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PROMOTION OUTREACH EFFORTS FOR CENSUS 2000
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HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
of the
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT
REFORM AND OVERSIGHT
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 29, 1997
__________
Serial No. 105-81
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
46-496 WASHINGTON : 1998
_____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
J. DENNIS HASTERT, Illinois TOM LANTOS, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
STEVEN SCHIFF, New Mexico EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
CHRISTOPHER COX, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida GARY A. CONDIT, California
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEPHEN HORN, California THOMAS M. BARRETT, Wisconsin
JOHN L. MICA, Florida ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia DC
DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
Carolina JIM TURNER, Texas
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
PETE SESSIONS, Texas HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee
MICHAEL PAPPAS, New Jersey ------
VINCE SNOWBARGER, Kansas BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
BOB BARR, Georgia (Independent)
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
William Moschella, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian
Judith McCoy, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal
Justice
J. DENNIS HASTERT, Chairman
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana THOMAS M. BARRETT, Wisconsin
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
STEVEN SCHIFF, New Mexico ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida GARY A. CONDIT, California
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
JOHN L. MICA, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio JIM TURNER, Texas
BOB BARR, Georgia
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Robert Charles, Staff Director
Michele Lang, Special Counsel
Ianthe Saylor, Clerk
David McMillen, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on April 29, 1997................................... 1
Statement of:
Morgan, Michael L., commissioner, Department of City
Planning, city of Milwaukee; and Leon A. Meyer, director,
City Planning Department, city of Cincinnati, accompanied
by Agnese Brienza, senior planner, Hamilton County, OH..... 10
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Davis, Hon. Danny K., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Illinois, prepared statement of................... 74
Hastert, Hon. J. Dennis, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Illinois, prepared statement of............... 5
Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from
the State of New York, prepared statement of............... 67
Meyer, Leon A., director, City Planning Department, city of
Cincinnati, prepared statement of.......................... 27
Morgan, Michael L., commissioner, Department of City
Planning, city of Milwaukee, prepared statement of......... 13
PROMOTION OUTREACH EFFORTS FOR CENSUS 2000
----------
TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 1997
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, International
Affairs, and Criminal Justice,
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9 a.m., in
room 311, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. J. Dennis Hastert
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Hastert, Davis of Illinois, Barr,
Barrett Cummings, and Turner.
Staff present: Robert Charles, staff director; Michele
Lang, special counsel; Ianthe Saylor, clerk; David McMillen,
minority professional staff member; and Ellen Rayner, minority
chief clerk.
Mr. Hastert. The subcommittee will come to order. It is my
pleasure to welcome our guests and witnesses this morning and
good morning to Mr. Morgan, Mr. Meyer and Ms. Brienza, I
believe. We will work on that.
I also would like to extend a welcome to my friend and
colleague from Illinois, Mr. Davis, who will be joining us from
the full committee and who has asked to join us here today.
The hearing is the first in a series of hearings we will be
holding to review the Census Bureau's preparations for the
critical task of conducting the 2000 decennial census.
Throughout the 105th Congress, this subcommittee will be taking
a very close look at the activities of the Census Bureau and
will be placing a particular emphasis on ensuring the accuracy,
reliability and inclusiveness for all Americans in the census
process.
Today, we will begin with one of the most important
elements required for accuracy in the decennial census, the
conduct of an effective promotion and outreach program to
ensure that every American understands the importance of
participating in the census by completing his or her form.
The General Accounting Office has reported to the Congress
that voluntary participation is the cornerstone of the
decennial census, because it is the voluntary public response
rate through mail-back, which is the most important and
accurate and effective and efficient source of census data. The
significance of a large mail-back response is not just because
it reduces the staff, time and money required, but that it
produces the best quality census data. Thus, it is clear that
the most fundamental and important task before this
subcommittee as it exercises its oversight responsibilities to
ensure an accurate census, is to examine the efforts of the
Bureau to achieve a high response rate through promotion and
outreach.
Unfortunately, we enter the 2000 census with a historic
trend of a declining response rate over the last three
censuses. When coupled with the persistent differential
undercount of minorities, the problem becomes even more
serious. These declining response rates have focused and forced
the Bureau to devote greater resources to nonresponse followup,
a costly procedure which relies on sending enumerators into
individual housing units to collect census data. It is
estimated that in 2000, the Bureau will expend on an average of
$25 million for each additional percentage point of nonresponse
to the mailed out form.
For every percentage point of mail response, there is $25
million less in resources to spend on promotion and outreach
efforts in hard-to-count areas.
However, not all the news is bad. Despite its problems, the
1990 census was the most thorough census in history, accounting
for 98.4 percent of the population. The most notable and
publicized failure of the 1990 census was the majority of
persons in the 1.6 percent of the population that were missed
in 1990 were minorities. In a nation where the concepts of one
person, one vote, and equal representation for all in
government are sacred principles, it is imperative that these
problems be resolved in the 2000 census.
On the bright side, as reported by the National Research
Council, half of the 1990 undercount was due to missed
households; that is, households which never even had an
opportunity to participate in the census. Why did this happen?
In a nutshell, because of inaccurate address lists. Without an
accurate address list, the Bureau was unable to get a census
questionnaire to these individuals and didn't know where to
send an enumerator to count them.
I am pleased to see that in the preparation for the 2000
census, the Bureau has placed a major focus on improving its
efforts in address list development. While I still have some
questions and concerns about this process, it appears that the
Bureau has made great strides in ensuring major improvements in
the master address list. Through these efforts alone, the
Bureau has laid the important groundwork to eliminate up to
half the problem of the undercount.
However, where our real challenge lies, and the reason that
we are here today, is to find out how we can reach the other
half of the undercounted population, which is comprised of
households which did receive census questionnaires but failed
to return them for one reason or another.
This challenge, while not new, is not beyond our
capabilities to solve. In fact, one of my predecessors at this
subcommittee, the former Chairman Sawyer of Ohio, offered some
wise guidance to us on this subject back at a hearing in 1989.
Mr. Sawyer stated then what is still true today: Minorities and
the poor are more likely to participate in the census if they
have genuine confidence that their participation will bring
them a step closer to playing a more meaningful and fuller role
in this Nation's system of government.
Today's hearing is all about how we can translate that
vision into a reality in time for the 2000 census.
The key to realizing that vision is promotion and outreach
at the local level. It should be the building block on which
the 2000 census is based. Our success in promotion and
outreach, and ultimately in the census as a whole, quite
frankly, depends far more on local mayors, school districts,
business and civic leaders and volunteers, than it does on
Washington-based statisticians, administrators and consultants.
These leaders in local communities, not statisticians with
calculators, are the ones able to capture the unique
characteristics of their community necessary to reach out and
communicate the vital importance of individual participation in
the census.
We are lucky to have with us today three individuals who
fill this vital role of community leader that will determine
the success of the Census 2000 effort. They are uniquely
qualified to address the issues involved with promotion and
outreach, and can speak from experience as to what works and
what doesn't.
To this end, we will focus on drawing their expertise out
in three separate and distinct areas.
First, we will revisit and review the local efforts of two
communities which were very successful in the 1990 census.
Conventional wisdom holds that minorities in hard to enumerate
areas simply won't return their census forms and thus are
doomed to be undercounted forever. I am pleased to say that
this just isn't true.
I commend Mr. Michael Morgan, whose efforts as the deputy
director of the Department of Administration for Milwaukee, WI,
in the 1990 census, were instrumental in Milwaukee's achieving
the second highest mail response rate of all metropolitan areas
in the Nation. In fact, the response rates in Milwaukee for
hard to enumerate minority areas exceeded the average national
response rate for nonminority suburban areas. Through his
efforts in developing a blueprint for promotion and outreach,
responsible for obtaining a full and complete count of the
citizens of Milwaukee, Mr. Morgan has created a national
example that should disabuse us once and for all of all
prejudicial notions about what is and isn't possible when it
comes to including all Americans in the census count.
In another community, Mr. Meyer and Ms. Brienza of
Cincinnati, are tremendous examples of how the dedicated
efforts of local leaders in assuring a complete count at all
local levels can result in $1 million of increased Federal
funding for a locality, funding that would have otherwise been
lost had it not been for both their careful preparation for
their census and a meticulous followup after the census was
completed.
Second, we will examine how well the Census Bureau has
learned from their experience of 1990 and whether it has taken
advantage of the knowledge gained through the successful
techniques implemented by localities in 1990. As with most
problems in our society, the real solutions are, and in this
case, were found at the local level. I am most eager to see if
these hard won lessons have been learned or if we are on a path
to repeat easily correctable mistakes in the year 2000. The
Bureau has indicated in written materials and at conferences
that it understands the key role of building partnerships in
the communities.
Has the Bureau listened to the success stories of the
localities in 1990? Has the Bureau done a good job of
communicating its plans to those at the local level who will be
implementing it?
By exploring the Bureau's plans for 2000 from the
perspective of local leaders who must actually implement them,
we will be in a good position to answer these questions.
