U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

64–923 PDF 2011

THE 2010 CENSUS: PARTICIPATION OF HARD TO

COUNT COMMUNITIES IN NON–RESPONSE FOLLOW–UP

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFORMATION POLICY,

CENSUS, AND NATIONAL ARCHIVES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

APRIL 30, 2010

Serial No. 111–116

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov

http://www.oversight.house.gov

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

PETER WELCH, Vermont

BILL FOSTER, Illinois

JACKIE SPEIER, California

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

JUDY CHU, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois

BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri

ANH ‘‘JOSEPH’’ CAO, Louisiana

RON STROMAN, Staff Director

MICHAEL MCCARTHY, Deputy Staff Director

CARLA HULTBERG, Chief Clerk

LARRY BRADY, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFORMATION POLICY, CENSUS, AND NATIONAL ARCHIVES

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri, Chairman

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

JUDY CHU, California

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah

DARRYL PIGGEE, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on April 30, 2010 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Ross, Dr. Robert, president, California Endowment; Gina Montoya, chief

administrative officer, MALDEF; and John Cho, actor ............................. 90

Cho, John ................................................................................................... 97

Montoya, Gina ........................................................................................... 94

Ross, Dr. Robert ........................................................................................ 90

Villaraigosa, Antonio, mayor, city of Los Angeles, CA; Mona Pasquil,

former Acting Lieutenant Governor, State of California; John A. Perez,

speaker of the Assembly, State of California; Dr. Robert Groves, Director, U.S. Census Bureau; and Robert Goldenkoff, Director, Strategic

Issues, GAO ................................................................................................... 10

Goldenkoff, Robert ..................................................................................... 49

Groves, Dr. Robert ..................................................................................... 40

Pasquil, Mona ............................................................................................ 23

Perez, John A. ............................................................................................ 31

Villaraigosa, Antonio ................................................................................. 10

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Chaffetz, Hon. Jason, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Utah, information concerning San Bernardino American News ............... 74

Cho, John, actor, prepared statement of ........................................................ 99

Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Missouri, prepared statement of .................................................................. 3

Goldenkoff, Robert, Director, Strategic Issues, GAO, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 51

Groves, Dr. Robert, Director, U.S. Census Bureau, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 43

Pasquil, Mona, former Acting Lieutenant Governor, State of California,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 26

Perez, John A., speaker of the Assembly, State of California, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 34

Richardson, Hon. Laura, a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 84

Ross, Dr. Robert, president, California Endowment, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 92

Villaraigosa, Antonio, mayor, city of Los Angeles, CA, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 13

Watson, Hon. Diane E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 108

(1)

THE 2010 CENSUS: PARTICIPATION OF HARD

TO COUNT COMMUNITIES IN NON–RESPONSE FOLLOW–UP

FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2010

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFORMATION POLICY, CENSUS, AND

NATIONAL ARCHIVES,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Los Angeles, CA.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in the Center of Healthy Communities, the California Endowment, 1000

North Alameda Street, Los Angeles, CA, Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Clay, Watson, Chu, and Chaffetz.

Also present: Representative Waters.

Staff present: Darryl Piggee, staff director/counsel; Jean Gosa,

clerk; Yvette Cravins, counsel; Frank Davis and Anthony Clark,

professional staff members; and Charisma Williams, staff assistant.

Mr. CLAY. The Oversight and Government Reform Committee

will now come to order. Without objection, the chair and ranking

minority member will have 5 minutes to make opening statements,

followed by opening statements not to exceed 3 minutes by any

other Member who seeks recognition. And without objection, Members and witnesses may have 5 legislative days to submit a written

statement or extraneous materials for the record.

Welcome to today’s oversight hearing entitled, ‘‘Participation of

Hard-to-Count Communities in Non-Response Follow-Up.’’ The

hearing will examine ways to encourage participation in the doorto-door enumeration process known as Non-Response Follow-Up

[NRFU]. It will allow those who live in hard to count communities

to hear from trusted voices about the importance of being counted.

I want to take a moment to thank our hosts, the California Endowment, for providing us with this impressive location for our

hearing today. The Endowment is a leader in California census outreach, raising more than $10 million to promote census participation among hard to count communities throughout the State. We

are grateful for all of your considerable efforts to make this hearing

happen today. Thank you.

We would also like to thank the many other individuals and organizations that assisted in the planning for this hearing, including

the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office and Voto Latino. Thank you also.

Previous decennial censuses have under counted certain populations, such as African-Americans, Latinos, and other historically

2

under represented groups. In both the 1990 and 2000 censuses, the

net under count rate was higher for people who were American Indian, Asian, Black, or Hispanic than it was for the overall population.

Reasons for this difference include fear of government and outsiders, limited knowledge of English, mobile people and households,

and irregular household members.

Besides determining legislative districts, census data allocates more than $400 billion in Federal appropriations annually to

States and local communities. Each person who is not counted costs

each community at least $1,500 a year, assistance that should be

going to education, health care, transportation, emergency services,

and other essential local programs. People who live in these areas

are not only traditionally more skeptical of the census but also

more in need of the resources that are allocated as a result of the

once-a-decade count.

Los Angeles, CA is the hardest to count county in the United

States, with more than 4 million residents living in hard to count

areas. The city and county of Los Angeles are comprised of all of

the characteristics of hard to count areas, such as complex households, communication/language barriers, mobility, non-traditional

addresses, lack of cooperation and distrust, and poverty and employment status.

The door to door enumeration starts tomorrow. Local census takers will visit households that did not mail back a census form. All

census takers carry an official badge and a shoulder bag, both with

the Department of Commerce seal, and a binder. During a visit,

census takers will show identification and hand respondents an information sheet explaining that their answers are confidential. The

census taker will complete the questionnaire, which should take

about 10 minutes.

We would like those who live in hard to count areas and who

have not mailed back their forms to know that they can participate

in the census, that they can trust the confidentiality of the census,

that a correct count is crucial to their community, and that they

can and should cooperate with the census workers who will be

knocking on their doors beginning tomorrow.

I now yield to the distinguished ranking minority member, Mr.

Chaffetz of Utah.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:]

3

4

5

6

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you and thank you, Chairman Clay, for

holding this important hearing. I appreciate all of you being here.

This is a critical time and juncture with the census. Literally hundreds of thousands of people, one of the most—this massive effort

from coast to coast to go out and count the people who have yet

to fill out their census forms.

I want the people here in the United States to have great comfort, safety and security in filling out this information. It will not

be used for any other purposes, law enforcement or otherwise. It

is something that we do as part of the U.S. Constitution. Every 10

years, we fan out across this country and count every man, woman,

and child that we can find. And I would encourage every person,

whether they are a homeless person, whatever it might be, to make

sure that they get counted. It’s simple. It’s safe. It’s easy.

I also want to thank all of those enumerators, the people that are

participating in the census. The education, the massive undertaking has been very, very impressive to date. We appreciate those

people participating and going and talking to friends and neighbors

and people that they’ve never met before. I appreciate the work of

Dr. Groves in the Census Bureau. It is a massive undertaking, but

please have the safety and security of filling this information out.

It’s vitally important to the function of government within this

country. It provides us a lot of valuable information and again, I

just thank the chairman for holding this important hearing and

look forward to hearing from our witnesses and the challenges that

we have in trying to make sure that everybody is counted. Nobody

is under counted, nobody is over counted. We’re not guessing, but

we actually go out and get the right count done.

So again, I thank Chairman Clay and look forward to participating.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much. Now I’d like to turn to my friend

and colleague, Congresswoman Judy Chu.

Ms. CHU. Thank you so much, Chairman Clay, and thank you for

bringing this hearing to Los Angeles County, my county, where my

district is, District 32. I understand that this is one of the few field

hearings that you’re having and so I feel very, very grateful because Los Angeles County is indeed an under counted county and

we need all the help that we can get. We need all the encouragement that we can get to make people answer the doors when the

enumerators come.

This is a very diverse county and we have people from all walks

of life. We have many immigrants from all over the world and as

a former member of the Race and Ethnic Advisory Committee to

the 2000 census, I’m intimately familiar with the barriers that

there are to an accurate census. I know that people think that it’s

too complicated to do a census, but this one is actually the shortest

one in history. This one actually has enumerators who speak all

different languages, including bilingual questionnaires and bilingual questionnaire assistance centers, and most importantly, this

census protects people from any invasion of privacy and people will

be sent to jail or have great fines if they share any information

that comes from the census to any official person, including the police or immigration officials.

7

So there is everything to gain. There’s nothing to lose. In fact, $400 million of Federal moneys rides on an accurate census. We

don’t want Los Angeles County to lose out versus all the other

counties out there. We should get our fair share. So I encourage everybody to answer the door when the enumerator comes.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Congresswoman. Let me now recognize my friend and colleague who started with me in Congress

who we will miss after this Congress ends, and I’ve known her for

more than our time in Congress, but Congresswoman Diane Watson.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the

ranking member, Mr. Chaffetz. I want you to know we provided

you today some of our best weather and one of our nicest locations

in downtown Los Angeles.

