of our city and from neighborhood to neighborhood.
We also have a traditional undercount as most cities have
suffered. We have all of the different groups that the Census
has identified as undercounted in our city, but rental units
usually make up most of the undercounted in our city. Fifty
percent of our city's housing stock is rental. It used to be
different. It was about 70 percent homeowners. Now, we are down
to 50 percent homeowners, 50 percent rental. We have a huge
population, 25 percent, headed by females, in terms of our
city. And some of the things that we are recommending is
certainly what the mayor has previously talked about, as
updating information in terms of the Census Bureau leading up
to the count in April.
We also believe that the well-funded--and I think he
referenced that also--media campaign is critical to letting
people know about the Census, what is and what is not, some of
the things that Congressman Castle was speaking about that many
people fear about the Census, that it is a way of finding
information about them, private or otherwise.
The other problem is that the media efforts should not be
just through radio and TV--the traditional modes. I really
think that there needs to be a strong effort to do door-to-
door, to do the mailings, and all the other things. Bilingual
messaging as opposed to singular are critical. I think, just
like in a political campaign, that we have all been in before,
what do we need? We need people to hit the streets. We do not
need a lot of messages going out on the telephone and on TV. Of
course, I cannot afford TV; you guys can.
But anyways, we do not just need the TV messages in the
traditional mode. We really need people who can go out on the
street and understand the populations that they are dealing
with. Sometimes it is the messenger that makes a difference as
opposed to just having people talking to people. Also, we feel
it is imperative to have a secretary appointed for the Commerce
Department.
I do not need to repeat the Census in terms of the
problems, in terms of education and all the rest, which we have
found is a critical point as to why some people do not get
involved in terms of filling out the information, and I will
not give you those statistics.
The mayor actually helped me very much because I really cut
down the--I was re-leafing through every page I could take out
while he was talking. Most of you know me; I hate text. I hate
reading speeches. And if I do not have to, I will not. I am
sort of like Joe Biden. I get into trouble because I talk off
the cuff.
Senator Carper. You might have to run for vice president
next time.
Mayor Baker. But anyways, I think that we all know that it
has to be well organized, everybody working together. We have
worked with committees, the nonprofit community, the church
community. I think one group that is left out of dealing with
Census are the landlords. Landlords come in contact with their
people all the time. Now, sometimes the landlords do not want
anybody to know who they have in a house either because they
know they are either into drugs or something else. And they get
cash payments instead of real payments, so they do not have to
declare it on their taxes. So they do avoid sometimes the legal
side of things just so they can make the money. But there are
good landlords who--we have a group in our city that we work
with on a regular basis. It would make a lot of difference in
terms of who is there and who is not there and who can be
contacted.
Last, we feel that the President can have a lot to do with
promoting the whole issue of the Census because he is well
respected, even though Fox and Rush Limbaugh and all those guys
always beat up on him. But they are the minority now and who
cares what they think.
So I think that it is very important because we lose a lot
of money by not having the count correct. And we are willing to
cooperate with the Census Bureau and others who wish to make
this work out in a fine fashion so we can get a true figure of
who is really there. And I think it makes a lot of difference
for the schools as to what kind of resources they need to
teach. It makes a lot of difference in terms of carrying out
the law, in terms of law enforcement and understanding what
things are and are not. It makes it easier to govern if you can
understand all of your population as opposed to just part of
the population.
So that is my take on it, and I appreciate very much having
both of you here and thank Mayor Nutter for having us in his
city. If Pennsylvania wants to give us some more people--of
course, Mayor Nutter does not want another person down there
running for Congress. He is perfectly happy being the only one.
So thank you very much for having me.
Senator Carper. Mayor, thank you very much. That was a
wonderful statement, and we are grateful that you made the time
to be here. Thank you for your leadership of our city and for
your testimony today.
Dr. Camille Barnett, I said to Mayor Nutter as he was
getting ready to leave, and we shook hands here at the middle
of the stage--I said to him, ``You know, I could barely see Dr.
Barnett's lips move when you spoke, Mayor.'' He acknowledged
that he had been working on that for a while, and you have to
be quite good at it.
But I understand you are the Managing Director for the City
of Philadelphia.
Ms. Barnett. I am.
Senator Carper. And I am told that you have the
responsibility for the management of all city operations, and
you also have more than 10 years of experience in city
management.
Would that be this city or other cities as well?
Ms. Barnett. Other cities.
Senator Carper. Well, what other cities?
Ms. Barnett. What other cities? Sunnyvale, California;
Dallas, Houston, Austin----
Senator Carper. Did you say Sunnyvale, California?
Ms. Barnett. Yes.
Senator Carper. Where I used to live when I was a naval
flight officer. How about that? We call it sunny Sunnyvale.
Ms. Barnett. Sunnyvale. Lots of cities in Texas, and
Washington, DC, and then here in Philadelphia.
Senator Carper. Great. And how long have you been the city
manager here now?
Ms. Barnett. Since the mayor was elected, so a little over
a year.
Senator Carper. OK. Does it seem that long?
Ms. Barnett. Yes. [Laughter.]
Senator Carper. Would you care to tell us----
Ms. Barnett. There has been a lot going on.
Senator Carper. Well, we are glad you are here. Thanks for
taking on a tough job, and you are recognized to speak.
Ms. Barnett. Great. Thank you.
Senator Carper. If you get into about the second hour, I
will probably rein you in because we want to get to the second
panel.
Ms. Barnett. Actually, I think my job is also easier. I am
just going to underscore some of the points that Mayor Nutter
made.
STATEMENT OF CAMILLE CATES BARNETT,\1\ MANAGING DIRECTOR, CITY
OF PHILADELPHIA
Ms. Barnett. For the record, I am Camille Cates Barnett,
and I am Managing Director for the City of Philadelphia. There
are several reasons, that I think Mayor Nutter summarized, that
an accurate account is important to the people in Philadelphia,
and I think in most of the big cities, but particularly big
cities that are on the East Coast.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Barnett appears in the Appendix
on page 47.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first reason that it is important to us in Philadelphia
is like in the Federal and State Governments, we use the Census
for our own political jurisdiction drawing. So for our city
council districts, as well as many of our other administrative
districts, we use the data from the Census. Our numbers are a
little different than the one I saw in the film about the
amount of Federal money that is distributed based on population
counts. I guess the 2007 Brookings study estimated that it was
$377 billion. So you cannot ignore the importance of the Census
data being correct for you to get allocations from Federal and
State Governments that really do match your population.
There are over 170, at current count, Federal and State
programs, that use population in their funding formulas, and
this is before we count anything with the Recovery Act. So
these are just the ones that we have been dealing with since
before the Recovery Act.
The figure that the mayor quoted is from a 1999 survey from
the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and it really brought this
funding formula down to the very level of our local economy.
For every person that we miss in the Census, the U.S.
Conference of Mayors estimates that Philadelphia foregoes
$2,263. And as the point has been made before, often the people
who are missed are the people who are most in need of the
funding that is missed. So it is doubly important to get these
traditionally undercounted populations served.
We have also been using the Census information in our own
planning and programming effort. One of the things that we have
started with this new Administration is a program called Philly
Stat, which is like a city stat program in other places, where
we look at population trends and city distribution of services
and what results we are producing. All of that information uses
Census information for us to analyze our own effectiveness by
neighborhoods. So we need to know not only the baseline of
where we have been but also to track our progress.
All of us are interested in economic recovery, and it is
important to notice and to note that the Census data is also
used by the private sector in ways that very much influence the
economic health of large cities because this is how they decide
a lot about their investment decisions, the number of people
and also educational level, where the population is. There are
many pieces of information that the Census collects that really
is important in terms of location and expansion decisions that
the private sector makes.
Alyssa Stewart Lee, in her article from the Brookings and
Urban Market Initiative, cites the U.S. Census Bureau as being
``the foundation of private sector demographic data used for
retail decisions.'' So in this time when we are really
interested in the health of our business communities, having
accurate information from the Census is important.
We also know that this is not a small task, but we know
that it is one of our most important. In fact, I brought along
the Philadelphia plan, which is our one-page strategic plan
that we have put on a business card. And one of the things that
we do is to have measures of how well we are doing. Because we
know that people vote with their feet, it is important for us
to use our total population as one of our key performance
indicators. In fact, for Mayor Nutter's recovery and jobs
objective, which is one of four that we have for this city, one
of the key performance measures is to add 75,000 people in
population in the next 5 to 10 years.
It is important, particularly for cities that have gone
through economic transition and population downturns, to be
able to demonstrate that we are on the way back. And the way
that we can demonstrate that is to be sure that everyone who is
here is counted fairly. So for a number of reasons, it is
important for us that the Census number is right.
Now, as the mayor said, there are two major challenges that
Philadelphia faces that I do not think are different from other
places, but we certainly see them here. One is locating each
household, and two is getting the form returned. So one of the
things that we have been working with in terms of the local
Census Bureau here is getting those address lists complete.