Finally, we will examine the larger scope of Census Bureau
activities for 2000 and determine how they measure up to the
standard of increasing accuracy through greater voluntary
citizen participation. This concern cannot be emphasized
enough, because it strikes at the heart of whether the 2000
census represents valid data that can serve as a base for
almost every government function for the next 10 years or
whether it is just merely just another set of numbers whose
validity is in question and is viewed by the public with the
kind of skepticism usually reserved for political polls.
Each of us should be asking at least three questions:
First, whether the Bureau's overall census plan encourages or
discourages political empowerment in these hard-to-count
communities through participation in the census?
Second, does the Bureau's overall plan work to overcome a
deep mistrust in the government process which many of these
hard-to-count communities hold? And third, through its actions,
is the Bureau sending contradictory messages to the American
people about the need for individual participation in the
Census 2000? If these questions cannot be answered
satisfactorily, there is a great cause for concern.
I look forward to exploring these issues in depth today and
at this time I would like to recognize the ranking member of
the subcommittee, Mr. Barrett of Wisconsin, for his opening
statement and also thank him for his bipartisan assistance in
pursuing our common goal of having the best ever census in the
year 2000.
[The prepared statement of Hon. J. Dennis Hastert follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Barrett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
holding this first of a number of hearings we will hold on the
important issue of the census. As we all know, the Constitution
requires us each 10 years to hold a census so we can determine
how many representatives we should have in each State in the
country.
Over the course of time, of course, we have also seen
another reason for the importance of the census and that is
because so many Federal dollars flow as a result of where the
people live in this country.
As we will find out this morning, my home community,
Milwaukee, has done an excellent job of counting people in our
community and it has done so with the relatively high number of
minorities.
If you were to put together a black list or a Hollywood
film you probably would want three elements in it. You would
probably want money; you would probably want power and you
probably want sex. I am not suggesting we throw sex into the
mix, but we already have incentives for a good census, the
issues of power and the issues of money. Because the number of
representatives that a community will have or a State will have
in Congress, of course, is dependent on the count, as is the
number of Federal dollars they receive.
So, I believe that there are built-in incentives for local
units of government to do a very, very good job in counting the
people in their community and for that reason I am very proud
of the job that my home community has done.
Mr. Hastert. I thank the ranking member. We are very
pleased to have three distinguished witnesses with us today:
Mr. Leon A. Meyer, the director of the City Planning Department
of the city of Cincinnati, and with him is Ms. Agnes Brienza, a
senior planner with Hamilton County.
Now, I would like to yield to Mr. Barrett to introduce the
gentleman from Milwaukee, WI.
Mr. Barrett. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. I am very
pleased to introduce Mike Morgan, who has come out on the same
plane I did last night, to share his testimony with us this
morning.
As I indicated, Milwaukee did a fabulous job in 1990 in
performing our census duties. There was a real local
involvement that was spearheaded in large part by Mr. Morgan,
and he played a key leadership role in performing the census in
Milwaukee. He has been with the city for many years. He is a
fine member of our community and a fine member of my
neighborhood, and it is nice to have you here.
Mr. Morgan. Thank you very much, Congressman.
Mr. Hastert. The Committee on Government Reform has in its
rules that we swear in all of our witnesses. So would you
please stand and raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Hastert. Let the record show that the witnesses have
answered in the affirmative.
Mr. Morgan, would you please lead off?
STATEMENTS OF MICHAEL L. MORGAN, COMMISSIONER, DEPARTMENT OF
CITY PLANNING, CITY OF MILWAUKEE; AND LEON A. MEYER, DIRECTOR,
CITY PLANNING DEPARTMENT, CITY OF CINCINNATI, ACCOMPANIED BY
AGNESE BRIENZA, SENIOR PLANNER, HAMILTON COUNTY, OH
Mr. Morgan. Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee on
National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice,
good morning. I am Michael Morgan, commissioner of the
Department of City Development of Milwaukee, WI.
First, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to
speak on this important subject. Eight years ago, as was
indicated, I was responsible for getting a complete count of
the citizens of Milwaukee during the 1990 census enumeration.
We believe that our efforts succeeded. The district office of
the Census Bureau that includes the city of Milwaukee had a
mail response rate of 82 percent, the best in the United
States. Metro Milwaukee's mail response rate was 60 percent,
the second highest of all metro areas in the Nation.
The 1990 census found 628,000 people living in Milwaukee.
State and Federal projections had estimated our 1990 population
at only about 600,000.
The additional people found by our efforts have meant tens
of millions of dollars in additional State aid to the city of
Milwaukee and helped preserve a congressional seat for the
State of Wisconsin.
Milwaukee is the 17th largest city in the United States,
and 40 percent of our population are minorities. Historically,
minorities have been undercounted by the census, as has been
indicated here today, and one reason we suspect that that is
true is because that part of our community is very distrustful
of government.
Also, our minority residents are often poor. Their mobility
makes them hard to find. What we found is that folks in the
poorer community tend to move a lot and it is very difficult,
from time to time, to find them.
The city of Milwaukee, of course, wanted an accurate census
count to ensure that we had fair levels of congressional
representation and our fair share of State and Federal aid.
Under the leadership of Mayor General Norquist, we
aggressively pursued a complete count strategy in 1990 and our
objective was to use local people to do people-to-people
contact, to support the Census Bureau's own data collection
process. We needed to do three things very well: One, build
trust among the minority community, regarding the census; and
to reassure people, No. 2, about the confidentiality of census
information; and then, No. 3, heighten the appreciation for the
importance of the census among our citizens.
Our complete count program actually began about a year
before the census date. We got started by interviewing the
dozens--interviewing dozens of local government officials and
50 neighborhood and social service agencies. We talked to staff
at homeless shelters, community clinics, halfway houses,
immigrant service organizations, food pantries, just among
others.
We asked everyone for their suggestions on how to reach the
undercounted community, the minority community. Using the
insights provided by these groups, we devised our complete
count program, following some general principles, and I will go
through them real quickly.
No. 1, get census information to places patronized by
target audiences and use languages they understand. We
distributed literature in unconventional places like resale
shops and currency exchanges. A local tortilla manufacturer put
census promotional labels on 70,000 packages of tortillas.
Our materials were printed in a variety of languages, and
these are materials that we produced locally. We produced
materials in Hmong, Spanish and Russian, just to name a few. We
happen to have a fairly large Hmong and Russian population.
We did presentations at community events like Cinco de
Mayo, Black History Month presentations, Vietnamese new year,
bamboo volleyball tournaments. We found that bamboo volleyball
was very popular upon the Hmong and Vietnamese community, and
at powwows.
Our TV promotional ads featured Reverend Jessie Jackson and
professional athletes, and rap singers. We even awarded gifts
to the first baby born on census day.
No. 2, we hired staff from the community that we wanted to
reach. Our outreach staff was intimately acquainted with the
neighborhoods and residents of Milwaukee's central city. They
were known and trusted. And we also referred qualified local
residents to the Census Bureau in its search for enumerators.
And No. 3, we recognized that the complete count required
effort and money. The city of Milwaukee spent over $400,000 in
cash and donated services and will have to spend about that
much again in the year 2000 to ensure a thorough count in the
next enumeration, census enumeration.
Again, we started our effort almost a year before the
Census Bureau did on April 1, 1990. Our project was kicked off
with publicity in the fall of 1989 and we had an office opened
in Milwaukee a full year before the Census Bureau was
functioning in January of that year.
We knew that our advance work was going to be real critical
so we got started right away.
I understand now that the Census Bureau has proposed many
strategies to improve response rates to the 2000 census and we
support these changes. We also offer the following suggestions
to ensure the count--to ensure that at least the count in
Milwaukee and Wisconsin, is complete.
No. 1, we feel the Census Bureau ought to consider local
complete count projects as part of the team. We should not be a
separate and distinct--we shouldn't have a separate and
distinct Milwaukee or Wisconsin project. It should be part of a
holistic approach to try to reach the undercounted population
and the Census Bureau should be the lead agency on this team
effort.
Also, the Census Bureau should try to take advantage of
local expertise, knowledge and expertise of the community. That
means promptly sharing information about issues like mail
response rate in particular neighborhoods so local complete
count staff can provide help in reaching those areas. The
certification of local outreach work to the census enumerators
could help improve the Census Bureau followup rate also.
No. 2, we feel the Census Bureau must hire local people who
are well acquainted with census city neighborhoods for
enumeration activities in those areas. We have to eliminate
barriers such as newspaper ads indicating that enumerators
would be subject to FBI checks, suggesting that a more onerous
investigation would be conducted to check the background of
potential enumerators. We want folks to be hired from the
community in which they live.
Now, we understand that the Census Bureau has to do a
background check and that's something that we are familiar
with, but the mere fact that you mentioned that an FBI check is
going to be performed tends to dissuade some folks, who may
otherwise be qualified, from applying for a job with the Census
Bureau.
No. 3, the Census Bureau should offer appealing incentives
for mailing in the completed forms. We did some very simple
things. For example, we teamed up with local fast food
restaurants and we made coupons available for people who turned
in their census forms and it worked.
And No. 4, we feel that Congress must understand that a
people-to-people count, we feel, is the most effective way of
doing the census enumeration, and Congress must provide the
resources necessary for such an effort.
There really is no option, no other option, if we want a
full and accurate count.