Mr. CLAY. I thought the mayor ordered up this weather.

Ms. WATSON. Of course, along with him, yes. Always Mayor

Villaraigosa is graciously providing for all of our guests that come

into the city and I just join him—better put that in real quickly.

Thank you so much for bringing the hearing, the subcommittee

hearing here. As you know, at this moment—or you don’t know, I

have about 30 people, Mr. Mayor, in my office being trained. And

we have one of the trainers and these are people who came out of

one of our job fairs and we just sent them over to be enumerators

and they were hired and they’re being trained in the office as we

speak.

And as you know, this is the non-response followup which begins

tomorrow for the 2010 census. And as a proud member, Mr. Chairman, of this subcommittee, as we discussed the preparation for the

2010 census, I want to thank you and our ranking member for coming here to Los Angeles and this is a critically important national

endeavor and for allowing me to join with my colleagues today.

I want to also thank today’s witnesses for being here to lend us

your insight and to encourage each and every person in Los Angeles to be part of the count. I want to congratulate you, Mr. Speaker.

The Honorable Perez and I were with Speaker Emeritus in Washington, DC, the day before yesterday and yesterday she left. Congratulations to you.

In California, 3 out of 10 households still need to be counted. So

when the census knocks on your door, please answer. Answering

their questions is easy. It’s important and it’s safe. These census

takers will have an official badge and a shoulder bag bearing the

seal of the U.S. Department of Commerce. They will show identification and a sheet that confirms and explains that all answers

are one hundred percent, as has just been said, confidential, so

that everyone knows participating in the census is completely safe.

You need have no fear.

Participating in the census is also an important civic duty. The

population numbers derived from the 2010 census will affect our

communities and our State for the next 10 years. Census data is

used to determine our share of Federal funding and the boundaries

of congressional and local election districts.

I’m coterminous with Congresswoman Chu. I am the 33rd Congressional District. I go further west and almost go to the ocean

where Jane Harmon’s district is. But you’ll always know the 33rd

8

by looking to the hills and seeing Hollywood. That is the 33rd Congressional District of which I’m very proud.

Unfortunately, Los Angeles is the hardest to count county in the

United States which is why it is so important that the 2010 census

has the most successful, non-response followup in history. Each

person who is missed in the census costs the community at least

$1,500 a year, money that could go toward our schools, Mr. Mayor,

as you know, our health care, our transportation, which is so necessary in this basin, and emergency services and jobs.

And I understand the government just called a press conference

about jobs at City Hall and all that press left my press conference

which was up in Hollywood and we were announcing the dedication

of the Johnny Grant Post Office. And I looked around and all of

them had left. And so jobs, jobs, jobs becomes the focus, but you

know, we’re going to see jobs in the Hollywood area because we’re

putting Johnny Grant’s name on the building on May 10th and

people are going to come. We’re going to have a star there and

they’re going to come and they’re going to eat there. They’re going

to buy trinkets and souvenirs there. So we’re talking about jobs as

well.

Especially during this time of extreme economic hardship, it’s important that our count is accurate so that the people of Los Angeles

get the money they need and deserve. Historically, the census has

had a tendency to under count minorities and I, in my district,

Congresswoman Chu, have had about a double digit under count,

somewhere around 10 to 11 percent.

And so we find that those that are hard to count have language

barriers, their children, and people that are living below the poverty line. Without an accurate count, not only do we lose out on important Federal funds, but we lose the opportunity to gain a true

picture of the wonderful diversities and complexities of our Nation.

That is why it is so important for people to participate with census

counters if they come to your door and if they come while you’re

out, they will leave a telephone number. You can call to have your

information taken over the phone. So get counted and let your

voice be heard. It’s up to all of us to make sure that Los Angeles

is completely counted and with the leadership of our mayor and

those who are our witnesses today, I know that we will have the

best count ever here in the Los Angeles area.

Thank you and I yield back.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Congresswoman Watson, for that

opening statement. And without further ado, I will now introduce

our first panel and our first witness will be the mayor of the city

of Los Angeles, the Honorable Antonio Villaraigosa.

Mr. Villaraigosa is the 41st mayor of Los Angeles. The mayor

began his distinguished career as an advocate for social justice and

leader of unionization efforts. In 1994, he began his political career

as a member of the California State Assembly, then ascended to assembly speaker, and further was elected as a council member for

Los Angeles’ 14th District. He was elected as mayor of Los Angeles

in 2005 and re-elected in 2009 to continue education reform, job

creation, and the green L.A. program.

Welcome, Mr. Mayor. I know you’re on a tight schedule, but we

will get to you.

9

Next, we will hear from a former Acting Lieutenant Governor of

the State of California, the Honorable Mona Pasquil. Ms. Pasquil,

a mere 4 days ago, became the former Lieutenant Governor of California. Prior to her appointment on November 4, 2009, she served

as chief of staff to former Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi

who happens to be a colleague of ours now. And she has served as

a senior advisor and strategist in numerous State and Federal Government offices, political campaigns, and private companies. Ms.

Pasquil has dedicated herself to mentoring youth, speaking about

against domestic violence against women and children, and serving

as a trail blazer for California Filipinos and all Asian Pacific Islanders. Thank you for being here.

After Ms. Pasquil, we will hear from the speaker of the California Assembly, the Honorable John A. Perez. Mr. Perez was elected

in 2008 to represent the 46th Assembly District. He has spent

much of his lifetime fighting for the rights of workers with an emphasis on health care and better wages. He is a long-time advocate

for the lesbian and gay community serving on both the Clinton and

Bush Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. In January

2010, he made history as the first openly gay speaker of the California Assembly. And welcome and thank you for being here.

And next we will hear from the Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Dr. Robert Groves. Dr. Groves began his tenure as Director

in 2009. Dr. Groves has a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and master’s degrees in statistics and sociology from the University of Michigan, where he also earned his doctorate. Dr. Groves

has testified on numerous occasions and is well qualified to lead

the census effort in 2010.

And after Dr. Groves, we will hear from Mr. Robert Goldenkoff,

Director of Strategic Issues at the U.S. Government Accountability

Office. Mr. Goldenkoff has over 20 years of program evaluation experience with the GAO. He is responsible for reviewing the decennial census. He is the co-author of, ‘‘Federal Jobs, the Ultimate

Guide.’’ He received his BA and MBA degrees from George Washington University and was a Presidential Management Fellow. And

I thank all of our witnesses for appearing today and look forward

to your testimony.

It is the policy of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to swear in all witnesses before you testify. I’d like to ask

you all to please stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, you may be seated and let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative and I ask that

each witness now give a brief summary of their testimony and

please try to limit your summary to 5 minutes and your complete

written statement will be included in the hearing record.

Mr. Mayor, if I may delay your testimony one more time to recognize my long-time friend and colleague who represents Los Angeles, Representative Maxine Waters. And thank you for being here.

If you’d like to make an opening statement, you can. If not, we’ll

go on.

Ms. WATERS. Go right ahead.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much. Yes, ma’am.

Mr. Mayor, you may proceed.

10

STATEMENTS OF ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA, MAYOR, CITY OF

LOS ANGELES, CA; MONA PASQUIL, FORMER ACTING LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, STATE OF CALIFORNIA; JOHN A.

PEREZ, SPEAKER OF THE ASSEMBLY, STATE OF CALIFORNIA; DR. ROBERT GROVES, DIRECTOR, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU;

AND ROBERT GOLDENKOFF, DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC ISSUES,

GAO

STATEMENT OF ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA

Mr. VILLARAIGOSA. I’m always willing to defer to my friend and

colleague, Congresswoman Waters. It’s great to see you as always,

a great advocate for housing and the safety net, and of course, Congresswoman Watson, who I’ve known since the 1990’s when—well,

actually before I was elected to the State Assembly and served with

her in the California Legislature and watched her as the President

of the School Board. We’re going to miss you, as you go on to a new

chapter in your life. And Congresswoman Chu and I who have

probably known each other the longest, about 30 years I think, we

grew up in the civil rights movement and we’re very proud to have

these three Representatives. And Congressman Chaffetz, it’s good

to see you from the State of Utah and we’re happy to have you

here.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for allowing me the honor to make a

presentation today. Let me say just how proud I am to be here with

long-time friends and a family member. The speaker is my first

cousin and so I’m very proud of him and our family and he will

have important things to say as well.

I want to welcome you all to the city of Los Angeles. It’s more

than fitting that you have chosen to hold this hearing here, arguably the most diverse city, not just in the United States of America,

but the world. Present among the more than 4 million Angelenos

are 140 nationalities and ethnicities speaking some 224 different

languages. The city is 46 percent foreign born. We have the largest

African-American, Latino and Asian middle classes in this city.