One of the things that the mayor mentioned that I think is
worth emphasizing is that, particularly in the redevelopment of
Philadelphia, a lot of our redevelopment strategy has the use
of non-traditional structures for housing. So these are
economic development activities, not only the kinds of non-
standard ways that the mayor talked about from Delaware, but
really part of our way of re-using buildings and getting the
population to stay in the city. And these are the kinds of
multi-unit, non-traditional places that are typically
undercounted. So because of our particular development pattern
and our particular economic strategies over the last decade or
so, it is particularly important to the City of Philadelphia
that these residential units be counted. We have estimated that
since the last Census, since 2000, we have added more than
22,000 of these converted units. So it will represent a large
portion of the address file that we need to make sure is
complete.
I think the mayor mentioned that for this and other
reasons, we have already given the Census Bureau an additional
56,000 addresses for Philadelphia alone. Just as a way of
estimating that, that is about 10 percent of all of our
addresses. So it is a significant amount for the City of
Philadelphia.
Once this process is completed and we get started, we do
not have, as you know, but 120 days to complete the master
address file and to update and review all the recordings. We
want to be sure that we have as complete a count as possible
and are really looking forward to working in close partnership
with the Census Bureau here to make sure that that is accurate.
So we also want to be sure that we get people that are not
only living in our traditional whole units or these converted
housing units, but also residents who live in group quarters,
such as school or colleges, which we have a lot of in this
area, nursing homes, boarding homes, correctional facilities,
and shelters for the homeless, several of the kinds of
populations that this hearing has already indicated are
traditionally undercounted.
So these are the things that I think are of interest to us.
But I think one of the things that has really been brought to
mind recently is how much this particular process affects us
now that we have a downturn in the economy. Because one of the
things that we notice in this downturn is that it also means
displacement for people. So when people lose their job, or have
their mortgages foreclosed, or abandon housing, this is going
to complicate the counting process.
So Philadelphia has not seen as large an impact in terms of
these negative effects of the economic downturn as other cities
have, but I do not think there is a single large city in the
country that has not had some of this. And a strategy so that
it is fairly accounted for in the population count is something
that I think is in all of our best interest.
So one of the things that we also know is that from the
research on what is undercounted, Philadelphia as a city, as
was talked about in Delaware and other major cities, the people
who live in cities are the people who are most likely to be
undercounted, those who are poor and those who are
linguistically isolated. One of the things that I think is
important to recognize is that 44 percent of all current
Philadelphians are black and 29 percent live in poverty. The
reported unemployment is about 9 percent in this population,
and we believe the number is probably higher.
So our black population also has a lower level of
educational attainment; 23 percent have a high school diploma,
and only 13 percent have college degrees. You will notice on
our Philadelphia plan, these are things that the mayor has
targeted as changes that we want to produce in the City of
Philadelphia, but we also know that while we are getting the
Census data, that we need to be cognizant that these are people
that need special outreach.
You have already talked about Latinos being
disproportionately represented. In the linguistically isolated
category, Latinos in Philadelphia count for 11 percent of our
estimated population, which is almost 155,000 Latinos. Three-
quarters of this population, which is a little over 110,000, is
from Puerto Rico. For Philadelphia Latinos, 43 percent live in
poverty; reported unemployment is 7 percent. And, again, the
true number is probably much higher. And educational attainment
for the Latino population also trails the citywide average;
that is 39 percent have less than a high school diploma and
only 10 percent have college degrees. And very significantly,
over a third of this population speaks English less than well.
One of the things that we have done is to pay a lot of
attention recently, in an initiative called Global
Philadelphia, to address the language capacity of many of the
people that we serve. And we know from the work that we have
done to try to make our own local government services
accessible to these populations, that we are not just talking
about Spanish. We have many different languages that are
regularly spoken in Philadelphia, and they include things like
Vietnamese, Chinese, and Ukrainian. There are many of these
populations that we are struggling to reach, and I expect that
we will have not only linguistic but cultural barriers in many
of these populations to get full participation. So we want to
respond to these challenges to receive the accurate count.
In Philadelphia, the last Census we had a 56 percent
response rate. We want that to be higher. We think it needs to
be higher to really be confident in the count. And so, Mayor
Nutter has instructed us to do several things to help that.
First of all, he plans to issue a mayor's executive order,
which will instruct city departments and agencies to continue
their planning and the execution of these outreach plans. The
mayor's executive order will also develop a city-wide campaign,
which is much like your complete count committees that you talk
about, to reach these hard-to-count populations.
We will also establish a multicultural network on Census
2010 to guide our efforts to reach immigrants and new-coming
communities. This initiative will also target the lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender communities and populations in the
city with high concentrations of undocumented residents. And we
will be working closely with the school district, as the mayor
said, to promote the Census Teaching Guide throughout all of
our neighborhood schools.
We will continue our work on the master address file to be
sure that everyone is counted. We will work with our
institutions of higher education, correctional officials, and
other places where groups of people live to be sure that we are
counting all of those. And we will support a comprehensive
follow-up by the Census counters to count the residents of
neighborhoods that are most seriously impacted by poverty,
foreclosures, and other issues.
Finally, as the mayor said, we think it is important that
the Census Bureau begin to make partnership funds and other
resources available to local communities. You can appreciate
that there is not a lot of extra money around to begin some of
the outreach that is really needed to have an accurate count by
April 1, 2010. So we want to participate very closely in the
communication process and the public consciousness raising so
that we can all achieve a successful count.
In closing, I want to thank our local Census Bureau for
their cooperation and outreach to us and to pledge our support
to them and to you to be sure that Philadelphia is a model of
how a big city can get the count right. Thank you.
Senator Carper. Dr. Barnett, thank you so much. A wonderful
statement as well.
Let me ask a couple of questions, and then I will kick it
over to Congressman Castle. But this is one for each of you.
When you think of the things that we need to be doing with
the Federal Government, we need to be doing within the Census
Bureau, to enable you to do a better job to ensure that we
fully count the people, whether it is Philadelphia, Wilmington,
or what are one or two of the things that you believe the
Census Bureau needs to do more of, less of, so that we can
empower you?
Mayor Baker. Well, actually, over the last Census, it
really came down to people being able to go out and directly
contact people. It worked out very well because you had so many
partners working together with the city and with the Census
Bureau, and I think that is critical. And the media, just a
heavy concentration of information, and I think that made the
difference as to what we did get.
I think ours was in the 60 percentile, 63 percent, compared
to the State, which was 70. We were about 7 percent off from
the State. But that would not have happened without all the
energy and the resources available to go out and get people and
to contact them.
Senator Carper. And let me just revise that question a
little bit.
Dr. Barnett, I am not sure where you were working 10 years
ago, or even 20 years ago, but if you will recall the cities
and towns that you were working in during the 1990 Census,
maybe the 2000 Census, lessons learned, things that are
particularly helpful, maybe you do not see happening this time.
It may still be early, but things that were really helpful in
those jurisdictions to count as best we could every person.
Anything come to mind?
Ms. Barnett. Well, probably 20 years ago, I would like to
say that I was not working in another city, but I was, and had
been for quite a while. And most of my career to that point had
been in Sunbelt cities, Dallas, Houston, Austin, and also in
California. And I think the major issue in those cities had to
do with being sure that there was an accurate reflection of the
growth. And so, since those were areas where populations were
booming, there was a real interest in making sure that all the
new population was counted, from the immigration, from other
cities in the country, as well as other parts of the world.
But the issues are the same in terms of the concerns about
who is counted and who is not. It may vary from one
jurisdiction to another in terms of what the makeup is, but the
cities in this country now are quite diverse. So you can expect
the linguistic problem to be there. You can expect the poverty
problem to be there. You can expect the cultural issues about
concerns of returning forms to be there.
So I think there is, actually from my experience, more
continuity and concern than there is in differences and
concern, although they may be for different purposes. We do not
want to look like we have lost or gained in population more
than we have, but it is important that we get an accurate
count. So those are the things.
Just to comment also on the first question that you asked
about what I think would be useful to do, the preparations so
far have been, I think, the kinds that we would expect that are
appropriate. It would be useful to have some of the money to do
some of the communications earlier rather than later. But I
also think that there is a significant new amount of data that
is going to be developed very quickly through the Recovery Act.
Cities will be reporting on this money, where it goes, what
jobs are created. And that set of data can also be helpful in
double-checking us in terms of other data that we have to count
population.
People who are doing weatherization, for example, will be
going to many of these houses before the Census Bureau needs to
go. And so, making sure that the information that is available
and is being developed is used, I think will be something that
you can help us with at the Federal level. And the State and
the local level need to do the same thing.
Senator Carper. All right. Thank you. I have some more
questions, but Congressman Castle, please join in.
Mr. Castle. Let me ask you this question.
I appreciate, Dr. Barnett, your listing various things we
could do on a local level, but one thing that struck me, as,
actually, Mayor Baker was talking, that we saw in Delaware last
month I think, was something that our U.S. Marshal, Dave
Thomas, organized, working with ministers and going to them,
and then organizing a session whereby they were able to have a
lot of people who had committed crimes, perhaps owed fines, or
had not reported on probation, whatever, relatively minor
things, come in and be resolved on the spot.
I was stunned at the number who came in. In fact, people
with more serious issues came in, could probably expose
themselves to prison or whatever it may be. But the ministers
got behind this. They had all the necessary personnel there to
resolve issues right on the spot. And I thought it was highly
effective. And it just occurred to me--and I agree with
everything you are saying about all we should do, but I am
trying to think sort of outside the box a little bit about what
we can do locally in our major cities and towns, especially on
the East Coast.