I have submitted a written statement regarding some of the
things that we did in Milwaukee in much more detail, more
detail than I have already talked about here today, and I would
ask that that written statement be part of the record.
And I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Barrett, for
inviting me here today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Morgan follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Hastert. Your written statement will be made a part of
the record, as is everyone's written statement will be made a
part of the record. Thank you very much for being here and your
excellent testimony, and we will have a few questions later.
Mr. Meyer.
Mr. Meyer. Thank you very much. Good morning, Mr. Chairman
and members of the subcommittee and guests. Thank you for
inviting Cincinnati to come and be a part of the hearing. I
invited Agnese Brienza to join me because she was the driving
force behind the 1990 census. I had just gotten my job as
planning director at the city of Cincinnati in 1989, right
before the 1990 census was due, so I wanted to bring Agnese
because I knew you would have some questions about how that was
put together. She will be very instrumental in the year 2000
census as well.
Your letter asked for information concerning the 1990
census experience in promoting census participation, hard-to-
reach areas. I would summarize that up in one word, and that's
BLITZ. You find every agency, every organization, every church
group, every member that you possibly can to be a part of this
process. You also use every kind of communication device you
can, TV, radio, handouts, brochures, et cetera. Then one of the
very effective things we do, and I am sure everybody does, is
the school system, when your children come home from school
they can bug you pretty heavily about what is the right thing
to do. So, the school system is a very important part of this.
But I would like to make three other main points. No. 1 is
the census numbers and data has got to be user-friendly, and I
will get into why in a minute. Getting buy-ins from the
governmental and nongovernmental agencies that are being
contacted is an absolute must.
No. 3 is a local review program that's been used in
previous censuses must stay. If the one number census means
that the local review program goes, I would suggest that we
need to keep the local review program.
User-friendly, the numbers must be user-friendly when they
are done. Thirty-nine of the census tracks in the city of
Cincinnati include both Cincinnati figures and county figures.
We are in Hamilton County. Ms. Agnese Brienza is the senior
planner with Hamilton County in Ohio.
Thirty-nine of those census tracks in the city of
Cincinnati have city figures as well as county figures. So,
when we start to use this information, we have to take out the
county numbers and keep the city numbers when we use the census
information. This has impacts on performance measures and how
we do those numbers. Every time we look at census information,
we have to go back to ground zero and basically massage those
numbers. If we could have census tracks that were completely
within the city, that would help.
Now, I realize that's against history and the census
information has used geological features as well as man-made
features to establish those lines, but if you are really trying
to get to municipalities you have got to make it easy for the
municipalities to use these numbers.
The next most important one is: Are we collecting these
numbers for the Census Bureau to have a number or are we
collecting them for us to use? And I think that's the basic--
that's the basic question.
For instance, Jacksonville, FL, which is ahead of
Cincinnati when it comes to using performance measures, they
have a booklet out, ``Life in Jacksonville, Quality Indicators
for Progress,'' which I highly recommend to people if they are
interested in that subject.
They have a distinct advantage because their county and
city have the same boundaries so they don't go through this
process of trying to eliminate figures that happen to be in the
county and not in the city.
This leads me to point No. 2, getting buy-in from
governmental and nongovernmental agencies and businesses. In
order to entice all areas of the country to be willing to
perform this monumental task that we go through every 10 years
you must illustrate how the census will benefit the area. The
``what is in it for me'' attitude and is really important in
this situation.
In 1990, the total population, the first figure was a
little over 352,000. We had done projections each year actually
from 1980 to 1990, and we were sure the number was higher than
that, so we actually went out and counted all those census
tracks that were on the borders of Cincinnati and came up with
an additional 12,000 people.
That has translated into receiving an additional $4 million
a year to the city of Cincinnati. Over a 10-year period that's
$40 million. That is one way to reduce the budget, but not a
way that Cincinnati would like you to do, actually.
In order to sell the idea of buy-in, the Census Bureau may
want to collect a number of stories similar to Cincinnati's and
then put out a pamphlet and say, this is how the census, a
correct number, can affect your community.
I don't want to leave the impression that I am blaming the
Census Bureau for Cincinnati's original undercount. It was an
honest mistake, but one that needed correction, a correction
that was accomplished through the combined efforts of the
Census Bureau, the city of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. It
was allowed to be made possible because of a local review
program, which is my third point.
The local review program is really important to keep or at
least some way of doing that because there must be a way to
refute and change incorrect numbers. That's really so important
in municipalities to get the correct number. So I strongly urge
that some kind of local review program be kept.
At hearings such as these, I know there is a tendency to
emphasize the negative. However, I want to say a few positive
words. I went to the Annapolis, MD, April 9 through 11
conference that was put on by the Census Bureau and it was well
done in every aspect. The entire conference was well-planned,
well-executed. There were even special dietary needs that were
respected.
The Census people obviously wanted to do a better, less
expen- sive job of getting the right numbers, and there are
four fundamen- tal strategies for Census 2000: Partnership,
simplicity, technology and statistical methods are exciting. It
is the implementation of these strategies that I am somewhat
worried about and my re- marks are intended to help in this
process. Obviously, I am going to continue to work on this for
the next 3 years and so is Ms. Brienza.
We are open for questions any time you want. We can submit,
if you like, more statements about how we did the 1990 census
now that Mrs. Brienza is on board with me.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Meyer follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Hastert. That would be very much appreciated, and we
will put that in our record.
I would like to ask a few questions. First of all, Mr.
Morgan, you say in your testimony that you were motivated to
pursue an aggressive census outreach strategy because of three
things: One, without a full and accurate count Wisconsin might
have lost a congressional seat; two, local reapportionment and
redistricting were at stake; and, three, $3 million of Federal
funds stood to be foregone.
In fact, with the outreach efforts you conducted you found
28,000 more people than State and Federal projections had
estimated living in Milwaukee and, in fact, your mail response
rate was the second highest, next to Indianapolis, of all
metropolitan areas in the Nation.
Do you think that other communities have to be on the verge
of losing a congressional seat to be motivated like you were?
Mr. Morgan. Well, you know, I can't speak for what
motivates municipalities and States, but I can state
definitively what motivated Milwaukee and Wisconsin, and it is
what is stated in both my oral, as well as my written
statement.
We found it so compelling of a challenge that we felt
something had to be done. We couldn't stand idly by and not put
together a campaign to get as accurate a count as altogether
possible.
The city of Milwaukee had had some difficulty with its
population before. After the 1980 census, we were very much
dissatisfied with the counts that we got. We had a special
census in 1985 and once again we showed that the State
projections in terms of Milwaukee's population had been lower
than the actual number of folks living in our municipality. So
we had had sort of a running feud, if you will, with the State,
in terms of how it estimated the population of the city of
Milwaukee.
When it came to the 1990 census, because we did have these
compelling factors that we were faced with, we thought
something had to be done and we decided to spend some money to
put together a campaign to work with the Census Bureau.
Mr. Hastert. Do you think that, having been through the
1990 outreach effort, which is now documented you say in
several thick volumes of information, and we are looking
forward to looking at those, that it will still be necessary to
hire outside consultants to assist your efforts?
Mr. Morgan. The Census Bureau has proposed some things that
I think will make the 2000 enumeration much better. It appears
to be moving away from its policy of buying or asking for
public service announcements to a more ad-specific
professionally done approach to trying to reach the
undercounted population.
It appears to be moving toward working toward partnerships
with local municipalities and States in terms of who it is that
they will hire. It appears that they are going to continue to
use the local review, which means that we will share
information, so that if we have questions or if we can provide
some assistance, we can do so very early on. So they have made
some real, I think, progressive things with regard to the way
that they will go about trying to count people in the year
2000.
However, I still feel very strongly that municipalities and
States have to take the bull by the horns and do whatever they
can to ensure that the envelope is pushed and that they are
getting as accurate a population as possible, particularly
those municipalities like ours that have a high percentage of
minority folks, who tend to be undercounted the most, who tend
to be distrustful of government.
Our poor communities tend to be very mobile. We really have
to find those individuals in a consulting community, and we
happen to know who they are because they helped us the last
time. We need to find them to help us do a good job. So I
think, yes, we will.
Mr. Hastert. You indicated for the 1990 you began your
planning for outreach efforts almost a year before the actual
census date. Is the city of Milwaukee thinking now about its
efforts for 2000?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, we are, in fact. Of course, your asking me
to be here today prompted a lot of that thinking. We had
exchanged a few memos.
I am in the Department of City Development now. We are in
real estate and business development. But the current director
of the Department of Administration, I know, is looking at some
of our volumes of old data and trying to decide now what our
strategy will be for the 2000 census.
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Morgan, your testimony stated that
Milwaukee's promotion and activity campaign was in full swing
in the fall of 1989, while the census office was not even fully
staffed until January 1990.
Should Congress follow your lead by mandating and funding
full field staffing and outreach programs to start in the fall
of 1999 rather than waiting until January 2000?
Mr. Morgan. I am not sure full field staffing would be
appropriate that early in advance, but I think there are
opportunities for the Census Bureau to begin to gear up a
little bit earlier than they did the last time.