It is also fitting that you’re holding this hearing at a critical

juncture of the census process. I don’t have to remind you that tomorrow on May 1st, U.S. census workers will begin knocking on

the doors of those Angelenos whose forms were not received

through the mail. I am calling on every resident who has not yet

submitted their census form to cooperate fully with enumerator

who will be deployed by the U.S. Census Bureau. Enumerators are

sworn to protect the confidentiality and will carry an official badge,

as you well know, and yet notwithstanding that there are still

some who are unwilling to cooperate and hesitant to share information with these individuals.

Therefore, to reach these residents who have not yet been counted, we’re spreading the message that the answers to the questionnaire will not be shared with any government agency by law. We

need to meet the fear of losing the right to privacy head on with

the simple fact that by taking 10 minutes of their time to fill out

this form, they will be framing the next 10 years.

Mr. Chairman, Members, in 2000, 76,800 Angelenos did not return their forms, second highest under count in the United States.

As a result of that under count, we lost more than $200 million diVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:57 May 09, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\64923.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
11

rectly just to the City Municipal Government. The county lost

about $1 billion. The school district lost a few hundred million dollars. So just by virtue of not filling out that census form, we were

hit with a pretty big penalty as a result. So we have said to our

residents, it’s important to engage every Angeleno to participate in

mailing back the form. Our actions moving forward in the enumeration phase have to be to cooperate, cooperate, cooperate, first

of all, to reach the homes of as many Angelenos as possible.

My office, with the Census Bureau, has partnered with city agencies to update and add 266,374 new addresses to the master address file. This has been a battle, a battle that we have been willing to take on because we know just how important it is to ascertain the appropriate number of addresses. We’ve challenged the exclusion of 12,379 unique addresses. Look, this is a city where not

everybody lives in the conventional three-bedroom home with a

pool and a front yard and a back yard. Many people live on top of

a business. They live in garages. They live in places that historically might not be the places where one would think someone

would live. And so we’re finding that the information that this has

helped us make sure that people aren’t slipping through the cracks.

The city will generate tens of millions of dollars during the next

10 years if we have a more accurate census and Congresswoman

Watson, you talked about this year’s census. This year’s census is

already our most successful. We’re leading virtually every major

city in the United States of America of the size, the top 10 cities,

in this count. But that’s not good enough. I think we’re at 68 percent as I understand it. But the county is at 70 percent and the

State is at 72 and we’re below the national average right now. So

even though we’re 46 percent foreign born, and even though we

have the demographic groups that historically have been the most

under counted, we’re moving hard and fast.

Tomorrow, there will be a big march, a march for immigration

reform. We will have our enumerators there. We will be present,

sharing the message that not only does your vote count, but we

need to count you so that you can get the services that you pay

your taxes for.

In addition to that, we’ve worked with the philanthropic community and raised what is essentially a couple of million dollars and

free TV in hard money from philanthropic community to expand

our outreach effort. We’re counting the homeless in an unprecedented way where we’ve distributed socks to the homeless all over

the city and we launched six feeding programs where the U.S. Census Bureau counted thousands of additional homeless residents

who might otherwise have been missed. And last, at the heart of

our successful strategy, is a city-wide grass roots movement.

A couple of weeks ago I had a day of service that I do very regularly. Tomorrow, we will have another one where we engaged a big

part of the couple of thousand of volunteers, 3,000 volunteers that

we had in the outreach for the census. So we’ve got community

leaders from different sectors all focused on this effort. We’re building upon the success of our field plan with the addition of 30 parttime employees from a highly successful Summer Night Lights Program for 30 days. It’s called the 30/30 Initiative which will strategically place teams out in the most under counted communities.

12

What we’ve done is working with the philanthropic communities,

identified the census tracts where we have the highest number of

people who aren’t returning their forms and we’re sending our

teams into those communities. So thanks to the advancement

project and the other canvassers, we’ve been able to really enjoy

some success, but we’ve got to do a lot more and we want to suggest that we review the census advertising strategy to determine

whether it was as effective as possible in reaching other county

communities and assess whether 3 days is sufficient to truly count

accurately the number of homeless in the city. Although we’ve been

more successful with that effort, again, we think we need more

time.

So thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, for allowing me to be here with you today.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Villaraigosa follows:]

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

Mr. CLAY. Thank you much, Mr. Mayor, especially for your steadfastness and your vigilance to make your city one of the top participants in the 2010 census. I appreciate that. I’m sure Dr. Groves

will have a response for some of the issues that you raise. Right

now we’ll go to Ms. Pasquil.

STATEMENT OF MONA PASQUIL

Ms. PASQUIL. Good afternoon, Chairman Clay and members of

the subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me here to testify today

and thank you especially for holding this hearing in Los Angeles

as part of the kickoff to the non-response followup phase of the

U.S. census 2010. This is truly a monumental effort and it’s critical

that we take advantage of every possible opportunity to remind the

public how important participating in the census is.

The challenge of this next phase, the door-to-door canvass promises to be particularly daunting. We must work together to engage

the least engaged. We must work together to gain the trust of those

who have the most to fear. We must work together to educate those

who are least likely to participate, but often those who have the

most to lose.

We must work together to make sure every single person, every

Californian and all those in our great State are counted. This

phase is critical because folks need to remember that it’s 100 percent confidential. We need to make sure that message gets out.

Thank you so much for being here because that, in fact, does help

us. Californians, I urge you, if a census taker knocks on your door,

please answer.

It’s my pleasure to be here today with the panelists, especially

to be with Mr. Perez, our speaker, who will discuss the State’s efforts during the non-response followup and make recommendations

for the Census Bureau and Congress to consider.

In 2000, California was extremely successful in implementing the

first-of-its-kind, statewide, multi-lingual, and culturally appropriate, outreach effort. We spent $24.7 million on our census effort,

an investment that enabled us to achieve a mail participation rate

of 73 percent. This was the first time in history that California’s

response rate outpaced that of the entire country, which came in

at 72 percent.

For the 2010 census, California and many other States did not

have the surplus funds to spend on a comprehensive outreach effort, and the Federal Government has played a very critical role,

taking many of the best programs innovated in California and replicating them nationally. In California, we’ve also experienced the

good fortune of having private foundations that have been willing

to step forward and invest over $9 million in outreach, including

the California Endowment, the organization serving as our host

today.

However, from our success in 2000, we knew that the State

would need to play an active role in ensuring that a fully functional

‘‘intergovernmental’’ effort was coordinated and implemented. To

that end, the State’s role has focused on convening, coordinating,

and collaborating, our very own CCC. With our very limited budget, California has invested $1 million to fund the 13 hardest to

count counties and help them coordinate their grassroots outreach

24

efforts. These 13 counties have 80 percent of the hardest to count

population in the State and have been asked to convene, coordinate, and collaborate with local community partners in their areas

to ensure that outreach efforts are effectively focused and not duplicated. You will hear more about how counties used these funds

from panelists who will speak later.

Our outreach in 2000 was focused around three critical elements.

Trusted messengers. These are people who the hard to count populations are most likely to trust. Questionnaire Assistance Centers,

staffed by trusted messengers from the community and placed in

locations in the community where the staff can help people fill out

their forms. Microtargeted Media Outreach and locally created

messages. We learned in 2000 that culturally appropriate ethnic

media outlets are the best places to get the census message out.

Mainstream media, whether it be traditional or new, it is not, especially at this point in the census, the best substitute for local media

targeting. We need to hear from our trusted messengers in our own

voice in our own message.

Again, because of the limitations of State funding, many of these

elements have been driven by efforts from the Federal level. Both

the Los Angeles Regional Census Center and the Seattle Regional

Census Center have done a great job in hiring partner specialists

and assistants, all from the community.

California specifically focused on the hardest to count census

tracts and the under count from 1990 where engaging all those

CBOs, trusted messengers, before making placement decisions. As

a result, an analysis was conducted by the State after the 2000

census that found that tracts with the QACs funded by the California Complete Count Committee had populations that were hard to

count in 1990, including high proportions of African-Americans,

Hispanics, renters, persons below the poverty level and linguistically isolated households.

These tracts improved their mail response by an impressive 8

percentage points higher than the census 2000. So while we applaud the commitment from the Bureau, this committee should

also recognize that until the U.S. Census Bureau has the legal

standing and authority to directly invest in State and local governments and community-based organizations, the taxpayers will not

receive the greatest return possible on their investment.