Is something like that even practical--and maybe I should
be asking this of the Census folks--or is this going beyond the
norm? It seems to me that if you could organize sessions with
the Census people, if you got the ministers and community
activists involved, suggesting that there are not repercussions
to all this, we just want to make sure everybody is counted;
you had people there who could speak whatever the languages
are, which are essential to count people in particular
circumstances, and outreach, in our case, the Latin American
community center, whatever--and try to get people to come
forward that way who might otherwise be shy about coming
forward.
I mean, maybe they are not parallel programs and maybe that
would not work. But is that another way of trying to bring
people out who might otherwise be hesitant about coming forward
and being counted when they get something in the mail?
Ms. Barnett. Yes. We were very successful with that
initiative in terms of trying to clear up some of the backlog
in our criminal justice system. Our faith-based community is
certainly one of the groups that we would use for outreach
because they are actively involved.
I think one of the points that the mayor made is important,
too, which is to look beyond traditional media outreach, so not
only the person-to-person that you would get through the faith-
based community, but not forgetting that radio and face-to-face
communication through community activities that people are
already involved in really help the trust level in this area.
So I think, yes. I think we should be innovative in a way
that we try to get the information out as well as getting the
information back. A lot of it will depend on our hiring
policies for the enumerators. We want the people that we hire
to be able to be a credible representative in their community.
So diversity in the hiring is also a critical component in what
we are going to do for outreach.
Mayor Baker. I concur with most of that. I think the other
thing that should be considered is that as long as you got this
non-fear of what will happen if I do this, if I fill it out or
send it back or whatever, if that could be diminished amongst a
lot of people--and it is not just people who speak different
languages that fear this. It is people who have been born in
the United States or whatever. They think it is going to be
used against them.
If we could diminish the fear issues and use all these
innovations, I think it would, obviously, get us more people
who would respond to it. But the non-fear that we are not going
to arrest you if you come in and get your stuff cleared up made
hundreds of people--I mean, it was around the block and
everything, people from all over. We had 100,000 KPS's out on
people. So I think that if we could clear up that kind of
thing, and, of course, meeting the different populations, it
would make a lot of difference.
Mr. Castle. The other thing that struck me in your comments
was the use of landlords. That is a little tricky I suppose,
but the bottom line is, in both of our cities, you do have a
lot of landlords who own properties, single-family homes as
well as big apartment buildings, who could probably be very
helpful if they are willing to share information in terms of
knowing who lives there or whatever it may be. I do not know,
first of all, what the legality of all that is, and, second,
how cooperative they would be. But that is an interesting
source for trying to determine who could respond or who does
not respond. I do not know how that could be put together.
Mayor Baker. Well, I think if they would work with their
tenants as opposed to their giving a list of these who are all
the people that I rent to--and provide information back and
forth, and make it as non-threatening as could be, it could
work, as opposed to having them as the teller of the
information.
Mr. Castle. Thank you very much. That is very helpful.
Senator Carper. I am going to ask you a couple of questions
that you have spoken to either directly or indirectly. But I
want to go ahead and repeat them. I will ask you to just
respond to them very briefly, please.
In my opening statement, I said that both Delaware and
Pennsylvania are among the places for which there is a
significant undercount. I think 2000 Census shorted the
Pennsylvania population by about 100,000 people, and of those,
almost 20,000 lived right here in Philadelphia. There are about
12,000 folks in Delaware who were missed.
Based on your knowledge, what impact did the undercount
have on your respective cities?
This is difficult, Ms. Barnett. I am not sure where you
were 10 years ago, but you could use that as an example if you
would like. And, Mayor, I think 10 years ago you were the
president of the city council.
Mayor Baker. Well, I think we lose a lot of money from the
Federal Government because of all those programs that require
population. And I think when you look at a small State and a
relatively small city like Wilmington, it means a great deal
because those are things you cannot do. So funds for one person
or a staff person doing a street, or whatever it might be, is
significant. So losing those numbers makes a lot of difference
to us. And we cannot make it up, and we do not want to--like
you were saying, we do not want to have false figures, but we
certainly want to be accurate in terms of having the numbers
and not get cheated out of money that the government keeps and
not give us.
Senator Carper. All right. Thank you. Dr. Barnett.
Ms. Barnett. One of the things that we have talked about is
the impact of just the overall number. And I think that it does
mean that we have an inaccurate view of what is going on in
this city and we also get less money, but there are also some
effects of the detail of the population that we have not spoken
to specifically, particularly things like educational level.
That is used significantly in location decisions for the kind
of economy that we have now. And so, having that misrepresented
has kind of a double-whammy effect because people look at what
kind of workforce is available in the city or the region and
make location decisions based on that. So it is important not
only to get the total count right, but it is important to get
the other information that the Census collects, and to get that
right as well.
I mentioned in my testimony the work that we are doing
trying to track our results in terms of the people who live in
Philadelphia. And in many of our services, the thing that
drives our own allocation has to do with the information about
poverty and other kinds of activities, other kinds of
information that is available through the Census.
Senator Carper. All right. Thank you.
Again, for both of you, I think it has been proven that the
partnership program was an effective tool in reaching out to
communities of color. We have talked about that. One of the
ways in which local governments can help, and in this case are
helping, is by participating in the local update of a Census
address program to ensure that all addresses and maps that the
Census Bureau will use to deliver the questionnaire and conduct
non-response follow-up are current, and, hopefully, that they
are accurate.
Would you just briefly describe your overall experience in
participating in the address update program and explain why it
is important for local governments to have input in this
process, if you would, please?
Mayor Baker. Well, I think all the things that were said
before makes a lot of difference. We have our planning
department, and other departments are working on this right now
to make sure that we can get as much accuracy as possible. But
it takes a lot of people. I mean, we cannot just take our
planning department or our other departments and say all these
people are totally responsible for something else when they
have other responsibilities.
So it does intervene in that. But the important fact is
that we are cooperating, and it has been such a good
relationship--I remember the 2000 Census. It was a good
relationship between the various people from the Census Bureau
on down. And I think it makes a difference if we are working
together early on and dealing with each because every community
is a little different no matter how we want to look at it.
In Wilmington, we are used to knowing each other from top
to bottom, so it is a little bit different. But we do know that
there are a lot of new people, growing populations, that we
would like to know. The Mexican population in Wilmington is
growing astronomically. We have people from Jamaica. We have
people from all the different islands and South America. And we
have the Korean population, Chinese population. All these
populations are there in one form or another, and it would be
good to know. And by working together, I think that is the main
thing that has helped us.
Ms. Barnett. Just a quick comment on the mayor's comment
about it is hard to get the people who do this to be dedicated
to all the Census work when they have everything else going on.
And that is one of the things that I think might be something
that could be taken into account when you are thinking about
doing this.
If you look at cities, now, with the economic downturn,
there is very little money to fund the kind of analysis that
makes it possible to have these accurate counts. We are
extremely fortunate in Philadelphia that we have a strong
foundation of community. And one of our foundations has
indicated that because of the tremendous economic and social
impact of the Census information, they are willing to help us
in terms of doing some of the statistical analysis and
verification that will help us get an accurate count. And that
little bit of money goes a long way, and that is certainly
something that might be something that could be facilitated at
the Federal level.
Senator Carper. All right, good.
A related question. You have already, at least partly,
answered this question as well. But in addition to
participating in the local update of Census address programs,
what other roles do you believe are vital for local government
in the implementation of the 2010 Census? Again, you have
spoken to these in part. Just briefly mention them again and
any others that come to mind, please.
Mayor Baker. I think we have pretty well hit it; if the
resource is there and we start early enough, we organize well,
and we do the multi-informational source, actually people
touching people, using churches, whatever format is out there
for us to use. That is what we do best, is to know that
community and who and what can do the job best. And I think
that is where the Federal Government then ties into that
because we do not have the resources. Our downturn--in 3
months, we went from a bad surplus to a big deficit. It was
just like falling off the cliff.
So we do not have all the resources that we used to have
available to us, so we do have to depend on others to do it.
But I think that is the best that we can do, is get all that
kind of work done.
Senator Carper. Do you want to add anything, Dr. Barnett?
Ms. Barnett. No, that is fine.
Senator Carper. Dr. Barnett, in your testimony, and also in
Mayor Nutter's testimony, you raised the issue of non-
traditional housing patterns, particularly in multi-unit
buildings, some of which were not historically residences but
served other purposes. But you talked about how a situation can
pose unique challenges to the Census Bureau and address
canvassing, and also in non-response follow-up activities.
For many of these residences, mailed questionnaires,
actually, just may never reach the intended recipient because
unit numbers are confusing or in some cases not even in
existence. As a result, communities with a high proportion of
such residences are at an unusually high risk of undercount.
What specific challenges do you believe the Census Bureau
will face with respect to housing units of this nature, and
what adjustments will you recommend that the Census Bureau make
in order to address these challenges?
Ms. Barnett. Well, I think the first thing is to be sure
that the master address file is correct. So the partnership
that we are working with in terms of identifying these
structures and the number of units that they represent, and
making sure that we all know where they are, is important in
the master address file. And then I suspect that we will have
to come up with some new ways of making sure people get the
form and get it returned, and that may be a place where owners
of the buildings or managers of the buildings may be important
for certain populations, as well as community groups, community
development corporations and other community organizations that
know about and have facilitated these kinds of conversions,
could be very helpful to us in terms of credibility of what we
are doing and why it is important to turn the form back in.