We had a good relationship with Stanley Moore in the
Chicago regional office, but they were a little bit late in
joining with us in terms of our effort to try to get a complete
count. So, we would like to see them talk to us much earlier,
maybe participate in some of the planning to start to gear up
before--and mobilize for the census count a little bit earlier
than they did the last time.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you, Mr. Morgan.
Mr. Meyer, what do you think about that?
Mr. Meyer. It is interesting you should ask me because we
started a year and a half ahead of time as well, and Ms.
Brienza could probably speak about that more. But, I think it
is absolutely important to start ahead of time. I think what
you have to do is to get people's attention. It may not be a
full staff, but just get people's attention so they do start
ahead of time. I think that's key. Just starting in January and
going to April 1st is not enough time.
Mr. Hastert. Not enough?
Mr. Meyer. No.
Mr. Hastert. My time is up. I think we will go through a
second round. But at this time I would like to yield to Mr.
Barrett from Wisconsin.
Mr. Barrett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you may know and
as my democratic colleagues may know, Milwaukee and Wisconsin
does come to this issue from a unique perspective because, as
Mr. Morgan indicated, we were basically on the bubble in 1990
and we were very close to losing a congressional seat in
addition to the millions of dollars that were discussed.
After Milwaukee and Wisconsin did an excellent job in
counting the residents of the State, we, in fact, earned some
rewards or some plaudits from the Census Bureau for the
excellent counting job that we did. After receiving those
awards, we were then told that a statistical adjustment would
be made and we would lose a seat. That led the State of
Wisconsin, along with several other States, to become involved
in litigation that went all the way to the Supreme Court, on
the issue of whether there should be an adjustment made, a
statistical adjustment.
I mention that because I think the perception is out there
that the Democrats are on one side of this issue and the
Republicans are on the other side of this issue.
I feel very strongly that you can have an accurate count,
in particular in urban areas, if you take the type of
aggressive approach that the city of Milwaukee took. Again, I
applaud Mr. Morgan and our mayor, Mayor Norquist who recognized
the reality that if Milwaukee is going to receive the dollars
that is due it and the political representation that it is due
it, it would take some aggressive and creative thinking.
So, I was amazed during this period in Milwaukee to see
this campaign, and it was literally a campaign, where local
leaders were involved, where, as Mr. Morgan indicated, grass-
roots citizens got very involved in this process. I think it
not only helped the campaign, but I think it actually helped
the community. I think what it does is it forces local
political leaders sometimes to go to areas where they would not
go as often, and I think what this does is it--whether the
local leaders like to do it or not, it forces them to get in
touch with the people.
Just a couple of questions, if I could.
Mr. Morgan, in your testimony you mentioned that one of the
things that was effective was printing some of the information
in other languages. We have in Congress pending legislation,
English-only legislation, which, frankly, I think would make it
far more difficult to have that type of outreach in other
languages.
How important was that for the drive in Milwaukee, being
able to print those documents in other languages?
Mr. Morgan. I think that was extremely important for our
efforts. It is real important that, particularly in our
immigrant communities, that they feel comfortable with the way
information is presented, because to give our Hmong population,
for example, they are a little bit distrustful of government
because of the repressive nature of the governments from the
countries that they immigrated from. So, when they come here,
it takes a little bit of time before they understand that our
governmental system is a little bit different from maybe what
they had back home.
We thought it was real important that we put into the hands
of the leaders of that community information in their native
language that could be explained, that could be disseminated
and understood about our community.
So, I think it is extremely important that we have census
information in the language of those communities in which we
are working.
Mr. Barrett. Mr. Meyer or Ms. Brienza, did you use any type
of outreach in other languages?
Ms. Brienza. No. In Hamilton County, it is not necessary.
Mr. Barrett. You don't have the immigration population that
you have in other parts of the country?
Ms. Brienza. That's right.
Mr. Barrett. In terms of local involvement in Cincinnati,
did you use a lot of local people to get out?
Ms. Brienza. Oh, yes. We started a year and a half to form
the complete count committee. What we did, we had two honorary
chairs, the mayor of the city of Cincinnati was then Charlie
Luken, who was in Congress for 4 years, and the president of
the county commissioner, who was Bob Taft, who is now the
Secretary of State. Also, we have a chair from the private
sector, Ray Clark, who was the CEO of the Cincinnati Bell.
We did an incredible outreach and we documented in this
thick volume all of the outreach we did, especially in the
minority neighborhood, in the black and also other minority
because in Cincinnati we have an Appalachian community. They
don't trust the government too much. We work very close to the
Omnibus Coalition. We have at least 10 or 15 organizations
directly or indirectly in the Omnibus, and we work with them
very closely.
Then we work with the press, all the schools, from the
universities to the Headstart Program. We sent fliers home in
each school district in Cincinnati. We have 22 school
districts, two vocational schools, obviously two large
universities and a large college. So, we used all the
newspapers and newsletters. We used the Inquier Newspaper, the
large newspaper in town, and the corporate community. We had
incredible help from the corporate community, from Cincinnati
Bell to Proctor and Gamble, General Electric and others. We had
a cooperation with the CBC, which is a large group of CEOs
that's the Cincinnati business committee. The outreach was
incredible.
We designed our own logo. By the way, I would like to say
that the office, the Census Office in Detroit Michigan, that's
our region, they were always very helpful, especially Dwight
Dean, the director, who is still there now. And we had
incredible help from them, too.
We had our logo, that says ``Count Me In,'' in many size
and forms, from stickers to large banners and on the buses, the
metro buses in town.
We also asked Public TV, Channel 48, to produce a 3 or 4
minute commercial and it was aired on the major stations for as
a public service announcement.
Mr. Barrett. Did the local television stations donate time?
Ms. Brienza. Yes, on public service announcement.
Mr. Barrett. At a good time or in the middle of the night?
Ms. Brienza. Oh, no, no, a good time. Also Channel 48,
obviously, did the production completely free.
The press was incredible. We had a lot of editorial. In
Hamilton County, it is a very diverse county because we have 37
municipalities and 12 townships. Obviously, the city of
Cincinnati is the major city. We worked with each mayor of
those 37 municipalities and each township trustee, so that the
cooperation was great.
We didn't have a congressional district issue, but one
issue was for some of the municipalities they would lose their
city status if they were less than 5,000 so their effort was
very incredible.
Mr. Barrett. Thank you.
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I want
to thank all of you for being here today. I want to also
congratulate you on what you have been able to accomplish.
Let me ask this: Fiscal year 1996, the Census Bureau asked
for $6.6 million for promotion and outreach, but was funded at
$1.2 million. In fiscal year 1997, the request was $18.8
million and the appropriations was $8 million. You both, all of
you indicated in your testimony, that a successful campaign
must start early. It seems to me that this underfunding of the
outreach and promotion process put us at a catch-up situation.
What would you recommend to be done with regard to that
issue, Mr. Morgan?
Mr. Morgan. Well, as I indicated before, I think there has
to be a realization that if we are going to reach those
undercounted groups in our cities and in our rural areas, we
are going to have to spend dollars. If Congress is serious
about an enumeration that counts every individual, then we are
going to have to get into the community, spend the dollars
necessary, employ the techniques that we know have been
successful and get the job done.
So, I am not sure what spending level is appropriate.
That's something for Congress to try to understand. But there
has to be an understanding that there is going to be a need for
dollars.
That community that we are talking about is a very
difficult group to get at. Conventional techniques sometimes
don't work. So it becomes a little bit labor-intensive, hiring
individuals to go into those communities or hiring individuals
from those communities to go back into those communities to
work and to find those individuals.
So, the frustration and the balancing--the frustration may
be that while on the one hand we don't want an estimate, but we
want a complete count, the dollars aren't there to do those
things that are necessary to get that complete count. There has
to be a balancing and we need the dollars. You need the
dollars.
Mr. Cummings. I live in such a community, so I understand
exactly what you are talking about.
There is a tremendous distrust of the government and
people, when they see anything coming from the government, it's
likely to be thrown in the trash unless it is something from
IRS. I am just wondering, the workers who you all hire to go
into difficult areas, who are they? I mean, how do you convince
them that their job is very important? These are tremendous
jobs. So you wonder about who it is that is being hired. And I
am just wondering, how do you make sure that they are folks
who--I mean, how do you get them up and get them excited about
what they are doing? Because I think this kind of work can be
rather--it is grunt work, and I am sure the pay is not
extremely high.
Mr. Morgan. No, no, the pay is not.
Mr. Cummings. How do you get them motivated?
Mr. Morgan. Well, what we did was, instead of trying to
reinvent the wheel and hire workers to go into a community that
had folks who were dedicated and working in their community, we
suggested to the Census Bureau that they hire folks who work in
the homeless community and to get into the homeless community
and to get the count there, that they hire folks who work in
social service agencies in the Hispanic or the Hmong or the
African-American community to work in those communities.
And you get two things: You get folks who are trusted by
their community, who if they say that the information is going
to be kept confidential, individuals in that community are
likely to believe them because they tend to be leaders in that
community.
They know where these folks are. The individuals can't hide
from them. They understand the community.
And the other thing, of course, is that to the extent that
you are able to have the Census Bureau hire these individuals,
sometimes that means extra dollars for that worker who may be
working on an income from a social service agency so there is a
little bit of a bump. There is an economic benefit for those
individuals to work with the Census Bureau.
