Mr. Chairman, Mrs. Maloney, and Members of the Subcommittee:
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the treatment in Census 2000 of private Americans living overseas, prisoners incarcerated outside of the state that is paying for their incarceration, and U.S. military personnel living outside their home state.
I want to emphasize at the outset that these are difficult issues and I appreciate the reasons they have been raised. As the American economy becomes more globalized and as technological advances, such as the Internet, shrink the globe, more and more Americans are living overseas and more may do so in the future. Both the issue of prisoners and the issue of active duty military living outside their home state raises a different set of important issues related to census residence concepts.
Each of these issues, however, is highly complex as I will illustrate shortly. They deserve thorough study. One complexity, for example, would be to determine whether inclusion of an American overseas would be related to the intent of that person to ever return to this country. The same applies if the Congress wants to reexamine the "usual residence" concept with regard to prisoners or U.S. military personnel outside their home state. We need to make sure that any policy changes are consistent with the original intent of the census to determine the "whole number of persons in each state" for purposes of apportionment. If the Congress believes that all private Americans overseas should be included in the decennial census then it may first want to commission in-depth studies that would shed light on the complexities involved in making such a change. If funding were available, the Census Bureau would be happy to contract for such studies.
As I have stated before, at present "Time" is our biggest issue. We are past the point in the Census 2000 planning cycle when all major operational plans have had to be finalized. Efforts at this late stage to introduce complex new procedures to the design will place Census 2000 at risk. The operational machinery that constitutes a census is not something to be taken lightly. We could not now re-start the excruciatingly detailed Master Activity Schedule work and meet deadlines for critical steps between now and April 1, 2000. Census 2000 is in its count-down phase where each day matters.
Now, let me address the issue of Americans overseas. We understand that there is proposed legislation that merely expresses the "sense of the Congress" regarding counting Americans abroad. It is, nevertheless, important to point out our general concerns about any mandate to count U.S. citizens abroad. At this stage in the census process, there is not time to design and develop the required procedures for conducting this enumeration.
Census Bureau staff met with representatives of the Census 2000 Coalition on this population in early May to discuss their reactions to our concerns and their proposals for overcoming those concerns. After carefully reviewing the Coalition's proposals and studying the viability of all the technical aspects involved, the Census Bureau has concluded that it cannot credibly enumerate the population of American citizens living abroad. There are difficult conceptual issues such as whether to count retirees and other persons unlikely to return to the U.S. We have serious concerns about our inability to validate responses and the operational complexity of such a worldwide enumeration. Because of our concerns regarding our inability to undertake this task in a responsible manner, we are concerned about inviting litigation to challenge any procedures we may be directed to adopt. As I mention later in my testimony, we do plan to count overseas military and Federal employees and their dependents in Census 2000, as we did in 1990, but for this population, we have reasonable procedures in place.
Accuracy
First, we have concerns regarding the accuracy of the information that we would obtain under any attempt to enumerate private Americans overseas. We cannot estimate accurately the size of the universe of this population and so we do not have the means of controlling and checking its progress as we do here at home, where we use the Master Address File to control the enumeration. For example, embassy/consulate lists of American citizens living in their jurisdictions generally are outdated and incomplete, since there is no requirement that citizens register with them upon entering or leaving the country. We also could not conduct an Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation to ascertain undercounts and overcounts.
Without a control mechanism that would allow followup of nonrespondents, the enumeration of the overseas component would essentially be voluntary. Only those persons who knew about the enumeration and wished to participate would be included. A voluntary count could be affected to benefit specific states with concerted publicity campaigns. This outcome would be dramatically different from the mandatory nature of the census here where we have the ability to make several attempts, including telephone calls and personal visits, to include everyone. The result of an inaccurate enumeration of the private overseas American population could distort the population of each state, potentially affecting the apportionment of Congressional seats.
Validation and Verification
Second, we have concerns about detecting and correcting any invalid responses. The problems include ensuring that the Bureau receives valid information for each overseas person reported on the form, problems clearly defining the universe for this enumeration, and problems defining what questions we could ask for validation purposes.
Identifying reports for these persons with potentially duplicative reports from administrative records that we will obtain for U.S. military and Federal civilian employees and their dependents abroad would be very difficult. To unduplicate, we would also have to get SSNs for the Federally affiliated employees overseas and their dependents. We have no means to collect SSN or any information for individuals in the Federally affiliated component of the overseas population; we obtain only counts by home state from the administrative reports of Federal agencies.