The last critical factor from 2000 was the use of micro-targeted

messages. We know that the U.S. Census Bureau spent over $340

million for their integrated communications campaign that included multi-lingual creative advertising, and ethnic market media

buys in addition to the main street market ads and other buys. We

know from California’s multi-lingual advertising efforts in 2000,

that it’s the locally created advertising content is what proves to

be more effective than the ethnic advertisements created at a national level. For example, the bilingual ad copy created for Latinos

in South Beach, Miami, will not be as effective as they are here in

Los Angeles. Commercials created for communities of color in

Philadelphia may not resonate in the East Bay.

Locally created content is just as important as the local ethnic

media buys themselves. To help the enumeration process particularly now we would therefore respectfully request that the U.S.

25

Census Bureau media contractors allow Regional Directors to have

greater input, not only with regard to local media buys, but in also

crafting the actual creative message.

Our State has tried to address the lack of locally created advertising content by investing a small amount of funding to engage

over 60 ethnic media outlets to place ads in 60 to 70 census tracts

with the lowest participation rate. Each ethnic media outlet has received a very small investment to allow them to create their very

own targeted culturally and geographically specific advertisements.

The Ford Foundation also believes in very localized, targeting creativity and has funded the same organization to implement these

efforts in other States. It’s not too late to apply this and other lessons learned because we want and encourage a stronger participation. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Pasquil follows:]

26

27

28

29

30

31

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Lieutenant Governor and thank

you for pointing out the importance of the communications campaign.

Mr. Speaker Perez, you are recognized.

STATEMENT OF JOHN A. PEREZ

Mr. PEREZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to thank you and

your colleagues on the subcommittee for hosting this hearing here

in Los Angeles. I join Mayor Villaraigosa and Ms. Pasquil in complimenting you on that. This is a very important venue for us.

Tomorrow, as has been noted, we begin the labor-intensive process of the non-response followup, to reach those who, unfortunately,

did not return the census forms that were mailed out to their

homes.

In California, 3 out of 10 homes still need to be counted. Our

State poses a particularly daunting challenge. We represent 12 percent of the Nation’s population, but we represent 30 percent of its

hard to count populations. Los Angeles County is the single largest

hardest to count jurisdiction in the United States. And I represent

one of the hardest to count districts in the State legislature, with

only a 64 percent response rate, although that number actually

represents an improvement over 2000.

This door to door canvass is an effort unlike any other undertaken by our government. The goal is simple. Count every single

person. The scope of the process, however, is staggering. Thousands

of workers in California alone are knocking on doors of every

household that failed to mail back their census form. The census

is vital to the efficient operation of California government. The

under count from the 2000 census has cost the State government

alone, not including local governments and special districts, it has

cost State government alone $1.2 billion on an annualized basis,

money that could have alleviated at least some of the budget shortfalls that we’ve faced over the past several years.

I’d like to take this opportunity to remind all Californians that

an accurate count is very important to our State. So when a census

taker knocks on your door, please open your door, please fill out

the form, please engage in this process.

This is one of the reasons why the Members of the Legislature

have been working so hard on census education. We’ve encouraged

our Members of the Legislature to include census pitches in all of

their community events and make sure that they schedule events

in hard to count areas. Encourage Members to talk to trusted messengers in low mail response rate communities about the importance of the census.

We’ve recorded PSAs, built Web sites, and created Webinairs for

State and local elected officials. As an illustration of the challenge,

Los Angeles Daily News ran a story earlier this week about the

challenges of NRFU within the Latino community. The story talked

about a family that had failed to return its census form. The irony

in the story was that this family had a sign on their lawn encouraging their neighbors to participate in the census.

So how do we confront this challenge? First, it’s particularly critical that during this phase that we build the process from the bottom up rather than the top down. The challenge is not merely to

32

get a few extra percentage of response rate in the mailback process.

The challenge is to get every single one of the least likely to participate to actually join in this effort.

Using trusted local messengers with tailored messages must be

more than just a slogan. It must be the reality of the work that

we engage in.

Ms. Pasquil mentioned the State’s investment to develop these

types of messages in some of the hardest to count tracts in California. I would reiterate that this is only the start. The U.S. Census

Bureau should allow its Regional Directors to have greater input,

not only into the local media buys, but into the actual creative messaging during the NRFU process.

Second, during this phase, the Bureau needs to continue to engage community-based organizations. One of the most critical components of California’s efforts are being funded by the private foundations. They’re supporting their own canvass operations to coincide with NRFU to make sure local, trusted messengers are directly contacting residents to make sure that when the census takers knock on the door, the door is answered.

Third, this local tailoring needs to extend beyond just media programs and actually reach those in the field collecting forms. Each

community has its own challenges. For example, the practice of

hotbedding is a military term referring to the practice of assigning

two or even three crew members sharing the same bunk, sleeping

in shifts. This same practice had been adopted by some in the immigrant community here in Los Angeles. In reaching these individuals, census takers already have to overcome language barriers and

trust issues. Even after overcoming these barriers and trust issues,

convincing the resident to open their door, many times they’re unaware of the practice of hotbedding and may fail to count everyone

who resides at that address resulting in further under count. This

is just one example. I’m sure every member of the committee can

cite different unique challenges in their own home States and districts.

Fourth, we need to make sure that as we identify communities

that continue to lag in their response rate, we use a very detailed

lens. Two examples come from California’s API community. On a

macro level, response rates from the API community here in Los

Angeles have generally been high. However, that rate is not uniform and could easily miss the fact that the response rates within

Korea Town are low. Failure to recognize this disparity could result

in that community’s numbers not being accurately reflected in the

NRFU.

In Fresno County, there’s a small, but vibrant Hmong community, however, due to their relatively small percentage of the population, they could easily go undetected by the National Census Bureau. Doing so would particularly be damaging to the goal of counting every person as the Hmong community and thus, the most effective messages needed to reach this community are distinct from

the messages that are effective in other API communities.

Looking forward, there are several recommendations that I’d like

to make from the State’s perspective which I expand on in my written testimony. I want to briefly summarize, if I may, some of these

suggestions.

33

First, build on outreach successes of this year’s census by recruiting and retaining large pools of outreach specialists. Second, Congress needs to find a funding mechanism to support local and CBO

efforts. Third, the census must finally end the confusing practice of

forcing Latinos to identify themselves as White, Black, American

Indian, Cajun, or other. Questions 8 and 9 on the form should be

combined with Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin added as a sixth

racial category.

Finally, recognize that State and local governments cannot be

treated uniformly and we must recalibrate our efforts accordingly.

With that, I’d once again like to thank the committee for coming

to California to talk about the next phases of the census and I’d

like to remind everybody in the community of the importance of

participating in the census process. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Perez follows:]

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you for your recommendations. We will certainly take them into account when we

do a complete assessment of the 2010 census. I appreciate it.

You may be invited back.

Dr. Groves, you’re recognized.

STATEMENT OF DR. ROBERT GROVES

Dr. GROVES. Thank you, Chairman Clay, Members Chaffetz,

Chu, Watson and Waters, I’m happy to be here. It’s nice to be out

of Washington, in fact, in southern California.

When I entered my position in July 2009, one of the biggest uncertainties that I reported to you was the uncertain cooperation of

the American public. This uncertainty arose because we had seen

steadily declining response rates in every survey we had done and

surveys done outside of the Census Bureau.

I’m happy to say that with some assurance right now, that uncertainty was removed by the American public in their returns of

the mailback portion of the census. The 72 percent rate equalled

our Nation’s effort in 2000 and this is truly a moment to thank our

fellow residents of this country for their civic engagement.

I also want to note that this success, the success of the American

public here is partly due in no small part, I should say, to the support of this committee and fellow Members of Congress and especially the over 200,000 census partners. These are smaller organizations spread throughout this country, the grassroots organizations that the previous speakers have mentioned. I’ve talked to

hundreds, if not thousands of these people across the country.

Their creativity is just incredible. They have hung door hangers describing the census on literally millions of houses in this country.

They’ve had census fairs. They have sponsored poster contests.

I just came back from Crenshaw High School where we announced the winners of PSA contests that high school kids had

made. All of the message there is positive for the census. They are

indeed the true heroes in my mind of the 2010 census. They’re not

being paid. They’re not visibly honored by their locales. They’re not

becoming famous in this endeavor. They’re working to help their

neighborhoods because they believe a fair count is in the interest

of their group and their neighborhood and their city.

I want to thank them publicly for this and I hope and pray they

have just a little energy left, because we’re only halfway through

this wonderful thing called the census.

We now move into the next phase of the 2010 census. We will

knock on the doors of 48 million households that didn’t mail back

their form or whoever received a form given the operational strategies of the Census Bureau. This begins tomorrow.

Right now, as we speak, there are 600,000 people spread over

35,000 locations in the country getting trained. They’re actually

some of them right now are taking practice interviews. This is a

big moment for us. On Tuesday, we fingerprinted, we have 1.2 million fingerprint sets to do FBI checks on them to make sure the

American public is safe in this endeavor.