Senator Carper. All right, good. Congressman Castle, any
further questions?
Mr. Castle. No. Thank you.
Senator Carper. All right.
We want to thank you both very much, and certainly to Mayor
Nutter as well, for taking time in your schedules to be here
with us today. As it turns out, both the City of Wilmington and
the City of Philadelphia, as well as our respective States and
other States and cities, have a whole lot at stake here. And it
is important that we get this right to the best of our ability.
To the extent that we get more people to respond initially
to the mailings, that reduces our cost and improves the
likelihood for a better outcome. But in a situation where we
have not just funding decisions for State and Federal
Government that flows to cities and States, that grow out of
our Census, but also the election of members of Congress,
county government, city government, there is a whole lot at
stake. And, clearly, you have that in mind, and we appreciate
very much the attitude with which you are approaching this part
of your duties, given everything else that you have on your
plates.
So thank you very much. With that, we will bring on our
second panel.
We are delighted that you have joined us. I appreciate,
especially--Mr. Mesenbourg, I appreciate your being here and
listening to the first panel. And I hope that was of some value
to you and to the folks that you lead.
It is Mesenbourg, right? Is that correct?
Mr. Mesenbourg. Yes.
Senator Carper. Has your name ever been mispronounced?
Mr. Mesenbourg. Maybe once or twice.
Senator Carper. But you serve today as the Acting Director
of the Census Bureau, and you have been serving in that
capacity for I believe about 4 months; is that correct?
Currently overseeing the planning and implementation and the
operations for the 2010 Census. You previously served as
Associate Director for Economic Programs at the Census Bureau,
where you managed the Census Bureau's economic Census, the
Census of government, and over 100 monthly, quarterly, and
annual surveys. Mr. Mesenbourg received his masters in
economics from Penn State, a local product, and did his
undergraduate work at Boston University.
Thank you for being here today and for your service.
Norman Bristol, do you pronounce your name Colon?
Mr. Colon. That is right, Colon.
Senator Carper. Bienvenido.
Mr. Colon. Gracias.
Senator Carper. Welcome.
Appointed by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell as Executive
Director to the Governor's Advisory Commission on Latino
Affairs; Commonwealth's Advocate Agency for its Latino
residents. In this role, Mr. Colon makes recommendations to the
governor, to State agencies, to legislature, local and county
governments on issues of importance to the Latino community in
Pennsylvania. And he also serves as the governor's liaison for
the Latino community, ensuring that State government is
accessible, accountable, and responsive to the needs of
Latinos.
Welcome.
Pat Coulter was appointed President and the Chief Executive
Officer of the Urban League of Philadelphia in 2002. She is the
first woman, I understand, to lead the Philadelphia
organization in its 90-year history. Ms. Coulter also serves on
various nonprofit boards and associations. She holds a Bachelor
of Science degree in music from Knoxville College and a masters
in education from the University of Louisville, the home of the
Cardinals, as I recall.
Finally, we have Wanda Lopez. Ms. Lopez is Chair of
Governor Jack Markell's Consortium on Hispanic Affairs, which
is focused on increasing access to education and improving the
quality of life for our State's Hispanic population. She is
also the Executive Director of the Governor's Advisory Council
on Hispanic Affairs.
Delighted to see you again. Thank you so much for coming up
here to Philadelphia and spending this time with all of us.
We are going to call on Mr. Mesenbourg first. If you would
lead us off, and then we will just go right down the table, Mr.
Colon, Ms. Coulter, and Ms. Lopez. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS MESENBOURG,\1\ ACTING DIRECTOR, U.S. CENSUS
BUREAU, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Mr. Mesenbourg. Thank you, Senator Carper and Congressman
Castle. It is an honor to participate in this hearing.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Mesenbourg appears in the
Appendix on page 52.
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Two hundred and twenty-two years ago, the Founding Fathers
recognized that a complete and accurate count of the population
was a cornerstone of democracy. And the 2010 Census marks the
twenty-third time the Nation has undertaken this great national
and civic responsibility.
Mr. Chairman, your invitation letter cited two concerns
from the 2000 Census, an undercount in Philadelphia and a low
mail-back response rate in Wilmington, Delaware. Counting
everyone once and only once, reducing the differential
undercount, and increasing the mail-back response rate are our
top priorities. Let me quickly describe the keys to achieving
these objectives.
First, as was mentioned earlier, the Census really is an
enumeration of addresses, so our first job is to ensure that
our address list is complete, comprehensive and up to date. The
first critical production operation of the 2010 Census, address
canvassing is now underway. At peak, we had 140,000 employees
walking the 9 million blocks in the United States and
validating and updating 145 million addresses. I am pleased to
announce that the hand-held computers have performed
exceptionally well and operations are running well ahead of
schedule and are almost complete in Philadelphia and in
Delaware.
This fall, for the first time, we will conduct the address
canvassing of some 270,000 group quarters. Those include
nursing homes, dormitories, etc. We also are working with local
government and advocacy groups, in cities such as Philadelphia
and Wilmington, to identify an update our roster of shelters,
soup kitchens, and mobile food stations as we prepare for our
service-based enumeration program next March.
Other innovations that will improve the 2010 count include
the first short-form only Census, 10 questions, 10 minutes; the
first use of English-Spanish bilingual report forms, and we
will mail those to 13 million Hispanic households.
Questionnaires will also be available upon request in Chinese,
Korean, Vietnamese, and Russian.
This will also be the first time we do a replacement
mailing of 2010 Census forms to traditionally low mail-back
response rates, and we have added two new coverage questions to
the 2010 form that we hope will help include incorrect
omissions or duplicates.
We are in the process of establishing 30,000 questionnaire
assistance centers and 40,000 be-counted sites. And our
language guides will be available at the questionnaire
assistance centers in 59 different languages.
Well, getting households to respond requires that they
understand that filing their Census form is easy, it is
important, and it is safe. And these messages are core to our
much improved and expanded communication campaign. This
campaign is multifaceted, employing and integrating paid
advertising, public relations, a very robust partnership
program, as well as an expanded Census in Schools program. Our
goal is to deliver the right message, through the right media,
in the appropriate language, at the right time.
The Recovery Act provided an additional $100 million for
the communications contract and an additional $120 million for
partnership programs. These funds will be directed primarily to
reaching and motivating hard-to-count segments of the
population. While paid advertising can educate, inform, and
motivate households and individuals, the Census 2000 experience
demonstrated that Census Bureau partners serve as a powerful
and trusted advocate that can effectively reach segments of the
population not persuaded by advertising. Our partners, who are
trusted voices in their community, can work with local
organizations, and they have credibility in terms of the safety
and the importance of the Census.
Elected officials in the Philadelphia region already have
committed to establish 95 complete-count committees, made up of
leaders from government, business, social organizations, faith-
based organizations, and local community groups. And I believe
my esteemed fellow witnesses earlier testified or are
considering establishing complete-count committees, and we
thank them for that.
In Pennsylvania, partnership staff have already obtained
commitments from over 350 community organizations and leaders,
with 89 in Philadelphia. In Delaware, 70 partnerships,
including 35 in Wilmington, have either been entered into or
are pending. Well, thanks to the Recovery Act, we will be
tripling our partnership staff in the Philadelphia region from
54 to 145 staff. Those people will be hired by the end of July.
Additional partnership staff hired locally will permit us to
reach out to many more local organizations. These trusted
voices can allay fears and convince members of the local
community to complete and return their 2010 Census form.
Mr. Chairman, Congressman Castle, we are well positioned to
achieve our constitutional mandate of counting everyone in the
U.S. and its territories. Our operations are not designed to
count most of us; they are designed to count all of us. This is
a daunting task, but we are prepared to fulfill it. So thank
you.
Senator Carper. Mr. Mesenbourg, thank you so much, and
thanks again for your leadership. We are having a hearing I
think this coming Friday with the gentleman who has been
nominated to be the new Census Bureau director. And we will
hopefully have someone there to give you some backup and some
additional leadership. But thank you for stepping up in the
interim.
Mr. Colon, please proceed. I am going to ask you to move
your name tag in so it faces the audience just a little more
directly. I want everybody to know who you are.
STATEMENT OF NORMAN BRISTOL COLON,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
GOVERNOR'S ADVISORY COMMISSION ON LATINO AFFAIRS, OFFICE OF
GOVERNOR EDWARD G. RENDELL
Mr. Colon. Chairman Thomas R. Carper, Congressman Michael
Castle, I will be remiss if I do not mention that you are the
sole member of the Subcommittee on Federal Financial
Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and
International Security that is here with us today in
Pennsylvania. That shows a lot of commitment.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Colon appears in the Appendix on
page 58.
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Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to
Pennsylvania. I would like to commend the presence of Fernando
Armstrong, who is the regional director of the U.S. Census
Bureau office here in Philadelphia, and, of course, a partner
that has been working with us for more than a year, Thomas
Mesenbourg and the staff of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Mr. Chairman, I am Norman Bristol Colon, Executive Director
of the Governor's Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs for the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I am grateful to you for inviting
me to this so important and timely hearing. It is symbolic that
this hearing is taking place in this landmark city and in this
landmark building for such an important discussion, and the
relevance of the U.S. Census work for generations of Latinos
and urban America.