There is no practical way to verify either the U.S. citizenship or the home state designation for each person counted through this voluntary, uncontrolled type of enumeration. Requesting passport number or SSN will not solve this problem because many American citizens overseas do not necessarily have passports, for example, if they live in countries like Canada where they do not need passports. Many may not have an SSN, particularly dependents. The issue of dependents raises another issue related to citizenship. Should only U.S. citizens be included in the universe or should all spouses and children be included regardless of citizenship? The fact is, the Americans overseas population is very complex and I do not believe anyone has made a thorough study to identify and examine all of the problems and concerns associated with counting this population.
There is the separate issue of determining the home state for overseas individuals. Would it be the last state they lived in before moving overseas, the state which they claim for income tax purposes, the state in which they vote, or their state of birth?
Operational Complexity
Third, even if issues of accuracy, validation, and verification could be resolved, it would be much more operationally complex to include all overseas American citizens in the Census 2000 count than may appear at first glance. Processing of results from this enumeration would require matching of files, development of procedures for resolving matching problems, and deciding how to handle unmatched cases.
Development efforts would require considerable lead times for planning, developing, and conducting operations and establishing the network of partnerships recommended by the coalition. After determining the design and content of the overseas form, we would have to obtain clearance for the form and then we would need to prepare and advertise for bids and award printing contracts.
To make an earnest and effective attempt to reach this population, the Census Bureau would need to obtain the commitment of considerable staff support from the State Department. The State Department would have to provide address lists of embassies and consulates by country worldwide, along with current estimates of the number of American citizens living in each embassy/consular jurisdiction. The State Department would be the primary agent for much of the logistics associated with overseas publicity of the enumeration at the embassies/consulates, along with the distribution of the bulk of the census forms. If the overseas form asked for passport numbers, the State Department would have to match a file of passports on the overseas forms with their official passport files. We would have to swear in State Department employees in embassies all over the world, providing them with special sworn status to address legal confidentiality concerns. All this work would entail a substantial amount of negotiation, planning, and coordination between the two agencies. This means time.
Cost
The cost of such an enumeration, were we required to design it, would likely be significant and we could not conduct it within the existing budget request. At the outset, the Congress would need to appropriate substantial additional funds (including FY99 preparatory activities) to carry out this overseas enumeration.
Even with all the assistance that the Census 2000 Coalition has generously offered, we would need additional staff to effectively coordinate and implement this work. Other costs would include printing forms and shipping of materials to and from many countries, as well as controlling and capturing the information on the returned forms.
Even if the census clock allowed us to consider adding this operation, which it does not, we must conclude that to take a census of private American citizens abroad at this time would be costly, of dubious quality given the conceptual complexities and operational difficulties, and result in incomplete, unreliable data. I hope I have adequately described some of the complex issues that would require thorough empirical research before we could undertake such a task.
Now, I will discuss H.R. 1632, which relates to how we should count prisoners in Census 2000. H.R. 1632 would require that, if an individual is incarcerated in a state and the state can recover from another state or states over half the costs for incarcerating the individual, then the Secretary of Commerce shall count the person in the state from which costs are recoverable. In the event that costs are recoverable from two or more states, the Secretary of Commerce shall prescribe rules consistent with carrying out the Act. The Census Bureau has serious concerns with this bill.
In Census 2000, the Census Bureau plans to count prisoners and other institutionalized populations as residents of the state in which the institution or facility is located.
This procedure is in keeping with the usual residence concept the Census Bureau uses to decide where to count people in the census. The concept of "usual residence," a principle used by the Congress in the first Census Act of 1790, is defined as the place where the person lives and sleeps most of the time. Usual residence is not necessarily the same as the person's legal residence. The usual residence concept was approved by a U.S. Court of Appeals in 1971 in Borough of Bethel Park v. Stans, 449 F. 2d 575 (3rd Cir. 1971). The Court found that counting inmates of institutions as residents of the state where they were confined was a reasonable means of interpreting the constitutional and legislative phrase, "whole number of persons in each state." In a 1992 decision, the District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the decision to count inmates at a prison located in Virginia, but operated by the District of Columbia, as Virginia residents rather than D.C. residents, was not arbitrary or capricious. District of Columbia v. U.S. Department of Commerce, 789 F. Supp. 1179, (D.D.C. 1992).