Mr. Cummings. Just one last question.
Mr. Hastert. Yes.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you. You know, President Clinton has
proposed that 4,000 people be hired from our welfare rolls to
do this, do some census work. Do you all have any opinions on
that?
Mr. Morgan. I have been monopolizing the questions. I will
defer to someone else.
Mr. Cummings. No, you go ahead.
Mr. Meyer. Go ahead.
Mr. Cummings. Ms. Brienza.
Ms. Brienza. I just want to say in 1990 we encouraged the
Bureau of the Census, and they did, to hire local people. And
so in our area, for instance, in Cincinnati, where most of the
minority are, we have a very good organization already in
place. We have a 52 community council. So we encourage--we did
talk to each community council president to help us in the
effort to count and include everybody, and also hire people
from each community. So it was easy for them to be trusted.
For the welfare, you know, the new goal that President
Clinton has, I think it is in Cincinnati we already have
something underway because we have a program that is called
Cincinnati Works. It is lead by Mr. Phillips, who is a retired
CEO. He works for $1 a year. It is to revitalize the downtown.
So the program, it is Cincinnati Works, they try to take people
from welfare and train them for special work, and also provide
baby-sitting, health insurance, all the other appropriate
things. So what we can do, probably we can talk to Mr. Phillips
and team up with him for the year 2000 census.
Mr. Morgan. Mr. Cummings, I would say, yes, I think we
should look at welfare, former welfare recipients, as potential
workers for the census.
What we found in Wisconsin, through programs like New Hope,
which is probably the best welfare reform proposed today, is
that welfare recipients, if given an opportunity to work, if
given adequate child care, if given adequate training, provide
invaluable services to the community. And I see no reason why
we shouldn't look to that work force as a potential group to
help us get a good enumeration in 2000.
Mr. Meyer. I would like to respond to your first question,
sir.
I think you see the people who make this work sitting to my
left and right. All you need to do is find a person like this
in each community, and you'll have your number by the time
we're done with the year 2000.
I think that's the trick is how do you get--how do you use
your resources at the Federal level to find the commitment of a
Mr. Michael Morgan and a Ms. Agnese Brienza. That's the key
right there because these people have put together the numbers
for their areas, and the way they have done it is by their
leadership is how it happens, how you trickle that down from
the Federal Government, how you use the Federal staff to find
these people, because I think that's the easy way for the
Federal Government to do it. They don't have to do it
themselves. Basically, the two people sitting to my right and
left are the ones that did it in each of those two communities.
Ms. Brienza. Can I say something? Also, I want to clarify
one point. For the Complete Count Committee within Cincinnati,
the in-kind stuff, our full time is so that--the person in
Cincinnati Bell worked full time. We didn't have any money. I
mean, we didn't have any budget. We just asked the corporate
community, the private sector and they really helped. We asked
for one company to do 1,000 fliers and another one to print it
or design it.
So we didn't have any special budget for the Complete Count
Committee. I don't think money is the answer. Like we really
need to look for people who have an interest and have love for
the community and understand the importance of counting
everybody.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you.
Mr. Meyer, you make the point in your testimony that little
is done these days because it's the right thing. Our sense of
truism seems to be weighing in the fear of citizens and for the
majority of society. Our local communities must be able to see
the relation to them of the census data with the resources.
Do you have any other advice with the Census Bureau
regarding ways they might effectively communicate the
importance of the census in order to strengthen the willingness
to participate in the outreach or promotion efforts?
Mr. Meyer. I think that goes to my last answer is you've,
again, got to find people that are really committed to the
census number. I'm not sure how you do that. I think some
people come on board because all of a sudden they've seen the
importance of it.
That's why I suggested the pamphlet idea, to convince
communities this is really important to them, and not just to
the Federal Government just to find the right number and say,
we now have so many billion people living in the United States.
I think if you convince them it's important to them, then
you'll get the right number. How you go about doing that, I
don't know.
Mr. Hastert. I'm sorry. Mr. Barr came in here. I'm sorry
sir.
Mr. Barr. That's OK. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Morgan, to follow on questions you were responding to
just a few minutes ago about temporary employees to assist in
this particular effort, of course they can't be compensated if
they receive Federal assistance such as food stamp program,
Federal housing, school, breakfast programs, job training
partnerships and the Head Start. Have you experienced this
prohibition as limiting the available pool of citizens that
might otherwise be qualified to be hired by the Bureau for
purposes relating to the 2000 census? Do you think that
Congress should consider waiving this prohibition in order to
make the pool of applicants as large as possible, as
Congresswoman Carrie Meek, for example, has suggested in recent
legislation?
Mr. Morgan. Congressman, I cannot recall those prohibitions
you speak of as being a problem in 1990. Of course, that
doesn't mean it isn't a problem, it just means I don't have any
present recollection that we had any real discussion regarding
our inability to get folks who may have been on welfare or may
have received the Federal benefits, some other Federal benefit,
from working with the Census Bureau.
It seems to me that to the extent that we would want to
look at individuals in that pool as potential workers, we would
do whatever we could to make our efforts successful in reaching
out to that group so that if there is an opportunity, if there
is a problem, and if there is an opportunity for waivers, I
guess it should be considered. But I can't say that that was a
real issue for us in Milwaukee in 1990.
Mr. Barr. OK. Do either of the other two witnesses have any
experience or recommendation in that particular area?
Mr. Meyer. I don't really have any experience, but my
immediate reaction is waive it. And that goes back to the idea
that if we're going to do this, we've got to get out of the box
of our old way of thinking. You can't do new things if you keep
thinking in the same old ways. So, in this situation, as soon
as you can ask the question, what came to my mind is, why not?
I don't see any reason why you shouldn't do it.
Ms. Brienza. I have to agree with Mr. Meyer, yes.
Mr. Barr. OK.
Ms. Brienza. It's one way to find people to really help,
because it's such a short time. So why not?
Mr. Barr. I gather, both from reviewing some of you all's
written testimonies as well as just listening to some of the
questions since I've got here, that you all believe that
special outreach and promotion efforts are best left at the
local level. Is that a fair statement? Do you all agree with
that?
Mr. Meyer. You certainly have to do them at the local
level.
Mr. Morgan. I think the local municipalities should be
equal partners with the Census Bureau in getting the outreach
effort done.
Mr. Barr. Mr. Morgan, I know that your effort was
particularly successful in a lot of these areas in reaching
some of the traditionally harder to reach groups in some of our
communities; African-American community, for example. Could you
just very briefly tell me how you developed or perhaps how best
we can develop a plan to target each individual ethnic and
racial group so that we can best get that count?
Mr. Morgan. Well, I can briefly recount what we did because
we assumed that we didn't know enough about those communities
that were undercounted. What we did was we went to folks who
work in those communities every day, who provide services for
them, and we asked, what is the best way of going about
counting individuals in that community? What are some of the
challenges or obstacles to counting that community? And he told
us what they were.
We kind of, you know, had a, you know, an idea of what it
might be based on, some writings on the part of sociologists
around the country, and that is, you know, those communities
tend to be distrustful of government.
The confidentiality of the information gathered on the
census form was really something that concerned a lot of
individuals in the community. So based on that--and the other
thing, of course is communicating with leaders in the community
who then would communicate with others in the community.
After gathering that information, we put together the
campaign that we thought got at those challenges, began to
erode some of those barriers, and we were fairly successful.
I would hope that we would go through a little bit of the
same process for the 2000 enumeration also; that is, make sure
that we understand what's going on in the community, what are
those challenges, what are those barriers, and what are those
best strategies for getting at that community.
Mr. Barr. That would include, I presume, utilizing agencies
such as social services agencies, United Way; agencies that are
already active in communities working with those very citizens.
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely, Congressman. I think that's the
key. Even with the promotional efforts that we had in
Milwaukee, we still found that the response mailed in from
minority census tracks tended to be a little bit less than what
we found in other census tracks. The real key, however, was
getting workers into the community and finding those
individuals, and getting those forms completed, and getting
them back to the Census Bureau. That's where their hard work
is. That's where you have to get in the trenches and have the
foot soldiers out there, to use the military analogy. You get
the foot soldiers out there and go house to house and door to
door and get the information.
Mr. Barr. OK. I appreciate the witnesses, and I appreciate
very much, Mr. Chairman, your convening these hearings well in
advance of when we're going to have to be facing these problems
so we can begin working now rather than later.
Ms. Brienza. Can I say something?
Mr. Hastert. Yes.
Ms. Brienza. I want to say two things. One, in Hamilton
County, we were very concerned about counting the homeless. So,
where we did organize lunches, I went a few times in the
homeless shelter to have lunch with the homeless and all the
appropriate organizations that worked with the homeless
organization. So, they felt very comfortable to eat together
and talk.
And one other thing that was important in 1990 in Hamilton
County, including Cincinnati, was the local review program.
What the Bureau of the Census did in 1990, was give a chance to
the community to check the housing unit and the number of
people. As I understand from the literature that I received
from the Bureau of the Census, for the year 2000, they're going
to eliminate the local review program, and I think that's the
most important program because it's one way you can check the
accuracy of the census.