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the population of
Latinos in the United States changed from 35 million to about
45 million in 2007, representing 15 percent of the U.S.
population. Sixty percent of Latinos are native born, and this
population growth has been noted and has created challenges and
enormous opportunities.
Today, we have more Puerto Ricans living in the U.S.
mainland than on the commonwealth island of Puerto Rico. As
national chair of the U.S. Council of Latino Affairs,
representatives from various U.S. State Latino councils and
commissions, we support and partner with the U.S. Census
Bureau, the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute and other local,
State and national organizations in pushing for an accurate and
successful decennial 2010 Census through the national
aggressive awareness campaign Hazte Contar Census 2010: Makes
Dollars and Cents.
The result of the Census plays a key role in determining
funding for the placement of schools, roads, hospitals, and
child care, among other things. It also contributes to
supporting the need for social services programs based on
current population at the local and State level. As
representatives of the Latino Affairs offices across the
country, we are committed to working together with the U.S.
Census Bureau to ensure a full count of our Latino communities
in 2010, and thus effectively meeting the needs of our Latino
constituents.
Ensuring that every Latino is accurately counted in the
2010 Census is an integral part of a greater agenda for social
justice, political representation and community empowerment. An
undercount will have an economic and educational disadvantage
to our community, a community that today is the largest
minority ethnic group in the Nation, yet, Mr. Chairman, it also
has the highest high school dropout rates and unemployment
rates in America.
I quote a statement by Angelo Falcon from the National
Latino Census Network. Mr. Falcon recently said that ``the
challenges facing an accurate Latino count by 2010 Census, in
light of the negative environment created by anti-immigrant and
anti-Latino sentiments in this country, will be enormous.''
Other challenges that will have a great impact that was noted
before is that this community is a very mobile community due to
many factors: Lack of trust in government; hiring practices by
the U.S. Census; the socioeconomic and educational levels, to
name a few.
Mr. Chairman, I urge you to request the U.S. Census Bureau
develop a plan that will reach the undocumented and the
documented the same way. Through your sincere dedication, Mr.
Chairman, we trust you will make sure that every Latino in
Pennsylvania and around the Nation is accurately counted in the
2010 Census by urging Congress to use its congressional power
to make sure the Federal Government adheres to the
constitutional mandate to count every person in the United
States of America; identify strategies for Census 2010
bilingual marketing; and seek for assurance that information
collected in the 2010 Census will be completely private and
confidential and not be reported to the U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement.
If current trends continue, the U.S. population will grow
to about 430 million in 2050. Eighty-two percent of this
increase will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050
and their U.S. born descendants. The Latino population is the
Nation's largest minority group and is expected to triple in
size and account for most of the population growth from 2005 to
2050. Latinos will make up 29 percent of America's population
in 2050. And if we have an undercount, Mr. Chairman, today, in
the 2010 Census, it will diminish the potential of this
community and it will have a great impact on future generations
of Latinos in this country.
In Pennsylvania, the Latino population has grown steadily
since 1990, 31 times faster than the rest of the population,
and has accounted for more than 50 percent of the population
growth in the past 8 years. Data collected in the U.S. Census
affects how billions of dollars in Federal and State funding is
given to communities that are suffering, especially the Latino
community that I am honored to represent in the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania.
In the last Census, Mr. Chairman, more than 1 million
Latinos were not counted in the United States. Over the past
decade, Latinos have become the fastest growing demographic in
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. With more than 560,000 Latino
residents and the trends pointing to a continuation of that
growth, the 2010 Census would publicly demonstrate the
prevalence of Latinos across the country. Additionally, to
better assess what Latinos need in the next Census, it is
important to examine what provisions currently exist in the
U.S. Census Bureau.
History shows that an incomplete and inaccurate Census
denies Latinos a right granted by the Constitution of the
United States, a right to fair representation at all levels of
government. An error in population data deprives Latinos
further resources needed to assist communities in forming
public policy.
Many times we have friends in the U.S. Congress like
yourselves, like you, Senator, and the congressman, but if we
do not draft public policy, whether you are in office or not,
our potential as a community will be diminished if we do not
have the good friends that we have in both of you.
As the decennial measurement draws closer, some major
issues face Latinos, and this includes ensuring that Latinos
are fairly and properly included in the counting--to make the
Census forms accessible so that they may be completed by as
many residents as possible; the influx of illegal immigration
in certain areas; finding a way to encourage Latinos to
register with the Census, independent of the issues regarding
immigration and anti-Latino sentiment that some areas like
Hazelton, Pennsylvania are undergoing today.
While the Latino population has been long concentrated in
the south and west, there is a strong possibility that as work
becomes available, the northeastern States could undergo an
influx of Latino migration between now and 2010 and 2020.
Besides having an accurate count of Latinos in the
Commonwealth and country, there are several key benefits to a
Latino-inclusive Census. Redistricting will include districts
that better represent the prevalence of the Latino community.
And for us in Pennsylvania, this is so important. We have more
than 560,000 Latinos in the Commonwealth today. Yet, we only
have one Latino in the Pennsylvania legislature. These
districts are more likely to yield public officials that
reflect the Latino background and will better address the
issues facing the community.
A proper count of Latinos could heavily improve the
community's political stature and create a better environment
in which Latinos can lobby for legislation that pertain to
their causes. The rise in population, prevalence, and
representation will lead to more economic and political
development, which can help produce better legislation.
Mr. Chairman, let me tell you, when we improve the living,
social, economic, and educational condition of Latinos, we are
improving the living, educational, and social and economic
conditions of all Americans. Twenty-five percent of the
Nation's early childhood education population today is Latino
in the United States. So if we look at that 25 percent, we can
say that 25 percent of the Nation's future as of today is going
to be Latino. If we miss out counting this population, a
generation will lose out to enjoy the benefit of a fair and
accurate count.
I urge you to prevent the Census from becoming a political
tool that will impact greatly the Nation's Latino population.
The Census can and will bring Latinos out of the shadows.
Mr. Chairman, let me conclude by saying that today, Latinos
know they can make a difference in the direction of our
country. In cities like Lancaster, Reading, Allentown,
Bethlehem, York, Harrisburg, Lebanon, Latino students are soon
to be, or already are, the majority of the student population.
An accurate count in these areas of the State will help us
provide better educational opportunities for these kids and a
pathway to their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. I strongly
believe that an accurate count will level the playing field and
will bring our community much closer to the American dream.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for you time.
Senator Carper. Mr. Colon, thank you for your testimony.
Thank you very much.
Ms. Coulter, you are recognized. And your entire statement
will be made part of the record. If you wish to summarize it,
you may do so, Ms. Coulter.
STATEMENT OF PATRICIA A. COULTER,\1\ PRESIDENT AND CEO, URBAN
LEAGUE OF PHILADELPHIA
Ms. Coulter. Good afternoon. Senator Carper and Congressman
Castle, thank you very much for having me here today. I am
pleased to be invited to testify today on Making the Census
Count in Urban America. For the record, my name is Patricia A.
Coulter, and I am President and CEO of the Urban League in
Philadelphia.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Coulter appears in the Appendix
on page 66.
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The National Urban League, with its 100 affiliates
nationwide, and the U.S. Census Bureau have a history that
dates back to 1970 in the Census project of that year. The
mission of the Urban League is to empower African Americans to
secure economic self-reliance, parity, power, and civil rights.
We carry out that mission by closing equality gaps in five key
areas: Economics, education, health, civic engagement, and
social justice.
According to the Urban League of Philadelphia's recent
State of Black Philadelphia report, African Americans comprise
44 percent of the population in Philadelphia. This report
statistically measures these five disparities between blacks
and whites in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia Inquirer journalist, Dick Polman, reported
back in February 2009 that the Census is a flashpoint. Numbers
are power. The population count determines who will most
benefit from the billions in Federal aid and where it will go.
It determines which States will gain congressional seats and
which will lose seats. ``Both political parties have a huge
stake in the Census,'' says Mr. Polman.
Census data directly affects African Americans in virtually
all decisions made in education, employment, veterans'
services, public health care, transportation, and housing.
Using the Census data to develop, evaluate and implement
programs means that the data is used to determine how to divvy
up more than $300 billion each year.
These facts underscore the importance of African Americans
being counted. In fact, Philadelphia has a unique history with
regard to counting African Americans for the Census. In 1837,
the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS) appointed a committee
to conduct a Census of the entire black population in
Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs. The Constitution that
existed was ambiguous with respect to the right of blacks to
vote. To remove the ambiguity, Ben Martin, a delegate to the
Reform Convention to amend the State constitution, proposed
that voting rights be limited specifically to whites.
The PAS actively lobbied to prevent this change to the
Constitution, and the African American Census was an important
component of these efforts. The Census was intended to
demonstrate that blacks were valuable contributors to their
communities, however, despite the efforts of the PAS and other
activists, the Constitution, which was ratified in October
1838, excluded blacks from the franchise. Well, today, as it
was, the Census data is used to prevent African Americans from
being disenfranchised.