Our challenge therefore over the last 3 months was building up

this applicant pool. We hire locally so that our census takers capVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:57 May 09, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\64923.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
41

ture the local diversity of the community and have the language

skills that several people have mentioned already.

I can report to my delight that this work force is in place in all

but three of the local census offices, 3 of the 500 across the country

and we have at least 2 qualified recruits for every position we’re

filling.

I can tell you this applicant pool came in much faster than we

ever imagined it would be. We hit our goals quite a long time ago.

In most of the local census offices, the ratio of qualified applicants

to the jobs is a four to one ratio. This is, no doubt, a reflection of

the unemployment rate throughout the country and we are the indirect beneficiary of the hard times we’re all going through.

Here in Los Angeles, the regional staff has hired more enumerators in these hard to count tracts because those tracts will take

more time. They have bigger work loads. They also require more

effort to enumerate. The local census offices have created some

charts. If you go to our offices in L.A. you’ll see them. They’re

called Tract at a Glance Chart. They summarize, they give a profile

of the census tract on one page with graphical representations to

help people deploy the right work force in areas where there are

high concentrations of apartment complexes. Over the past few

weeks, crew leaders have searched the internet to get phone numbers for apartment managers and rental offices to help facilitate

entry. Crew leaders plan to call ahead to contact property management companies to get advanced assistance in those areas.

In high-risk areas throughout the city and the county, or highcrime areas, we are identifying the best way to enumerate them.

Often this is in a group enumeration and disproportionately in daylight hours, on weekends. These are just a few of the ways that the

L.A. Regional Staff is trying to tailor their operations to meet the

challenges they face.

I want to assure you that our job at this point is to reach everyone that has not yet participated in the 2010 census. In some cases

I want to note that this will mean we’re going to call on a house

that has already returned the questionnaire. We ask for the patience of those people who do that. Questionnaires are still coming

in as I speak. We’re still getting returns. Some of those we were

not able to cross off the list before someone has to go out and visit,

so we ask people to be patient and cooperate with our folks when

we call on their houses.

We will not end this phase until we have a disposition on all 48

million households that we haven’t yet enumerated. We will not

quit, therefore, until we get 100 percent response rate.

I want to note just to update the committee that we have completed six other operations since the address canvassing phase in

2009. The committee noted rightly that operation had an overrun

in it. I’m proud to note that all of these other operations since that

time have been on budget and on time. We have completed these

successfully.

We do, however, have an internal risk that remains and I must

alert you to this. When I arrived in July 2009, one of the highest

internal risks was the late software development of a critical system called the Paper-based Operation Control System, that’s a

mouthful. In every testimony I believe I’ve given in this committee,

42

I’ve reiterated my concerns about this program. We are not out of

the woods, but I am happy to report that last week for us was the

maximum load on this system. We had to print out every assignment area for these 600,000 enumerators. We were sweating a little over the weekend, but we successfully completed that. This is

a testament, by the way, to the commitment of our staff. This is

not a well-loved software system in the Census Bureau right now,

but it is performing at the level that we need to finish the census

in my belief.

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, we have, I believe,

successfully completed the first half of the census, but we have another half to go. We need the help of local partners in a special way

right now. The message must be that it is a safe thing to do, to

open your door to a census taker who is carrying one of these

badges around their necks and holding one of these black briefcases, that it’s a safe thing to do, that we’re making it as easy as

possible. We come to you and we ask the questions. It should take

just a few minutes.

I thank the committee for its on-going support. It’s been crucial

to the success of the census thus far and I appreciate it and welcome your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Groves follows:]

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Dr. Groves.

Mr. Goldenkoff, you are batting clean up. You’re recognized for

5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT GOLDENKOFF

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Thank you, Chairman Clay, and members of

the subcommittee. I am pleased to be here today at the Center for

Healthy Communities in Los Angeles to discuss the importance of

census participation.

As you know, the U.S. Census Bureau goes to great lengths to

secure a complete and accurate enumeration of the more than 300

million people that live in our country. Last month, the Census Bureau mailed out questionnaires to around 120 million households,

and hand delivered 12 million questionnaires mainly in rural localities, as well as in the hurricane-affected areas along the Gulf

Coast. Tomorrow, the Bureau will shift into the next phase of the

census when it will launch its massive non-response followup effort

with the roughly 48 million households that did not mail back their

census forms.

As part of that effort, more than 600,000 enumerators will fan

out across the country contacting each nonresponding housing unit,

as many as six times in an effort to ensure that everyone is counted. In my remarks this afternoon, I will focus on first the Bureau’s

preparedness for non-response followup in terms of workload and

staffing levels; second, why it is critical for Angelenos and others

across the country to cooperate with enumerator during followup;

and third, the key steps the Bureau needs to take moving forward

to ensure that non-response followup is timely and accurate. The

bottom line is that to be heard Angelenos must be counted.

Nationally, based on workload and staffing levels, the Bureau appears to be well positioned to implement non-response followup.

When the Bureau determined the non-response followup workload

on April 19th, the National response rate was 63.2 percent which

is consistent with the Census Bureau’s expectations. The response

rate for the city of Los Angeles was 61.4 percent and L.A. County

was 64.7 percent. In terms of staffing, the Bureau met its goals

both nationally, as well as for L.A.

Participation in the census is critical because it has decade-long

implications for individuals, communities, and States. For example,

census data are used to apportion House seats, redraw the boundaries of congressional and local election districts, and help ensure

compliance with civil rights and other laws. A complete count also

helps ensure that L.A. and other areas obtain their fair share of

Federal assistance. This is because more than $400 billion is distributed each year through formula grants that allocate money

based at least in part on census and related population data. The

grants include Medicaid, highway planning and construction, Head

Start, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

According to a recent study by the Brookings Institute in fiscal

year 2008, Federal assistance programs distributed $19.8 billion in

total program expenditures or almost $2,000 for each person in

L.A. County. At the same time, local governments in the private

sector use census data for planning and investment decisions and

to better tailor the services they provide.

50

For example, census data can inform such questions as where

should the next elementary school be built in L.A.? Are L.A.’s mass

transit systems reaching the people most likely to use mass transit? And where should the supermarket chain locate its next store?

Following up on nonresponding households is a daunting task

and L.A. presents its own challenges and opportunities. For example, a planning data base the Bureau developed help to target its

resources placed L.A. County first on a list of the top 50 U.S. counties with the highest number of people living in hard to count areas

based on data from the 2000 census. Factors contributing to the

areas hard to count challenges include poverty, unemployment, and

language barriers.

To help address these challenges in L.A. and elsewhere, it will

be crucial for the Bureau to engage local government, neighborhood

organizations, clergy, and other trusted voices in the community to

pave the way for enumerators and build support for the census. It

will also be important for the Bureau to tract various production,

quality, and other indicators as planned to help ensure non-response followup stays on track as well as to have plans and personnel in place to quickly address any operational issues that might

arise.

Importantly, census participation is safe. The confidentiality of

one’s answers are protected by law and cannot be shared with anyone including law enforcement people or tax collection agencies.

In summary, participation in the census is a quick, easy, and

confidential act that has lasting impact on States, cities, neighborhoods, and ultimately individuals right here in Los Angeles and all

across America. However, the benefits that can accrue from a complete and accurate head count will only occur if Angelenos cooperate with enumerators when they knock on area doors in the days

ahead.

This concludes my remarks and I’ll be happy to answer any questions that the subcommittee might have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Goldenkoff follows:]

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Mr. Goldenkoff. I thank the entire panel for their testimony.

Now we will move to the question period for Members under the

5-minute rule and I will yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman, Congresswoman Waters.

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to

thank you for coming to my city to hold this most important hearing and I’d like to thank you for breaking the rules so that I could

participate being that I’m not a member of the committee or the

subcommittee.

I’d like to thank you for assembling such an impressive panel

here today with all of our leadership.

Mr. Mayor, I’d like to thank you for taking time out to be here.

And of course, our Acting Governor, Lieutenant Governor, the Honorable Pasquil, and our new speaker of the California State Assembly, and of course, Dr. Groves and Mr. Goldenkoff.

It is very impressive to see the numbers. It’s been indicated the

mail back response nationally is 63.2 percent, in L.A. City, 61.4

percent, L.A. County, 64.7 percent, and that we have literally exceeded the goals. And that this is considered to be successful.

I’m worried, however, about the pockets of challenge that is referenced by everybody. Let me just preface the question. You heard

from both our mayor and from our speaker that they could have

used similar assistance from the Census Bureau, from Congress,

from the Federal Government in doing their job and I think they’re

absolutely correct. We should not have to depend on foundations

and others. This is government work. And I’m hopeful that perhaps

in the next census that will be taken into account.