This legislation, if passed, would mandate an exception to the judicially-approved usual residence concept. Doing so may open a Pandora's box of pressures for other exceptions to our residence rules. For example, there may be an interest in having prisoners incarcerated within a state counted at their pre-incarceration residence in that state. Once we begin to violate the concept of usual residence, there are many other permutations that could confound the process.
There are other examples where one state funds its citizens' activities in another state. North Dakota provides funding for students to live and participate in programs at universities in other states. In Illinois, the state government and local school districts provide funding for services that disabled students receive out of state. Nevada, in some cases, provides funding for its residents to receive Medicaid services out of state, which in some cases involves their living out of state. Maine pays for out-of-state residential care and mental health treatment when treatment is not available in the state. West Virginia pays to house students who need special education or other special care in other states. As you can see, changing the residence rules with regard to prisoners would raise a whole rash of questions about whether other categories of people should be counted at their usual residence.
Census residence rules are carefully designed and integrated to make sure everyone is counted and to avoid counting anyone twice. Implementing new rules at this late date, without proper testing and evaluation, would run the risk of introducing errors into the census process. Consider the complexity of the issues raised by the bill:
First, the bill is not clear about whether prisoners would have to be allocated to a specific location within a state. If not, they would not be reflected in the totals below the state level; in essence, they would not have an impact on redistricting or funds allocation for any locality. If they do have to be counted in a specific location, what location should it be? Should it be their home at the time they committed the crime they are incarcerated for, or at a correctional facility in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed? Attempting to assign these people to an address within another state would be extremely complicated.
Second, the Census Bureau would have to design a new form for collecting sufficient information to allocate a prisoner to another address in another state. And we would have to devise new procedures to assure proper distribution of long form questionnaires to a sample of prisoners.
Third, having to determine which prisoners are funded by another state would require developing new procedures to work with prison administrators on a case-by-case basis. Doing so would involve significant retraining of census enumerators and we would still have no way of knowing whether they could make these determinations. Without proper testing and evaluation, we cannot know whether prison officials have good records that would show which prisoners are funded at the 50-percent level by another state or whether this information is even recorded. For example, a contract between states may indicate that one state has to pay another a certain amount for care for a prisoner but may not indicate the total cost of custodial care. How then does one decide if it's 50 percent?
Fourth, the bill is not clear on whether it is only state-supported prisoners and state-run correctional facilities that would be included, or whether prisoners and facilities at the local level, as well as privately run prisons, would be included. Notably, the bill makes no reference to Federal prisoners who are more likely to be incarcerated outside their home state.
These are just some of the complex issues raised by this bill. Again I emphasize that there is not enough time to consider additional operations related to prisoners, which would be untested and not carefully integrated into the current Census 2000 operational plan.
Now I will discuss proposed legislation that would require that members of the armed forces on active duty and their dependents be allocated to their home of record. We have had very little time to study the legislation or to analyze its impact, so I will present only a brief description today and would be happy to provide a more detailed analysis later.
Let me begin by describing our plans for counting active duty military in the United States. Members of the U.S. armed forces who on Census Day are living on a military installation in the United States or living on a military vessel assigned to a home port in the United States are counted at the military installation or at the home port of the vessel. Members of the armed forces stationed on a nearby military installation or ship in the United States who live in off-base housing are counted at the off-base residence. This is consistent with the long-standing principle of usual residence that I described above with regard to prisoners.
We do count U.S. military and their dependents assigned overseas (as well as Federal civilian employees and their dependents) at their home of record or other home state designation as determined by using agency administrative records. We do not conduct an individual count of this population.
As with H.R. 1632, we have serious concerns with this legislation because it would mandate an exception to the usual residence concept for the U.S.-based military and potentially lead to other challenges to the usual residence concept, as I have described above.
For the U.S.-based military, we conduct a standard enumeration. They are asked all the same questions asked of the civilian population and they are included in all the detailed counts and characteristics we tabulate in the census. To enumerate them at their "home of record" would require us to design a new operation late in the process. Many armed forces members may not know their home of record; if we had to match completed census forms for armed forces members to Defense Department administrative records, that would require a massive, costly, and time-consuming operation that we could not undertake without putting the census at risk. If "home of record" means place of birth, this could lead to the incongruous result where a person is born in one state but owns a home and uses the resources of another. There is simply no time or justification to make this kind of significant change to the census residence rules and to census operations.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my testimony. I will be happy to answer any questions.