African Americans have been systematically and
disproportionately undercounted by the Census. Urban centers
and high poverty areas, immigrant and minority communities, are
most susceptible to miscounts. The 1990 Census included a net
undercount of 4 million. Most of those left out were urban,
non-white, and generally poorer than the mean of those counted.
The consequences of the undercount could be serious in many
urban areas. According to the former Philadelphia deputy city
planning commissioner, David Baldinger, the 1990 undercount
cost the city $10 to $15 million annually.
Federal funding for employment and training is one of the
primary policy responses directed at racial inequality in
employment. The undercount has a major impact on the
distribution of Federal funds for employment and training. The
formula for distributing employment and training funds could be
significantly distorted by the undercount in urban areas that
could reduce the funds available for job training in cities
like Philadelphia.
Minorities tend to be undercounted because some are
mistrustful of and avoid sharing information with the
government. Many people, frankly, just do not feel a part of
the American system; therefore, we need community organizations
to be a bridge, to be a connector to these undercounted
communities.
According to Robert Hill, in the initial planning for the
2010 Census, he says that the Stimulus Bill stipulates that the
Census Bureau can spend up to $250 million for its partnership
program. I heard a person here say $100 million, but the
Stimulus Bill can spend up to $250 million in partnership
programs and outreach efforts to minority communities and hard-
to-reach populations. With adequate resources, community-based
partnerships can reach the undercounted through their current
services and programs, as well as direct outreach to
neighborhoods and constituents.
The Census Bureau will hire 1.4 million temporary workers
to help collect the data and follow up with households that do
not return their forms. Community-based organizations could be
partners for the Census Bureau to ensure an ethically and
racially-diverse workforce, from the staff in the district
offices to the enumerators in the neighborhoods and barrios.
In conclusion, with this history and with these numbers as
a backdrop, making the Census count in urban America is
critically important for African Americans and other minority
groups. I thank you for this opportunity to share my views on
this important issue.
Senator Carper. You are welcome, and we thank you for
sharing your views with us today.
Now, direct from Delaware, the first State, the State that
started our Nation, ratified that constitution and was first
drafted here in the City of Brotherly Love, Wanda Lopez.
STATEMENT OF WANDA M. LOPEZ,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GOVERNOR'S
ADVISORY COUNCIL ON HISPANIC AFFAIRS
Ms. Lopez. It is great to be with so many Delaware
representatives here today.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Lopez appears in the Appendix on
page 69.
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Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and Congressman Castle. I
wanted to also acknowledge Mayor Baker and Mayor Nutter for
hosting us in this city today, and all the other participants
here today, especially some of the familiar Census
representatives that are becoming familiar faces. I appreciate
the opportunity to testify on behalf of the Delaware Governor's
Advisory Council on Hispanic Affairs (GACHA) and share
recommendations from council and community members.
I have a quote written by one of our GACHA members,
Margaret Reyes, ``We as a Nation has always been and will
always remain greater than the sum of our parts. But we as a
people must know the amount and the sum of these parts, who and
where we are. In this way, we move forward together as a united
Nation of many. In this way, the founders wisely decided the
decennial enumeration be done.'' It is in the spirit and with
this in mind that I am here before you today.
Good afternoon. My name is Wanda Lopez, and I have served
as the Executive Director of GACHA since 2003. The Council has
existed for 31 years and our members make recommendations to
the State as they relate to our five active committees:
Education, health, social justice, economic development, and
historical and cultural affairs.
For the last 3 years, I have had the opportunity to meet
with other Hispanic Latino Affairs directors during the U.S.
Hispanic Leadership Institute Annual Conference at the
invitation of Dr. Juan Andrade, the USHLI president. We were
provided with this venue where we were able to share best
practices around policy and organizational development. And
this year we formed the U.S. Council on Latino Affairs, and we
held an election, and Norman Bristol Colon is our chairperson,
actually.
Our latest gathering was in April in Washington. We had an
education summit and 23 Hispanic State affairs directors
attended, all making a commitment to work on the Census as our
national project under the Hazte Contar campaign that Mr. Colon
spoke of.
GACHA began its partnership with the Census Bureau last
year, and we formally announced that partnership during our
Hispanic Heritage Month proclamation on September 15, 2008. And
former Governor Minner was in attendance, along with Fernando
Armstrong, regional Census director, who is here with us today.
The commitment was to raise awareness on the importance of
being counted, and GACHA became a community complete-count
committee member, launching a local campaign that we call
Cuenta Conmigo, Count on Me.
The goal is that through our established network of
contacts, we refer to the Census partnership specialists,
various community, and faith-based leaders throughout the
State. These connections have led to Census staff meetings with
local emergency service providers, ensuring physical locales
are properly verified and pockets of communities are properly
located.
Identifying these areas is the critical first step. The
next critical step is to hire the right people to enumerate
their own communities. We feel confident that if partnerships
are formed with these organizations State-wide, the community
will receive the message from trusted messengers and
participate in the Census.
By creating the Census storefront sites within existing
organizations in each county, and placing Census personnel in
service provider locales, community and faith-based sites, this
could be very effective in capturing the historically
undercounted population of Hispanics. Relying on volunteers to
accomplish this task would be a mistake, as too many nonprofits
are understaffed and underfunded.
In order to garner the trust of these sensitive
populations, it is imperative that test scores alone not be the
sole criteria for the selection of the Census workforce in
these work areas. We highly recommend that additional criteria,
like language ability, cultural sensitivity, knowledge of
community, and experience from living and working within the
hard-to-count areas, be the final determining factor for hires.
The Hispanic population must receive messages from trusted
sources, like church leaders, service providers, the local
Spanish media, in order to fully grasp the importance of the
Census. We are all here today to fully understand that the
Census is the sole basis for the distribution of political
power and the distribution of Federal funds. The general
population as a whole, and the Hispanic population
specifically, needs to understand how that impacts their daily
lives, why their participation is critical for their future.
Those messages must come from trusted and familiar sources.
We all know that agribusiness relies heavily on migrant
workers and the undocumented workforce population that live in
rural areas. These are traditionally hard-to-count areas, and,
therefore, historically undercounted communities. Thus, this
presence within the corporations where they work and
partnerships with service providers and their community will be
instrumental to count these groups. Stepped-up immigration
raids and hate crimes focusing on immigrant workers has driven
this community further underground, making this tumultuous task
more challenging.
The Census Bureau now has the unenviable task of having
less than 1 year to undo the erosion of trust resulting from
immigration policies of the previous Administration, focused on
workers not employers. This community has difficulty in
understanding the difference between the mission of the U.S.
Census Bureau and ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, two very separate branches of government. It is
for this reason that the only solution to a successful count is
to work with people they trust within their communities.
We also hope to see cooperation from other agencies to
support the Census Bureau in dealing with a sensitive
population. The absolute key is working with trusted faces in
the community where they learn, work, play, and pray. Working
with the Department of Education to incorporate the Census into
the curriculum, not only K through 12, but adult ESL, which has
already been accomplished in Delaware; working with employers
to hold Census awareness sessions on site; working with service
providers to assist with questionnaires; working with soccer
league coordinators to carry the message on the field; and
working with the media and the faith-based leaders to
incorporate the message within their programs, will ultimately
ensure that these folks are captured in their community during
the course of their daily lives.
Although Delaware is a small State, we are capable of
producing great results, as evidenced recently on the political
scene and here today. Delaware is capable of being a model
State for the Census since we are manageable in regards to size
and we are open to new ideas. GACHA feels confident that Census
2010 can be more successful in capturing the Hispanic
undercounted population than in prior years if the community
partnerships are formed State-wide, bilingual/bicultural
personnel hired for key positions, and Spanish-speaking Census
personnel placed in critical areas. We have seen that work. It
has already begun in Delaware.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for allowing me to address the
Subcommittee and share Delaware's GACHA council members' and
community leaders' recommendations for a complete count in
Census 2010.
Senator Carper. Ms. Lopez, thank you. Nicely done.
Congressman Castle is going to lead off this round of
questions. We will maybe do one round for this panel, and then
we will call it a day. Congressman Castle.
Mr. Castle. Thank you, Senator.
Mr. Mesenbourg, let me start with you. One of the concerns
that I have expressed and I have heard often is that people are
shy of the Census counting because they are concerned about
what else it may involve.
Can you tell me what relationship, if any, the Census
Bureau has or could have with immigration officials or law
enforcement officials in this country?
Mr. Mesenbourg. Any information provided to the Census
Bureau will be held confidential. The only individuals that
will ever see the information provided by a respondent will be
Census Bureau employees. So data will not be shared with INS,
it will not be shared with IRS, it will not be shared with
anyone except Census Bureau employees.
Mr. Castle. I do not mean to counsel you, but I think that
is a very important message to get out. I think that relieves a
lot of the problems we are all concerned about. If people truly
understood and believed that, I think we would see the counts
go up among certain people or population who are concerned
about those kinds of issues.
Mr. Mesenbourg. This is going to be a key message in our
paid advertising campaign. We tested the preliminary ads and 78
focus groups, with 1,400 people, and most of the groups,
especially the Hispanic group, has advised us even to
strengthen the message on confidentiality. We intend to do
that.