I don't feel it's that expensive. It shouldn't be that
expensive because we know that the technology today, a lot of
communities are organized, and also, even if they do it with
the land use map, they can easily double-check the census
number. So, it seems to me that it's going to be very
detrimental to complete count to eliminate the local review
program, which means check the census number after the April
1st count.
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Morgan, one of the things that you had
talked about and mentioned is you really did some--I think some
probably unique thing, that is, put messages on the wrappers
for tortillas. That was a real outreach which is a product of
imagination and effort. So, that was a special effort. Each
community, I would guess, is a little special in those regards.
One of the issues I think is going to come down, a dialog
that we're having with the Federal Government and the Congress
right now is that the Federal Government thinks, well, every
community can't be as unique as maybe Milwaukee was, so the
easy way is just to take statistics and to figure out
statistically where those people may be.
I think that if you give communities the resources and the
incentive to do the right thing, and that's what the
Constitution says, to count, to enumerate, you can get the job
done, and even in a superior way. How do you feel about that?
Mr. Morgan. Well, you know, our city hasn't taken an
official position, but I will tell you how I feel about it.
Mr. Hastert. I'm asking you for your feeling.
Mr. Morgan. At the end of the day, it seems to me the most
accurate way of understanding who is there is to find that
individual and count them. And understanding that that's a hard
thing to do, that you're going to have to spend money to be
creative, to get the job done, is something that I think that
Congress needs to wrestle with a little bit in terms of you
know what dollars are going to be made available to the Census
Bureau and maybe even what dollars may be made available for
local municipalities like Milwaukee.
But it's my feeling and I--you know, I've taken a look at
some of the testimony, for example, that our Attorney General,
Jim Doyle, made. It's my feeling that constitutionally it seems
that the best way to go about preserving the integrity of the
process and understanding who is in our cities and who is in
our States is to get out and count them.
Mr. Hastert. Do you feel that maybe a secondary benefit
from this--and it's probably a leading question, but I want
your reaction to it, and, Mr. Meyer, you may react to this,
too--is when you actually reach out, find that person, where
he's at, what his ethnic makeup may be or his beliefs, that you
also reach out and find a person that the city can actually
then help and make sure that the city or county or whatever
agency is out there searching for those people, they can better
serve.
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely. One of the things that statistical
adjustments may not be able to get at is, right down to the
census track, an understanding of actually who that individual
is. With statistical analysis, and I'm not a statistician, it
seems to me that you make certain assumptions, and sometimes
those assumptions don't lie on the census track level.
In cities like ours where provisional services and dollars
for social services are tied to the Census Bureau, it's real
important that you get down to that level in a way that you'll
never be able to get with that.
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Meyer.
Mr. Meyer. Yeah, I may echo that. Actually my first degree
is with mathematics, and I have had some brush with statistics.
What I would be concerned about is that you're not really
finding out who these people are. You might be able to count
them and estimate the count, but when you get down to it, you
want to know who they are. If we take that step down the road,
there might be another step beyond that, which all of a sudden
we're doing just the statistical census in the future and not
actually going out and trying to count as many people as
possible.
I'm real leery of a statistical census. I think we ought to
use that information as a check, but I would be very concerned
about getting rid of the local review program, as Ms. Brienza
has stated.
I don't think we ought to use census as part of getting at
the final number. We ought to use it as a check.
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Barrett.
Mr. Barrett. Ms. Brienza, you indicated that there were
corporate dollars for loaned employees.
Ms. Brienza. Yes.
Mr. Barrett [continuing]. That were involved in that, which
is an experience, I think, quite dissimilar from Milwaukee. I
don't recall Milwaukee using corporate dollars or loaned
employees.
My concern with that is do you think that there is any
danger that if you use corporate dollars or loaned employees,
that there might be areas where they don't want to get
involved.
Ms. Brienza. Yes. I wasn't clear. Mr. Ray Clark, who was a
CEO of Cincinnati Bell, agreed to chair the committee. So after
all, it's very important for any corporation to have accurate
census information, because, you know, they use it, that type
information all the time from between the censuses.
And the corporate--there was no corporate dollars as such.
There was a budget with in-kind donations.
I was asking to different corporations, because I had
contacts in different places. They just agreed to help, but I
don't see any interest. See, their goal was to have a complete
count with all the accurate information, you know, the
socioeconomic information and others, the location, because
that's where they are. They sell their product. They install
their phones. P&G sells their soap. You know, it's good to have
a complete count, good census information. It's not only
important for local government, but it's very important for the
private sector, too.
Mr. Barrett. Well, that underscores my concern a little
bit, especially when you talk about the sale of products. For
example, one of the controversies that I have been involved in
is the sale of insurance and allegations that insurance
companies may want to sell in one part of a community but not
in another part of a community. So, if we accept in-kind
contributions from a corporation that is interested in a very
accurate count for one part of the community for sales or
promotional purposes, but has no desire at all to serve another
area, my concern is you may get corporations that say, well,
these are the areas that we like to serve. Frankly, I think
that the very area that we're concerned about not reaching is
the area where there's not a lot of dollars, and so that the
incentive is small up there to have an outreach.
Ms. Brienza. They only help us to publicize the census, to
make everybody aware that--you know, to answer the question, to
answer the questionnaire.
Mr. Meyer. Yes. I think one of the things you're driving at
is is there a conflict of interest here, and I don't believe
there is from the point of view that the corporation has helped
us to get to the number.
Now, if you get to the numbers in your scenario, and then
the corporation is going to use that number in a wrong way,
you're going to still get to the number. Whatever you do,
you're going to have a number there, so you might as well get
to the most accurate number. We can't help how the corporations
use it, whether they're involved or not. So, they're not
involved from a conflict of interest point of view. They're
involved to try to get Cincinnati, and this was a community
effort.
Ms. Brienza. Yes.
Mr. Meyer [continuing]. Community effort throughout the
county and I think the city is even going to be more involved
because, actually, we have a 40 percent African-American
population ourselves, and I'm going to talk to this gentleman
after we're done talking to you all because he has a lot of
good information that we can use.
But to get back to the corporate thing, Cincinnati has
always been a community that works closely with corporations.
The community, the CBC, which is the CEOs for all the big
companies downtown, and it's probably lead by Proctor & Gamble
as much as anybody, they've always been involved in the arts
and in these kinds of developments, and they give us in-kind
services, and it's done in a manner that is not at all, I'm
doing this and I want something back. I'm doing this for the
community. And that's really the flavor of it. I don't have any
problem with that in Cincinnati. Whether it would happen in
another city, I can't tell you. I don't know that.
Ms. Brienza. Can I clarify one thing?
Mr. Barrett. Go ahead.
Ms. Brienza. In Cincinnati we have a program. It's called
Leadership Cincinnati. It's on the 25th year, and I was a
member of one of the classes. The Leadership Cincinnati is
organized by the Chamber of Commerce. It's also done in other
cities. I don't know if it's in your cities--in your city. They
have a class of 50--45, 50 of the leaders of the community in
different fields, and they are very--you know, they're black
and white; they're men and women. They're not necessarily--
they're people from a company.
So when I called Ray Clark, who was then the CEO of
Cincinnati Bell, I called him as an alumni of Leadership
Cincinnati, he was my friend, because I knew that we have an
organization. So it's like a sorority in a sense.
Mr. Barrett. Yeah.
Ms. Brienza. I wasn't thinking about the company. I was
thinking about the person. I knew he was a respected person in
the community. People listen to him. And the public officials
don't have too much time to get involved in it. I called--so
it's kind of different. If I know some of the CEOs, it's
because I know them through the Leadership Cincinnati, not for
what they sell or what they work----
Mr. Barrett. OK.
Ms. Brienza [continuing]. Only by what they want to give to
the community.
Mr. Barrett. Chairman, I just have one other question. In
1993, Congress passed the Address List Improvement Act to allow
local communities to review the census address list before the
census. Has your community had any interaction with this thus
far, this law? I have to admit I was in Congress, and it's not
one that jumps out of me. I thought maybe among census gurus it
was one that sort of hooked in.
OK. Mike.
Mr. Morgan. Well I can tell you this: I did a little bit of
research, and I found that this had been passed, and I asked
our demographer in the Department is that a good thing, and she
said yes.
Mr. Barrett. OK.
Mr. Morgan. And as far as we're concerned at this point----
Mr. Barrett. OK.
Mr. Morgan [continuing]. It's a good thing to have the
ability to get the addresses.
Mr. Hastert. All right.
Mr. Barr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one final brief
question. It's my understanding that the Bureau's current plan
calls for direct sampling of nonresponses to begin within 14
days of census day. However, expert testimony that I believe
was recently provided to the Senate Governmental Affairs
Committee cautions that the Bureau's direct sampling scheme
precludes making special outreach efforts at the sampling stage
to hard-to-reach, hard-to-enumerate groups because those
efforts would introduce bias into the nonresponse followup
sample. I'm not sure all of that makes sense, but that's
apparently their view.
The problem that I see is this seems to indicate that the
Bureau will discourage special promotion and outreach programs.
Mr. Morgan, do you have any familiarity with that or any
comment on that?
Mr. Morgan. You know, I don't have a lot of familiarity on
that, but I would say that any policy that tends to discourage
outreach into those hard-to-reach communities is not a good
thing. You know what we should do and you know, I'm a little
bit reticent to comment because I don't really know if I
understand your statements, Congressman, with regard to what
the Census Bureau is proposing.