I also see the goals that you had set for what you described as

success. Now I want to know where are these pockets of challenge,

for example, in L.A. County? Where are they and what does that

mean for reapportionment? For example, if they are where we suspect they are in the poorest community and communities of color,

Latin communities, African-American communities, Asian communities, then this has implications for reapportionment. So where

would you identify them publicly on the record and then tell me,

Mr. Groves, how you plan to address this under count in these

challenged areas?

Dr. GROVES. Thank you for that question. First of all, you’re absolutely right and it’s important to note that although the mailback

return rate or the participation rate, as we call it, met or exceeded

our expectations, throughout the entire country there are pockets.

We’ve analyzed those. In fact, every day of this process I was

watching the pockets develop. We tried to intervene at various

ways with more advertising of those pockets.

When we analyzed what are the biggest drivers on the lack of

return, our data show that they are neighborhoods that are disproportionately rental housing, disproportionately poor people,

disproportionately——

Ms. WATERS. I don’t want to interrupt you. I just have so much

time. Where are they in Los Angeles? Identify these areas.

Mr. VILLARAIGOSA. I can tell you where they are in the city.

Ms. WATERS. OK, in the city.

71

Mr. VILLARAIGOSA. We have four clusters that we’re focusing on.

One of them is the area that you represent.

Ms. WATERS. Where is that?

Mr. VILLARAIGOSA. South L.A. in the following ZIP Codes: 90011,

90007, 90037, 90003, 90044, 90001, 90008. So that’s South L.A.

The four clusters, the other clusters are Boyle Heights, 90033,

90022, 90063, 90023; the Hollywood Echo Park area which Congresswoman Watson represents part of Hollywood, 90029, 90028,

90027, 38, 46, and 26. And then in the central city, Korea Town

area, 90057, 90005, 90020, 90017, 90006, 90004, 90019. Those are

the areas that we’ve identified.

One of the things I want to say, when I was speaker of the Assembly, there actually was money in the State coffers so I was the

individual that actually allocated the money that Mona Pasquil

talks about. This time around there was no money for that and so

the million dollars that you talked about, we were $23 million

down. The city last 10 years ago had more money and they allocated more money for this effort than we were able to do. We did

this on a shoestring. And as the Congresswoman says, if there’s

something to say here, if there hadn’t been the philanthropic and

community organizations and by the way, we have 37 nationalities

that have the largest population here. We focused on those communities, but on the many communities that make up L.A. If we had

not had those partners, this would have been an abject failure.

My office was the coordinator, without question, but the philanthropic organizations, the community organizations, they are what

has put us in the position where we’re doing better than last time,

but not as well as we need to do. We lost too much money last time

around. Too many people are not getting counted. We’re looking at

the real possibility of losing a congressional seat if there’s an under

count here. So there’s a lot at stake and I think the Congresswoman makes a really strong point here.

Cities—we’re the ones that engage in this. Cities need a bigger

partnership than we’re getting to do this effort. I do want to say

that our local Census Bureau folks, I don’t know where Jamie is—

here he is, he’s been very responsive, again on a shoestring budget,

but we’ve got to have more resources to do this work.

Ms. WATERS. Thank you. I think my time is up, Mr. Chairman,

but I’m hopeful that we can find out what the effort is going to be

to deal with these challenged areas. Do they double up on enumerators? Do they do additional media work? I hope that in this

discussion we can discover that.

Mr. CLAY. I think we will get a response from the Bureau on that

and before I move on to Mr. Chaffetz, let me ask unanimous consent of the committee to allow Representative Waters to serve on

this committee. Thank you. So ordered.

Representative Chaffetz.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you again all for your testimony. I need

you to know that I was most impressed with the mayor’s testimony. It was no coincidence that he mentioned Eva Langoria in his

written testimony, so I’ll give him kudos for that.

Maybe if we can just go down the table. You all mentioned

things, but maybe if the first three of our witnesses here, I want

to be crystal clear, particularly with the Census Director, Members

72

of Congress here, what is the No. 1 thing that you need the Census

Bureau to do in your personal opinion, what is the No. 1 thing you

want to see the Census Bureau do to make sure that they maximize the participation in the enumeration?

Mr. VILLARAIGOSA. I associate my comments with some of what

I heard Ms. Pasquil and the speakers speak to. I think if I had to

pick one thing, we need more resources to do this. And I did mention 3 days to count the homeless—we have the largest homeless

population in the United States of America. So to put cookie cutter,

you know, deadlines on everybody, we’ve a more daunting task

here with the numbers of homeless people that we have in the city.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you.

Ms. PASQUIL. Agreed. Resources, funding. It’s critical in this

phase to reach out to people, but in their language and in the best

way possible. The messaging and how you convince the least engaged is really dependent upon the crafting of that message and it

must be done locally and we need the resources.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Do you feel that they don’t have enough personnel? Is your concern that they don’t have enough enumerators

there ready to go starting tomorrow?

Ms. PASQUIL. Enumerators, but also the messaging for local advertising.

Mr. PEREZ. If I may?

Mr. VILLARAIGOSA. Before you do, Mr. Speaker, I have another

commitment to be at. We have 15,000 people at the Sports Arena.

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Mayor, we understand and we appreciate your

time and your dedication to this effort. Thank you.

Mr. PEREZ. If I may followup on Ms. Pasquil’s statement. We

should not give short shrift to the notion that we have to have very

specific messaging to different sub-communities. The Asian Pacific

Islander community is tremendously diverse. It is diverse within

itself and it is diverse in different geographic areas. The same is

true for the Latino community. Oftentimes there are different levels of appreciation of that. When we do the API community, we

often understand at least the basics that there are different languages in which we must communicate. We fail to appreciate sometimes the difference in using language within the Latino community. That is a huge challenge and only by engaging local message

designs can we most effectively address that.

The issue of trust is huge. When a message isn’t crafted in a way

that is best suited to the audience, it undermines the trust that is

so essential. I’ve got to tell you, there’s one issue that I’m concerned about that we haven’t talked about and that is the unknown

under count. Households that respond and therefore not captured

in the NRFU, but we have under counted who is in their house because they are fearful of disclosing that they had more people in

their residence than their lease or their rental agreement allows

for.

I talked about hotbedding. In parts of my District, it is not uncommon to find two, three, and sometimes four people sharing a

bed on shifts. To the extent that those folks may have responded

to the written survey, I am fearful that they may have under reported residents within their own households and this absolutely

73

gets to the question of apportionment and reapportionment that

Congresswoman Waters so very clearly raised for us today.

Ms. PASQUIL. Sir, I have an example we might share as well with

the community from San Bernardino American News, but it’s a

local ad and it’s with the group of the New American Media that

we have worked with to reach out to our various communities, but

it goes out to, it’s by our own young people. In the messaging, it

looks familiar and it is familiar and people will look at it.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, if it’s OK I’d like to ask unanimous consent that we insert that into the record.

Mr. CLAY. Without objection. The San Bernardino——

Ms. PASQUIL. American News.

Mr. CLAY. American News shall be entered into the record.

[The information referred to follows:]

74

75

Mr. CHAFFETZ. And one final question, I know my time is up, but

Dr. Groves, what is the one thing that you would ask of the local

community leaders in helping the census execute and with that,

after he answers, I’ll yield back the balance of my time. Thank you,

Mr. Chairman.

Dr. GROVES. I hope we keep the dialog, first of all, but the one

thing to answer quickly, looking ahead is the trusted voice, the confidentiality message we think is the most crucial now. For those

who chose not to fill out the questionnaire some of them are afraid.

And trusted voices locally can deliver that message a lot more effectively than somebody from Washington, DC. So that’s my hope.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much. We will now go to Congresswoman Judy Chu, 5 minutes.

Ms. CHU. Well, thank you for coming out and in particular our

elected and appointed leaders. Chairman Clay, this is a very distinguished group and I thank you. It shows how much you care about

the census that you are here for this particular hearing.

Let me ask this. I think there are some people out there that say

well, ‘‘what is in it for me? Why should I even put in this little tiny

bit of effort to fill out the census form?’’

Can you give an example of where a greater response in the census would make a difference in a person’s life here in L.A. County?

Ms. PASQUIL. Schools. We’ve been going to schools and the Complete Count Committee, all the members have been going to schools

and to neighborhoods and have talked about money for schools,

money for hot lunch programs, money for hospitals. When you

bring it forward in a very personal level where you talk about this

is not just about yes, it’s all about Los Angeles in this country, but

when you talk to people, when these trusted messengers talk about

how it personally affects our families that has been the most compelling, particularly the young people that we’ve been working with

to reach out.

Mr. PEREZ. I would associate myself with those comments. And I would remind you that for the State alone it’s a $1.2 billion

annualized loss. So when you look at the devastating cuts that

we’ve had to make in education, in transportation, in housing investment, those are all tied to the ability for us to leverage for that

Federal return that is so significantly based on our response rate

to the census.