Mr. Castle. My second question, let me preface it with a
story. I guess it was last Tuesday night or so, down in the
Capitol, I was asked--because I was a sponsor of a youth bill--
to do an introduction in a new movie, which is a documentary
coming out, the Bloods and the Crips, about the gangs in Los
Angeles. And the producer was there, and Baron Davis, the
basketball player, was there. And the producer's wife is
Jessica Alba, who is a movie star. I must admit, I have not
seen her a lot, but she is a movie star.
We were walking over from the Capitol, into the Capitol
Visitors Center, and I just happened to at that point be
walking sort of alongside of her. There was a railing and
stairs, and we were on either side of that railing walking
down. And, I walk around the Capitol all the time. I mean, I am
one of 435 people; people could care less. But anyway, down at
the bottom of the stairs there are probably about a hundred
photographers taking pictures. So we get down to the bottom,
and I turned to her. I said, ``Jessica, I apologize for causing
you so much inconvenience with all these pictures.'' I do not
know if she heard me or not. She sort of laughed and went on.
The reason I raise that is, it is clear there are
celebrities out there of which members of Congress--maybe
senators, but members of the House are not.
And I just wonder how much help they could be in terms of
doing public service type announcements, and maybe talk about
some of the things we have talked about here today, or the fact
that nobody else is going to learn about this or whatever.
I mean, Oprah Winfrey, people like that, doing public
service announcements would be, I would think, a tremendous
value in all of our communities, finding people who would be
able to help in the communities.
Is that something that is being pursued?
Mr. Mesenbourg. That is, Congressman, something that we are
pursuing. Actually, we vetted the preliminary advertising with
our new Secretary of Commerce, Secretary Locke, about 2 weeks
ago. And one of his advisors was a senior advisor to then
Senator Obama during the campaign. And he encouraged us to
really involve some of the celebrities, especially celebrities
that are viewed as trusted voices within their local community.
So as part of our communication contract, we have a public
relations aspect to that, and we have that firm actually
crafting some of those messages. And some of the advice that we
have is maybe we need to be a bit more cutting edge on some of
the advertising to hit some of these traditionally hard-to-
count parts of the population, and we are exploring that.
Mr. Castle. Let me just ask the other panelists, does that
make sense to you, if they had public service announcements
with people of some notoriety in whatever community you are
trying to deal with in terms of getting people to get involved
with the Census count?
Ms. Coulter. I do think it makes sense. The only thing I
would suggest, though, is that there be a sensitivity to making
sure that you are reaching all the groups. So, for example, in
the African American community, African American media, African
American PR firms. When you talk about celebrities, for
example, in the African American community, the person that
comes to my mind--we were just talking about Oprah. But in
addition to Oprah, there is Tom Joyner, who reaches millions of
African Americans everyday on the radio, and he is very
trusted.
So I think when you think through that strategy, just make
sure it is very inclusive.
Mr. Castle. Is that true in the Latino communities as well?
Ms. Lopez. Yes. I would reiterate that the same would apply
in the Hispanic community, very popular, soap operas in
Spanish. Novellas are very popular, so the stars obviously are
very much sought out.
But from a local perspective, I think local radio,
especially in Delaware, is considered an important source. So
at the same time that the Telemundo and Univision are using
these wonderful celebrities to carry the message, then they
have to also hear it from local community leaders and media and
newspaper and radio, and I think that would be powerful.
Because the message for our community, the most concern we have
has to do with a community that is fearing this process and
needs to understand how these two entities are separate and
that this data is safe.
Mr. Castle. Well, let me thank you all. You have been a
very good panel. It is has been very informational and helpful.
And, hopefully, working together, we can overcome some of the
problems that have existed in the past. And let me thank
Senator Carper for the opportunity of participating today, and
turn it over to him.
Senator Carper. Well, I am just delighted that you have
joined us, Congressman. Just think about it, two-thirds of the
entire Delaware delegation in Congress is on this stage at this
moment. But we are honored that each of you are here.
I am just reminded in terms of putting together and
crafting a message to encourage folks to step forward to be
counted, in terms of being able to craft the message to
encourage those folks who might otherwise duck this opportunity
to not duck it.
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Catholics like the congressman
and myself, we are not the most effective messengers. We are
not the best ones to put together the marketing plan. We are
not the best ones to do the media, but there are a lot of folks
who are, and you have mentioned some of them who are.
I think someone earlier mentioned that the President might
play a valuable role. I would say the First Lady might be a
terrific asset there as well. I do not know if their children
might be called upon to play a role, but there are a lot of
children in homes that are not going to be counted. So this
could be a whole family participation project. But we need to
be creative. We need to think outside the box. And my sense is
that what we are doing here.
First question that I have is for Mr. Mesenbourg. I want to
go back to talk about something we had a chance to get into
before. As you know, in April, the Census Bureau began a
massive operation to verify and update more than 145 million
addresses nationwide--the hand-held computers, I think their
cost is about $800 million for the hand-held. That is what I am
told. But the address canvassing operation has a projected cost
estimate of about $370 million. In Delaware, approximately 500
temporary employees were hired to carry out the operation, I
believe.
For the first time, workers are using hand-held computers
to update the Census Bureau's address database. And, as you
know, last year, there were major problems with the hand-held,
which led to a major redesign of the Census late into the
process.
Would you just talk for a minute or so about the
improvements that have been made to the overall functionality
of the hand-held computers? Since the dress rehearsal, are they
performing as expected during the address canvassing operation?
I believe you suggested a few minutes ago that, indeed,
they are and that you are encouraged. But take another minute
and just talk about that.
Mr. Mesenbourg. Certainly, Senator.
As you know, we faced some significant challenges last year
that we experienced with the hand-held computers in the dress
rehearsal that was in both Stockton and Fayetteville, North
Carolina. Faced with some of those problems, we actually took a
hard look at our data collection activities for 2010, and we
decided to focus and use the hand-held computers only for the
address canvassing operation.
The original plan was to use those for non-response follow-
up in May 2010. That is when that operation starts. We thought
that was far too risky an undertaking to do that, so we put all
of our resources on making sure that the hand-helds would
perform in the address canvassing operation.
Senator Carper. Not everybody following this hearing knows
what we mean by address canvassing.
Why don't you just take a moment and explain to the
laypeople what that means?
Mr. Mesenbourg. The address canvassing operation, we hired
140,000 Census Bureau employees to walk every block in the
United States and actually check the address, validate the
address. And they have a GPS capability on the address
canvassing that permits us to accurately locate the housing
unit in the block. And that becomes important, of course, if we
have to go back and do non-response follow-up and when we are
going to tabulate the data.
So the objective of address canvassing is to make sure we
have every address on the address list. We heard some
discussion earlier in the day about the local update process.
Philadelphia provided us with 56,000 addresses, and across the
Nation, we got 8 million additional addresses from State and
local governments.
So when we approached address canvassing this spring, we
found that the workload had increased. We had the 8 million
additional addresses that had come from the State and local
communities. We had tested the hand-helds in a small scale test
in December in Fayetteville, North Carolina, but there were
still some concerns on how they would perform. So we introduced
a series of risk mitigation strategies. And while originally we
planned to do address canvassing in two waves, we decided to do
it in five waves to reduce the risk. So we actually ended up
starting about 10 days early in eight of the local Census
offices.
We also then benefited from the downturn in the economy. In
the dress rehearsal in 2007, our experience was if we hired
somebody, about 25 percent of them would not show up for the
training, so we would make an offer. Well, our experience in
this economy, of course, is much different, and only 12 percent
did not show up. We also had much higher probability that
people might decide address canvassing was not their cup of tea
6 months or a year ago, and now we are getting very few people
that are willingly giving up their jobs. So they are working
longer hours and they are not separating. That really explains
why we are so far ahead of our address canvassing operation.
But to answer your question, the hand-helds have performed
very well. And with a very highly-skilled workforce working
longer hours, we are finishing the operation much earlier than
we originally planned.
Senator Carper. Thank you for that.
Let me just segue, kind of stay on that point. But I am
told that the address canvassing operation was initially
expected to last I think through mid July. But in certain areas
of Philadelphia, and I think even Delaware, I am told that
Census workers were let go after working only a few weeks. And
last week, I think the Commerce inspector general issued a
report, indicating that workers were not following basic
procedures and taking short cuts.
Let me just ask, what is the impact of these
inconsistencies on the quality of the address lists that we are
compiling? And then subsequent to operations, what steps has
the Census Bureau taken to address the concerns that have been
raised by the inspector general from Commerce?
Mr. Mesenbourg. The inspector general sent two individuals
from their office to 15 of our local Census offices. We
actually have 150 local Census offices established across the
United States to support the address canvassing. They basically
followed the address canvassers around, a small sample of them.
And they noted in six of the sites that some of the address
canvassers were not following the procedures.
Two procedures that were noted, they were not knocking on
the door. This was in our procedure, and we did that for two
reasons. First of all, to get a good map spot from the GPS, you
have to be relatively close to the residence. And since
strangers may be showing up on your front step holding a
strange device, we thought it was wise to announce our
presence.
The other reason to knock on the door, though, is to ask
the homeowner if they are home--of course, we canvass night and
into the evening, and sometimes people will not be home. If
there is an unusual housing arrangement--perhaps they are
renting out the top floor, perhaps there appears to be a
building in the back or there may be two rows of doorbells on
the door. And the earlier panel had talked about some of the
challenges in the economic downturn. That is one of the
objectives in address canvassing, is to note that there may be
multiple housing units in what we would think would be a single
unit.