Mr. Barr. I'm not sure I do either, but that was their
testimony.
Mr. Morgan. Right, but I guess what I'm saying is we should
do whatever we can to ensure we're communicating with that
community and that we're reaching out to them and encourage
them to participate in the census. And anything that
discourages that I think is a negative.
Mr. Barr. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hastert. One of the questions that plagues me from time
to time is that we send out short forms in the census, and
relatively easy for people to answer. Then, I think 1 in every
7 or 1 in every 8 forms is a long form. Especially, in the
hard-to-reach areas where people are a little bit questionable
about their trust in government, I'm afraid that those long
forms probably don't get answered and in the sense that maybe
they are thrown away as Mr. Cummings has talked about.
Could you tell us what your feeling is? Was it easier. My
view of this thing is the job of the census is to count people,
make sure we know what the accurate number of people are in
this country and where they live. The long form tends to get
into a lot of different details at some time--you know, does
your water come from a well, or, do you have a septic system,
and all these types of things that maybe some people would like
to know, but really isn't the necessary stuff that we have to
have to count people and make an accurate census. What was your
experience with the short form as opposed to the long form?
Mr. Morgan. Our experience was that the short forms worked
very well in terms of getting the undercounted groups to
respond, particularly as workers went into those communities.
On the other hand, I have to say that for planning purposes,
the information that you pick up on the long forms is fantastic
information.
Ms. Brienza. Yes.
Mr. Morgan. But, you know, I tend to agree with you,
Congressman, and that is that I think the primary function of
the census is to count people, and if we can do that and get
the information on the long form and do it well, then that's
great. But we should come down on the side of doing those
things that get an accurate count, and I think the short form
tends to do that better than the long form, in our experience.
Mr. Chairman. Mr. Meyer.
Mr. Meyer. I would agree with that, except, being somewhat
into demographics, we need that information to be able to plan
for our cities with the information that's supplied on the long
form. The problem is when you allow people to voluntarily fill
it out, you almost self-select certain things. You get certain
people filling them out, so your information might not be that
accurate.
So, what you need to do is the way the Bureau is doing it
is statistically just send a certain number out to the
population so that we keep those numbers fairly accurate from a
statistical point of view about who's filling them out. I would
like to keep it, but as you say, we need the numbers.
Mr. Hastert. Would you be in favor--and this is, I don't
know what the statistical ability to do this and how the use
comes out, but to me we need to make sure that everybody fills
out a short form. That gives the information. And among
respondents, you can go back out after the fact then and ask
them to fill out a long form. If they responded once, probably
they'll respond twice. But the quality of the census is not a
threat here. Do you think that would be a possibility?
Mr. Meyer. If you're directing that question at me, again,
I think that that would have a tendency to self-select to
certain groups and probably be statistically inaccurate. Also,
once you fill one form out, my guess is, just from personal
view, I don't want to fill out another form. I mean, I don't
mind filling out the long form to start with, and I would do
that willingly, but after I do the short form and then later
come back and ask me to do the long form, I don't think I
would. I don't know how the rest of the population would relate
to that.
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Morgan.
Mr. Morgan. Well, I don't think that I really have anything
to add. I think Mr. Meyer summed it up accurately. I really
couldn't comment on that.
Mr. Hastert. OK. Great.
Let me ask you, according to the Bureau's own documents, it
admits that smaller governments may have trouble finding the
time and resources to participate in the PLS, which is the
Postal List Service, so crucial to an accurate list. And the
basis is that if you have the right list of addresses, that you
can go out and find the people.
Doesn't this argue for a greater level of Federal activity
or supplemental funding to assist communities in these efforts?
I mean, what is your experience with this?
Mr. Morgan. Our experience is that that's of crucial
importance that we get good and accurate lists, that we cross-
reference whatever sources that are available for getting
addresses as early on in the process as possible so that we
know where the people are, where the addresses are, and we can
respond back to the Census Bureau.
For example, in our city there are areas where we're
building, there are new addresses, and there are areas where
we're, quite frankly, not getting units of housing or buildings
down.
It's real important that the Census Bureau have accurate
information in terms of what's there and what's not there
anymore. They need accurate addresses. They need to cross-
reference. We need to be involved in the dialog in terms of
understanding how those lists are put together.
Mr. Meyer. One of the things we're doing in Cincinnati,
we've actually already started----
Ms. Brienza. Yes.
Mr. Meyer [continuing]. For addresses, and one of the
things that's going to be very important for Cincinnati is we
have a Cincinnati Graphic Information System, or for short GIS,
who I'm sure you've all heard of across the Nation, but ours is
one of the most accurate, I think, across the Nation.
We've been working on the accuracy of the addresses for the
last 8 years, and it will be very accurate for the year 2000. I
think the census ought to look at those particular lists,
because depending upon the particular community, that could be
your most accurate information. And we're doing that for other
reasons, so we have a reason to have it accurate.
Cincinnati Bell, we have a consortium of the city of
Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Cincinnati Bell and Cincinnati Gas
and Electricity. So, you can see they want those figures and
addresses to be accurate.
The addresses, when you get into it, is a tremendously
complex, difficult issue. I think people have a tendency to
say, well, what's the problem? You have one house, you have one
address. We have some homes that have four or five different
addresses for some reason or other. You don't know why, but it
happens.
When you start dealing with these issues in these
geographic information systems, you find how complex. The
Census Bureau has had to deal with these issues for a long
time. And so I would suggest that they really look hard at
those as being a source of information for them.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you.
Mr. Morgan. For illustration, Congressman, if I could, we
have fairly jagged borders with other neighboring
municipalities in the city of Milwaukee, and what we found was
that in working with the Census Bureau--and by the way, the
Census Bureau was very, very helpful and very cooperative in
the 1990 enumeration with the city of Milwaukee. We found that
in cases, whole blocks of our city were moved over to
neighboring municipalities. Of course we----
Ms. Brienza. That's right.
Mr. Morgan [continuing]. We corrected those.
So we have a GIS system also that's fairly sophisticated,
maybe not as good as Cincinnati, but we're very proud of it.
And to the extent that we can work together with the Census
Bureau in understanding the addresses and what's in the city
and what's not in the city, that's real important early on in
the process.
Mr. Hastert. I also would like to welcome Danny Davis, who
is a member of the full committee, not a member of the
subcommittee, but we would like to invite him to ask any
questions he might want to.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I didn't have
a lot of questions, but I did indeed want to make a statement.
But I certainly appreciate the opportunity.
I note, though, that both Milwaukee and Cincinnati had
undercounts that were perhaps larger than the national average.
I happen to come from the experience of having lived all of my
life among individuals who were hard to count. I mean, that is,
I have deliberately lived in what would be poor areas, and
those individuals seemingly have a greater bit of difficulty
participating effectively in many components of life.
In terms of the undercounting, did you find that it was
pretty much relegated to certain areas or certain type
population groups or certain communities?
Mr. Morgan. Well, first, in terms of the undercounting in
the city of Milwaukee, I think our undercount was less than the
national average. In fact, we did a pretty good job of getting
to the undercounted groups.
To answer your question, that the groups that tended to be
undercounted are the groups that--African-Americans and other
minorities, Hmong, Spanish in the city of Milwaukee. Russian
immigrant groups tend to be undercounted, and poor people, and
we knew that was the case. And that's where most of our efforts
and most of our success in terms of finding undercounted folks
were.
We worked directly in those communities, both in terms of
trying to get a good mail response and then getting out and
going door to door enumerating folks, filling out the forms
with workers from those communities.
Mr. Davis. Would you suggest that there was a difference in
the African-American community that was say, ``middle class''
and an African-American community that had lower socioeconomic
standards?
Mr. Morgan. Yes. Poor people definitely were--whether
they're African-American or white or any other ethnic group
tended to be a lot more difficult to find and to count. More
middle class, more educated individuals tended to do better in
terms of mail response, and we understood that. We understood
that going in because we did a lot of work in preparation for
doing a good job of enumeration.
Mr. Davis. Then are their special targeting efforts----
Mr. Morgan. Yes.
Mr. Davis [continuing]. Here toward a particular group, and
what might those be?
Mr. Morgan. Well, what we did in the city of Milwaukee, was
to go into the community and find those individuals who worked
with what we knew were the hardest segment of our population to
count. We asked the Census Bureau to hire some of them, we
hired some of them, and we sent them back into the community to
work with those individuals, to get them to respond to the
census--the Census Bureau forms, to turn those forms and to
complete the forms.
We worked through a variety of outlets, homeless shelters,
social service agencies, mill programs. You name it, we did it.
We worked with boys' and girls' club. We invited folks in. We
did special promotions, too, that provided coupons for folks
who responded. We did a variety of things that were targeted
for specifically that segment of the community. That's why I
think we were successful, because we knew the greatest gain was
getting at that group that had been persistently over the years
been undercounted.
Mr. Davis. I just have one--the promotions, I assume that
these were creative promotions that sort of emerged in many
instances through interaction----
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely.
Mr. Davis [continuing]. With the people themselves.
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely.