People in California are generally frustrated that we don’t get

back as high a return on our Federal tax dollars as we think we’re

entitled to, 78 cents on the dollar. The single, easiest way to increase our return on Federal money is to fill out the census accurately and completely so we get our full share.

Ms. CHU. Dr. Groves, I think there’s still some people out there

that just don’t trust the census. And don’t trust that it truly is private. What kind of training is there for the enumerators to keep

the information private?

Dr. GROVES. That is one of the cornerstones of the training.

There are two cornerstones with regard to the treatment of folks

that they will visit. One is that they treat everyone with respect

and since we hire locally, that helps a little I think.

The second thing is this pledge of a confidentiality. A wonderful—if you read the history of censuses, you become an admirer of

76

the Founding Fathers in a new way. They knew this country was

going to be a country of immigrants and they set the foundation

for a set of strong laws that Congresses have passed over the years

to protect these answers from any use by an enforcement agency.

These are really strong laws. It’s one of the proudest things I think

we can all say as residents because mainly new immigrants come

from countries where central governments have been oppressive

and they need assurance that their answers will be protected and

we have those laws. That’s a message we need to deliver nationally

and the message has to be matched by local trusted leaders. That’s

the only way it works, I think.

Ms. CHU. And the penalty for not adhering to this law?

Dr. GROVES. If I would breach that law as an employee of the

Census Bureau, I’d go to prison for 5 years and I would have a

$250,000 fine. And by the way, this is a lifetime oath. When I leave

this office, I’ll still be obligated by that law.

Ms. CHU. And has this ever been breached by a census worker?

Dr. GROVES. To our knowledge, we have no individual cases. The

laws have changed over the years, but under the current legislation, I don’t have examples of that to give you.

Ms. CHU. So nobody has ever been reported to the immigration

officials then?

Dr. GROVES. Never to my knowledge.

Ms. CHU. Thank you.

Dr. GROVES. Nor to any other enforcement agency at the local,

State, or national level.

Ms. CHU. Thank you. I yield back.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you. Representative Watson, you’re recognized

for 5 minutes.

Ms. WATSON. Yes, I also want to add my thanks to all the witnesses. This has been very helpful, very informative.

I noticed something that occurred. Those of us who are in Congress, we have a residence in Washington, DC. I got a census form

in my mailbox in my apartment building and I made it out, but it

says ‘‘other.’’ Now this is not a vacation home. I am not traveling.

I am here to work. So I would hope that the form does not count

me twice because I filled out the form for my home where four people live. So I did write where it said ‘‘other’’, Dr. Groves, I am a

Member of Congress, this is temporary, etc. How is that handled?

Dr. GROVES. Congresswoman, it’s interesting. I’ve had a lot of

conversations with your colleagues about this issue over the past

few weeks. So we count people where they usually live. Each of us

has to make this calculus. Many Members of Congress are usually

living in Washington, but a lot of Members of Congress are at

home for 3 days a week or at least 2 days a week. That may be

you. So we ask that you fill it out where you usually live.

And then there are two special questions this year that I’m quite

hopeful about. We asked you to say do you sometimes live somewhere else? There’s a little check box. We’re going to followup on

you, perhaps, because we probably mailed it, if you have a residence here, we probably mailed you a form here as well. And we’re

going to make sure that you’re not duplicated. So you can check up

on us to see if we followed up properly. That’s our intent.

77

Ms. WATSON. We’re having this discussion, but you might want

to go ahead, Maxine——

Ms. WATERS. No, no, no. I don’t want to take your time, but I

got four in my Washington, DC, condo and I got three more in Los

Angeles. I started to fill them all out.

Ms. WATSON. I have an apartment in Arlington, VA and I would

not want my personage to be counted in Arlington, VA. I’d rather

have it counted in Los Angeles where the need is the greatest. So

I wish there would be special attention. She received four and I

don’t know how many people live in the residence.

Ms. WATERS. One.

Ms. WATSON. One. So we really need to sort that out. That might

be a problem. There are 435 of us sitting in the House and 100

over in the Senate and if that happened with the majority, we really would have over counted some places and under counted in others. So I just raise that as something that was a concern to me.

Dr. GROVES. On March 1, 1790 this discussion was held and

some of the Founding Fathers who were Members of Congress at

that time had to sort through this, although the transportation was

a little different at that time, I must admit. And they decided that

everyone would be counted where they usually live and it turns out

every 10 years since 1790, we’ve tried to do that as faithfully as

possible. I acknowledge the complications for those of us who have

multiple residences. It’s a challenge to us every decade to make

sure we don’t get duplicate counts and that’s why we added those

questions.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you. The 1980 census I called the Director

to my office and particularly the Regional because I noticed something. I had my own legislative office on a very busy main street,

but above all of those street level businesses were apartments

where people were living. And I noticed that you never see the occupants until the weekend and I see them playing in the parking

lot, playing over at the school grounds on a Sunday and so on, so

I suggested that we particularly go out on the weekends and go to

places, because the people up there over the liquor store were

hotbedding and there were different people living in one bedroom,

hotbedding and counting two people.

So I suggested that the enumerators not look like they’re official,

but dress like the people who are playing on the parking lot and

the kids who are playing on the school grounds. And don’t carry

that clipboard. Go out and talk with people and find out where

they live. So I don’t know if that’s being followed up on, but I just

want to say this, the city of Los Angeles has on any given night

between 70,000 and 90,000 homeless and I think we’re doing the

job by sending out people to count and having their address be at

the closest center around, but that becomes a real issue.

People now are sleeping on the sidewalks. They’re living on the

sidewalk and so the approach to them and I was up there at a post

office and very—shall I say peculiar behavior, so we need to approach them with people who really understand who the homeless

population actually is. And we might get closer to a more accurate

count if we send out people well trained.

78

By the way, I just told you they were training in my office and

I was really appreciative of 20 or 30 of these people, the enumerators.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Representative Watson.

Let me ask, Dr. Groves, can you show the subcommittee a few

media clips that the Bureau has developed to encourage trust and

inform the various communities about NRFU?

Dr. GROVES. I’d be happy to do that with the cooperation of the

wonderful technology in this room, it looks like we’re all set up.

Let me tell you something about the messaging. We started the

advertising for the non-response followup stage on April 26th. It’s

different messaging than we had in prior commercials. The messaging before was if you have this form, fill it out. Now we’re showing

videos with census takers in mind and they have these black briefcases that I have a copy of here and they’re wearing this badge.

The whole messaging is about be nice to this person when they

come, open your door. So I don’t know whether we’re ready to show

some of these. I don’t know how to do this.

Mr. CLAY. I’ll go on to my next question. Let me ask Speaker

Perez——

Dr. GROVES. Looks like we’re getting close, Congressman.

Mr. CLAY. Are you ready? OK.

[Video was played.]

Mr. CLAY. Just one? Apparently, they’re having technical difficulties. Let me continue with the questioning, until they get it together.

Let me ask——

Dr. GROVES. We’ve got one in Korean coming up. 0

[Video was played.]

Mr. CLAY. OK, we get it. Thank you so much. Let me ask and

I appreciate the commercial. Let me ask Speaker Perez, do you believe concerns regarding recent immigration legislation in Arizona

will have a detrimental effect on the census efforts in California,

particularly the NRFU door to door efforts?

Mr. PEREZ. I’m fearful that unless we do an aggressive job of

communicating using trusted messengers that may be an impediment. I will tell you that I am sure that it will be an impediment

in the State of Arizona. For somebody that opened their door in

that environment, I think it is a very, very challenging proposition.

Here in Los Angeles, we have a huge challenge with making sure

that we reinforce the messaging that we have been delivering

about the confidentiality of the census process.

I will tell you in my office I convened meetings with all the religious leaders in my District, to have them engaged in the process

of talking to people about the confidentiality. It is going to be a

huge challenge for us. I think it’s incumbent upon the Bureau to

find special resources to deliver the message of confidentiality very

directly as we move forward in this NRFU period, otherwise, we

absolutely run the risk of having a greater under count than would

otherwise be the case.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for your response.

Mr. Goldenkoff, according to your testimony, have the glitches in

the paper processing system been worked out and—go ahead.

79

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Not yet, but the Bureau is going to great

lengths to correct them. They’re working with the different companies that supply the different application systems, but it’s still a

risk area and time will tell. So far the Bureau has been able to do

what needs to be done so far, but it is a frustrating system for the

people who have to use it and we’ll have to see what happens when

the enumerators go into the field next week and how well it performs then.

Mr. CLAY. And that involves the tabulations. Is it tabulations?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. No, it’s more the—it’s operational support on

a day to day basis. Basically, it marries the 600,000 enumerators

with the 48 million housing units that need to be followed up on.

It provides progress reports and tells them where to go and how

fast they’re doing it. It’s more of a management tool than tabulation.