The second concern, some of the rural roads, the address
canvasser is to go down every twisty road, even if it is a dirt
road. And they noted a couple cases where the canvasser did not
do that. What we did, as soon as we got that report, we sent
out a blanket announcement to all 140,000 canvassers that
actually shows up on their hand-held computer, to reconfirm
that you need to follow procedure, you need to knock on the
door, and you need to go down every road in the rural area.
We do not think this was a systematic problem, but we were
concerned that some canvassers were not following procedures.
Perhaps not a surprise when you have 140,000 people in the
field, that not everyone follows direction. But as soon as the
IG made us aware of that information, we put out a blanket
message to the listers, and we followed up with a telephone
call with all the regional directors the day after.
Senator Carper. All right. Thank you.
We talked a fair amount about overcount and undercount. We
have a situation where, ironically, folks that are most often
undercounted are those that live in the most dire economic
situations, and those that are overcounted are those who tend
to be more affluent, college-age students who go to schools out
of State, folks who have second homes, vacation homes, and not
uncommon for them to be overcounted. Not a good situation and
one that we certainly tried to address in 2000 and we are
seeking to address in 2010 even more.
Let me just ask each of you, are you satisfied thus far
with the steps that the Census Bureau has taken to address some
of the problems in the count that showed up in 2000, where we
had about 6 million people who were undercounted, were not
counted, and about 3 million who were counted at least twice?
Ms. Lopez, would you like to go first?
And again, the question is, how do you feel about the steps
that the Census Bureau is taking to address the problems that
we faced in 2000?
Ms. Lopez. Well, thus far, all the recommendations that we
have made regarding potential partners for the Census--I know
that in Delaware, the office has gone forth and spoken to these
folks all over the State. What partnerships came out of that, I
am not sure of all the details, but some of them are event
sponsorships and some of them are much more involved and using
space for testing, and using space for, hopefully, in the
future, as a questionnaire assistance center.
So I feel that in Delaware, we are having a positive
experience moving forward if all these partnerships are
critically placed throughout the State. And the concern that
Director Mesenbourg brought up, I have heard before, that they
have a good problem and they have a very good workforce because
of the economy. The concern there, and I want to reiterate, was
that when you are looking at the hard-to-count areas, these
folks may not be scoring very high on their tests. But what
they have to bring to the table is access to a community that
is not going to open the door to an unknown face.
So my concern is that if they are given the flexibility to
hire the best candidate for the hard-to-count areas, and they
are able, given the flexibility, to have the partnerships
customized based on the community, if they need to set up a
store front in a community center that has a high population of
Hispanics, especially in Wilmington, they should do so. I do
feel confident that they are going to have much greater success
in 2010 in capturing this community.
Senator Carper. Thank you, Ms. Lopez. Ms. Coulter.
Ms. Coulter. I listened with intent regarding some of the
things that are being done, and it is quite a management
undertaking with thousands and thousands of people out there
doing these types of tasks. But I do think that--I will
underscore, actually, Ms. Lopez's statements around partnering.
I think that the key to this is really getting into community-
based organizations who are trusted in these communities.
Many of us have been around for years, the Urban League for
nearly a hundred years. And if nothing else, if you walk into
most African American communities in this city and other cities
across the country, they will have heard of the organization.
And it kind of gives you a step in right away because they know
that while I may not know exactly what it is all about, but I
know I have heard of it. So really hiring people who are
trusted folks that can walk into these communities I think is
critically important.
Locally, we have also worked with our local office, the
Census Bureau, in initially helping them reach out to racially-
diverse folks to hire. And I know that more than 50 folks have
been hired by them. And we would like to do more of that. I
think the concern, though, for us is that as a nonprofit,
community-based organization, resources are critical to us. But
I think that we have proven ourselves by doing some things just
because we want to be a partner, but then there are probably
deeper and more complex things that we could do together if we
had resources to do them.
Senator Carper. Thank you. Mr. Colon.
Mr. Colon. I am confident that this 2010 Census is going to
be the most successful Census ever in the history of the United
States. However, that does not mean that we do not have some
concerns in the counting of all Latinos, especially as the ones
that I mentioned before. The migrant and seasonal farmworker
community, more than 80 percent of that population is Latino.
That creates a lot of challenges for us to make sure that we
are counting the migrant and seasonal farmworker community. In
addition to that, the immigrant community that is of Latino
descent. That should be a top priority for us, if we are going
to make sure that every Latino is counted in the Nation.
And I would also like to mention that, Senator and the
congressman, if you can assist some of us really delivering the
message to our local and State leaders on the importance of the
U.S. Census. What I mean with this is engaging the National
Governors Association to make sure that they are really engaged
in this process the way that we are engaging ourselves,
especially I am talking on behalf of the U.S. Council on Latino
Affairs. If our governors are there with us, I think it would
be a lot more successful for us to make sure we are counting
every single resident in those respective States.
Senator Carper. Thank you.
I have no more questions of this panel. I am going to ask
Congressman Castle if he would like to make a closing
statement. I will make a closing statement, and then we will
call it a day. Thanks.
Mr. Castle. Thank you, Senator. I have a 40-minute closing
statement I would like to give now, if everybody is ready for
that out here in the audience. [Laughter.]
No, I am pleased to have had the opportunity to be here,
and I do thank Senator Carper for that. I believe this is a
very important subject, and I am very pleased with this panel
and the first panel. I think your suggestions were good. I
think we all need to pay attention to these suggestions.
Obviously, saying these things is one thing; carrying them out
and doing them properly is something else.
Again, that is the responsibility of those of us who are
elected officials and those who are working in the Census. But
I believe that there seems to be a greater focus on this
particular 10-year cycle than normal. And I think we have an
opportunity to really make sure we get our count numbers up,
and I think your testimony today has proven that. And for that,
we are all very thankful. So thank you.
Senator Carper. And let me just say thank you so much for
joining us today on this important occasion.
A former President of the United States--it might have
actually been Richard Nixon. Not many people quote Richard
Nixon these days, but I am going to quote him today. And he
used to say that ``the only people that do not make mistakes
are the people that do not do anything.'' And all of us will
make mistakes in our lives. I say to my sons, who are now in
college, that there is nothing wrong with making mistakes. The
key is to learn from those mistakes.
We have been conducting a Census every 10 years for over
200 years, and along the way, we have made a lot of mistakes.
We continued to make those mistakes in 2000 and the intervening
years up until now. But I am actually encouraged. We had some
enormous concerns. My staff and I did, and other members of the
Senate and the House had enormous concerns as we were
approaching the 2010 Census, and found out how little we were
planning to use technology to increase the number of people
that we are counting to reduce the number of errors; and
enormous concern about the hand-held computers and doing the
address canvassing and whether or not the technology would
work, would enable us to be more accurate and to be more
efficient in the work that we are doing. I am encouraged to
hear that after a little bit of a late start, it looks like we
are picking up speed, and the result that we are seeing thus
far is actually encouraging.
The concerns raised by the Inspector General of the
Commerce Department, we had an opportunity for Mr. Mesenbourg
to respond to those, and I am encouraged that he jumped right
on it. And he used the technology, the hand-helds, to send out
messages ASAP, to folks who were walking around with those
hand-helds to make sure that we addressed those concerns that
had been raised by the Inspector General.
The Census, as we all have heard here today, is enormously
important, as important maybe as any time in our Nation's
history. As States, cities, counties of all sizes and shapes
wrestle with the financial difficulties, in some cases
catastrophes, that they face, they each have a special vested
interest in making sure that we get this count right. Whether
the amount of money for an undercount for every person is a
$100 or $2,000, a lot of money is at stake here. A lot of this
money at stake is cities, counties and States apply for Federal
grants. A good deal is at stake in terms of how we elect our
U.S. representatives, how we apportion our districts, how many
U.S. representatives a commonwealth like Pennsylvania will
have, and also to determine how we are going to elect and
apportion the districts--create the districts for our local
officials and, in some cases literally for officials on our
city governments. There is a great deal at stake, and it is
important that we, to the best of our ability, get this right,
to the extent we find that we are making mistakes, to correct
them in the stream, in mid-air, and then to have some lessons
learned for the next time.
I do not know that the congressman and I will be back 10
years from now to do a lessons learned, sort of retrospective.
We might; you never know. But I am very grateful that each of
you were able to set time aside in your day and those who
joined us. I want to say a special thanks to our staff who
worked for weeks to put this hearing together.
A friend of mine, Lamar Alexander, a former governor, now
serves in the U.S. Senate, he likes to talk about hearings as
talkings. He says they are really misnamed. They should not be
called hearings; they should be called talkings because all the
senators do, they come to these hearings and talk. And I just
want the record to show that Congressman Castle and I listen a
fair amount. We talk some, but we listen a whole lot. And you
gave us a whole lot to chew on and to take home with us, and to
take us back to our respective responsibilities.
So with that having been said, special thanks to everyone
here at the center for hosting us today and for all of our
witnesses who have been a part of this presentation. Thank you
all. And with that, this hearing--not this listening. This
hearing is adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 3:15 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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