It's easy for us to impose a solution on a problem rather
than going in and trying to understand the problem and having
the folks who work in those communities come up with a solution
to the problem. And that's what we did. We went into the
community. The tortilla--we talked earlier about the printing
of--you know, respond to the census on tortilla packages. You
know, that wasn't something that spontaneously came up during
the course of a discussion between myself and the consultants,
that was an idea that came up with Hispanics in the community
that said, you know, we really ought to do something with this
packaging because we know it's reaching a large number of
Hispanics. That's just one example of a creative way of getting
the message out to that hard-to-count population.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Meyer. Yeah. I would like to respond a little bit to
that. The undercount in Cincinnati was basically we just missed
a bunch of dwelling units, or the census did. So we went back
through, and we have a statistician that works for the city of
Cincinnati, and we felt we knew pretty close what that number
ought to be, and it was just off by too much, so we went back
to find that.
After being here today, though, and this is another way to
communicate things, our population is 40 percent African-
American, and you can bet we're going to be talking to Mr.
Morgan to find out how to make sure we get an accurate count
out of that population as well. So, we'll see what happens next
in the year 2000.
Ms. Brienza. One thing we did in 1990 for the complete
count, we focused on the inner-city school and sent fliers home
with each kid, and more than once. Also, we used all the
community leaders, Boy Scout, Girl Scout, and--and also the
Head Start program, the Community Action Agency. It's very
active in, you know, as a--about 5,000 kids in the Head Start
program in Hamilton County. So, it reached a lot of people. We
encourage also the parents, you know, to participate. And we
had different programs.
Mr. Davis. And I assume that the schools were cooperative?
Ms. Brienza. Oh, absolutely. The schools were absolutely,
and also the Head Start school where most parents are anyway.
So there was a lot of interaction.
Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That concludes my
questions. I would ask for permission at the conclusion to
enter a statement into the record.
Mr. Hastert. Without objection. Thank you for joining us
today, and I just wanted to say that you weren't here for the
beginning, but Mr. Morgan's city of Milwaukee was the second
best city as far as getting information back in the whole
Nation because of the efforts, and they actually did a better
job than the Census Bureau did.
I welcome a member of our subcommittee, Mrs. Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you. I would like to know if I could
put my opening remarks in the record.
Mr. Hastert. Without objection.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney
follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mrs. Maloney. Right. Well, congratulations on doing so
well, Mr. Morgan. The Census Bureau has been talking about
spending roughly $100 million to advertise the 2000 census. Do
you think this will help your local efforts? Would you
recommend that most of the advertising be targeted at hard-to-
count populations or directed to the general public?
Mr. Morgan. Well, I--yes, it will help, it will help
tremendously. And I think there has to be a balance between a
strategy of broadly promoting the census and a strategy of a
targeted efforts to promote the census in those undercount
efforts. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the
preponderance of the dollars should be spent in trying to get
at that undercounted community because it is a very difficult
community to get at.
I think the Census Bureau should think strategically about
the form in which it advertises to ensure that it is using
outlets that will get to that community; that is, you know, the
PSA sort of approach, public service announcement sort of
approach, is good in terms of general knowledge about the
importance of the census. But you really have to be a little
bit creative in terms of getting to the undercounted community
in a language that they understand with individuals that they
trust.
Mrs. Maloney. Would other people like to comment?
Well, you mentioned getting to them in a language that they
understand. We've heard some reports that there were problems
with translations used in the promotion materials of 1990. And
did you experience, any of you, any such problems with
translations used; and if so, would you describe the problems
and how we would address them? You've brought up the point it's
important to reach them with people they know, with their
language. Was there any problem with the 1990 census in that
direction?
Mr. Morgan. You know, I'm happy to say that we worked well
with the Census Bureau in getting the language, the
information, translated into languages for those targeted
communities that we had to reach.
In fact, Stanley Moore was very helpful in working with us
in ensuring that we had the information in the language, in the
form that we needed it.
Mrs. Maloney. What in your opinion was the largest problem
in the promotion of the 1990 census, and what would you do to
correct it?
Mr. Morgan. Well I think a promotion, the area that we have
to work the hardest is getting to a segment of the community
that really doesn't want to be counted, just doesn't want to
have a dialog with the government, or for that matter anyone
else. This is the homeless community. These are poor people who
move around frequently, particularly in their central city.
These are folks who are distrustful of the government because
they may have individuals living in the household who may be
illegally living in the United States.
So, the real hard part and the preponderance of the effort
on our part in the city of Milwaukee was to have individuals go
into the community and talk to those individuals, people who
worked in those communities.
So our effort was really--and I used the military analogy
before--we had to get into the trenches. We had to get some
foot soldiers out there to talk to these folks. No amount of
promotion was going to convince that segment of the population
to mail back the responses. We knew that wasn't going to happen
after a while, so we had to get folks out there to sit and to
help get those forms completed.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, about 2 weeks ago, excuse me, you
wanted to----
Mr. Meyer. Yes. Could I respond in a slightly different
manner? I think what Mr. Morgan is talking about is, once you
have a good, in-place organization like he heads up, to get to
people, I think what the Federal Government's level--and I made
this comment before you entered the room--is how do you get to
people like Mr. Morgan to head up counting people in the
different communities? And I think that's the Federal charge
is, how do you make sure that each one of the municipalities,
each one of the townships, each one of the cities, et cetera,
actually has someone like Mr. Morgan that is out counting
people?
Mrs. Maloney. Very quickly, last week we celebrated pay
equity day, and women are still paid at 71 cents to the dollar.
What was interesting is they got to the number by the census.
Ms. Brienza. Census.
Mrs. Maloney. That's how they reached that number. It's an
important number to me, it's an important number to my
constituents. This was gathered on the so-called long form. The
long form gathers a lot of important information for the
National Institute of Health, for pay, for demographics, for
businesses actually. I have the Chamber of Commerce wanting Mr.
Hastert to come down and talk to them in my district. So, the
businesses are very concerned about what is gathered in the
census. It happens very rarely, as you know, and it's a very
important time.
We had a hearing last week where we talked about what would
be on the short form and the long form. And we had interesting
testimony that some of the scientists felt they needed
consistent information so they----
Ms. Brienza. That's right.
Mrs. Maloney [continuing]. So they could track what is
happening in the country in certain areas. Yet, on the other
hand, there is the need to really graph other information that
really shows where we are as a Nation, and I use the example of
the pay equity. And I just like to ask your opinion on the
short and long form. There's been some debate on it. I
personally support both forms. They both have important
information on it. But many of you have been on the front
lines, and I would like to hear your response. Anyone on the
panel.
Ms. Brienza. I supported the long--the short and long form
like you because all the information on the long form, they use
it every day. For instance, I'm board member of the Community
Action Agency, and we're doing now need assessment for the 3-
to 4-years-old Head Start program. We used the long form from
the Bureau of the Census to assess the children below the
poverty level, so the long form it is very important.
Also, it's very important, like they say, to have community
involvement because it's only the community people who can make
everybody answer the census, because in 1990 we received boxes
of information from the census, but we had a lot of people were
able to give out information in the flier because it wouldn't
serve any--anybody any good just to keep the information in
somebody's office.
But I agree with you, the long form is absolutely--it's
important for many, many things. But the community development
program, for instance, every year, between census, we still use
the 1990 census up to the year 2000 to qualify community. And
the long form information, I use it.
Mr. Meyer. There's another interesting point that I didn't
even realize until the day before I came here, and I was
talking to a genealogist who goes back and looks at the census
information for over 70 years ago, because it's not made public
for 70 years, and finds--the other information that he finds on
that, on what would be the long form now, probably the best
information he can get in trying to trace people and trace his
family. He's probably traced thousands of relatives and done
that a lot through the census. So, there's another interesting
aspect to this that I wasn't even aware of.
Mr. Hastert. Well, I thank the panel and all the Members
who are here today to contribute, and especially Mr. Davis, who
is a visitor to our committee from the full committee. It's
clear that we've learned a lot.
I think there's probably three things that we've also
gleaned from this. No. 1, it's important that the community be
committed and involved in trying to find the best way to reach
the undercounts and to make sure that we have accurate counts
of people living in our cities and other places in this
country, and certainly Milwaukee and Cincinnati have led the
way, and your testimony was very, very much appreciated today.
Second, we've found that promotion and outreach is
certainly one of the keystones to be able to get members and
citizens counted in this country, and we need to do an adequate
amount of that, along with trying to lay out the accurate
information, especially in the address lists that we have to
work on.
And since we know that effective promotion and outreach can
be done, we should certainly fully support those efforts and
make sure that the funding is available in the appropriations
process to do exactly that.
The Constitution requires us to have a census every 10
years, to count the people in this country to make sure that
this Congress is adequately apportioned, and many, many other
things that go along with it. There's a lot of extenuating
results that come out of the census count, but I think the most
important is to get the accurate count of the citizens of the
United States.
You've helped us very much today. I appreciate your
testimony. Anything that you could add to the record would be
greatly appreciated, and we would welcome that. And this
committee is closed.
Ms. Brienza. Thank you very much.
Mr. Morgan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Whereupon, at 10:50 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[The prepared statement of Hon. Danny K. Davis follows:]
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