Mr. CLAY. OK. Final question, how do the dollars expended upon

NRFU 2010 compare with the past efforts?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. It is more in terms of total dollars, but it’s a

lower percentage of the overall cost of the census. I don’t have

those figures directly in front of me. It was a little bit over $2 billion for 2010 non-response followup.

Mr. CLAY. OK.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. The total cost of the census was $14.7 billion.

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Speaker.

Mr. PEREZ. Mr. Chairman, if you would allow me to just briefly

expand on the answer to a previous question? One of the things I

was struck by is that as we’ve increased our response rate over

2000 here in California, in particular, Los Angeles, there is one

area that I think is a particular concern. The overall response rate

for English-speaking Latinos is on the rise as compared to 2000,

but for Spanish-speaking Latinos, it’s on decline. So getting back

to the question that you asked, that already decreased rate of response amongst Spanish-speaking Latinos, coupled with concerns

over what has been happening in the immigration debate in Arizona and how it’s translated into an overall sense of heightened

tension is very concerning.

We see these patterns whenever there is an economic downturn

of increased inner-group tension. But here we have the confluence

of that and the timing of the census which causes great concern for

us. And that again speaks to the need of us doing an extra special

outreach program in this NRFU period.

Mr. CLAY. And the Bureau’s effort should be targeted?

Mr. PEREZ. It should be and it shouldn’t just be a translation of

a message. This gets to the point that Ms. Pasquil and I were trying to make. There is a difference between translating a message

into a specific language and actually crafting a message to a specific community. When you saw those two ads I didn’t understand

the words that were spoken, but they were the exact same ad in

Korean and Japanese. It is my very clear sense from them that the

message was the same message. I think we would probably benefit

from a more nuanced message targeted to each of the communities

differently.

If you look at the response rate between the Japanese-American

community here in Los Angeles and the Korean-American commuVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:57 May 09, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00083 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\64923.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
80

nity, very different response rates. So what are the underlying cultural issues impacting people’s level of trust, people’s level of sense

that it is proper and safe to interact in this process? So language

in and of itself isn’t the solution. Messaging has to be crafted in

a way that maximizes the way to people’s participation.

Mr. CLAY. And then begs that the Bureau make the extra effort

to target those communities.

Ms. Pasquil, any closing remarks?

Ms. PASQUIL. And you can do that by allowing your Regional Officers to do that and work directly with the communities and the

local media creative and buyers.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I still did not hear what was going

to be done that was different for these challenged areas? I did hear

the compliment that was paid to elected officials to say that we

needed to use our voices, but Mr. Groves, that’s not enough. Aside

from sending the enumerators out, what are you doing that’s different and special in the challenges areas?

Mr. CLAY. And let me followup on that, reclaiming the time, and

Dr. Groves, hasn’t the Bureau held back funds to deal with the

issues raised by Speaker Perez and others to target specific groups

during NRFU?

Dr. GROVES. We have, I think the first answer is that we have

targeted those areas, trying to use local media as much as possible.

I admit there’s—it’s frustrating that you can’t do everything you

want to do. Everything you say I agree with, by the way.

Ms. WATERS. We’ve got some specific ZIP Codes that were showing these areas. What is going to be done to get to those ZIP

Codes? It cannot be generic. It cannot be the kind of video buys

that you’ve done in the past. How are you going to get down into

those communities? Excuse me, will you yield for a minute for the

gentle lady?

Ms. WATSON. I’m looking in the back. I see Danny Bakewell, publisher of the Sentinal and you’re now, if I understand president of

the Black Publishers Association. A paper like that, that comes

right into our community and read within the community, might

be helpful to invest in for them to present the message in a way

that will reach those who cannot be reached in other ways.

So I would suggest using the press in these areas that become

pockets where it’s hard to count. And let me just ask if I may, Mr.

Chairman, if you will make a comment when the time for the public to comment, is there going to be a time for the public to comment?

Mr. CLAY. We’ve got another panel that we’re going to invite.

Ms. WATSON. I was just asking for some suggestions.

Ms. WATERS. I’m reclaiming my time that was yielded to me by

the chairman. I did not have an opportunity to get into some questions about the lawsuit that has been levied against the Census

Bureau about the way you do hiring. Let me just say that I at one

point in time recognized that there was going to be some difficulty

getting these forms back in from challenged areas in my District,

so I held a census Town Hall meeting for the purposes of hiring

at Southwest College. We had 300 people there. I started to call

them and out of almost 100 calls that I’ve made, I’ve found only

81

two people who had been hired. These were people who came directly from the community.

Now, the lawsuit that has been levied is a lawsuit because you

do it a little bit differently than the civil rights law says we can

do in the Census Bureau. The question of have you ever been arrested as opposed to have you ever been convicted appears to be

utilized by the Census Bureau and if one has been arrested, it appears that they just get thrown out of the window, that those in

that group do not get hired. We talked about the fingerprint and

the FBI and all of that.

But if I ask you about public housing projects in East L.A. and

in South Central Los Angeles and you told me that there was a terrific under count and I asked you who would you hire to go into

those areas, if you hired people who have ever been arrested, based

on your forms, you’re going to have great difficulty in getting the

kind of response that we need because unfortunately Latinos and

Blacks are disproportionately arrested and even convicted in some

cases. But the arrest records of young Blacks and Latinos is so disproportionate, but it is predicted that living in certain communities, by the time you’re 17, 18 years old, you’re going to have

been arrested. You’re going to have been stopped by the police and

you’re going to get arrested. If nothing happened, they let you go.

But I would like to ask, there are public housing projects, particularly in East L.A., downtown and South Central, we need to see

what those responses are. And I think they’re probably going to be

a lot less than the average is nationally, L.A. or for the State. And

then I want to know whether or not you can shore up the work

that’s being done with some of those applications that have been

thrown aside from people who live in those areas and who came

from those areas who tried to get jobs. Because if you’re talking

about trying to do something about the under count, the challenge

there, you’ve got to do something different.

It can’t be that elected officials are going to say you guys don’t

know what you’re doing, you better go out there. Nobody is paying

any attention to that. And the ads certainly are not going to do it.

They were not culturally significant. We’ve got Cinco de Mayo coming up. Juneteenth will be coming up. You don’t factor that kind

of stuff into it.

Tell me what you’re going to do and if you don’t know what

you’re going to do beside what you’ve already said, maybe you

should let some of us give you suggestions like I’m trying to give

you now about how to get Nickerson Gardens counted.

Mr. CLAY. Before Dr. Groves answers, let me share with the committee the struggle that the Bureau has had as well as I with the

minority party on this committee about qualification for employment and how they demanded a list of what kind of infractions

hirees could have and could not have, what kind of crimes they

committed and they demanded a listing. And we struggled with it

for a couple of months until the Bureau came out with a list. And

that was the demand—they came out with a list of which crimes

were allowable to even be detained for. And which kinds of crimes

were not allowable for people who would be temporary workers in

the census.

82

Ms. WATERS. But if you’ve been arrested and you’ve committed

no crime, you were arrested, but you were let go, you should be eligible for a job.

Mr. CLAY. And that’s why I brought it to the minority’s attention

that you’re going to exclude numerous people from certain communities because as you said, young Black males, young Hispanic

males, are all the time being pulled over, being stopped, being detained.

Ms. WATERS. These are your challenged communities. What are

they going to do about it, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. CLAY. I’ll let Dr. Groves tell you what he did.

Mr. PEREZ. Mr. Chairman, may I ask to be excused? I have an

event at a community hospital that I have to get to.

Mr. CLAY. Yes, sir. Mr. Perez.

Mr. PEREZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CLAY. It’s been a pleasure having you too. Thank you for

your attendance.

We’re about to wind it up if Dr. Groves can answer the question.

Dr. GROVES. I share the concerns of recruitment in every area.

If you think about where the workload exists now, these are areas

throughout the country where the issues you bring up are salient.

I can say that with the restriction of hiring within these areas,

within the local Census Office areas, we have been successful in recruiting a team that fulfills our workload needs.

The process that we went through, as the chairman noted, was

one that was revised, reviewed by the Office of General Counsel,

by OPM, by EEOC. We’ve tried to walk that narrow line and it’s

a very difficult thing to do to hire locally and indigenously because

we know that works better. And then also at the same time to assure the American public that we have a screening process that

puts pretty salient in our viewpoint their safety, that we can assure them that we’ve reviewed the backgrounds of these people and

that they can be assured that when someone knocks on the door,

they have been reviewed in a way that we follow. I understand the

limits——

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Groves, that’s why you have a lawsuit. You’re

in violation of civil rights laws in a way that you did this hiring.

I appreciate what you’re saying, but you still can’t tell me how

you’re going to get these challenged areas counted?

Did you put more resources into them?

Dr. GROVES. Yes.

Ms. WATERS. How?

Dr. GROVES. We put more human resources into them. We put

more media resources into them.

Ms. WATERS. So what did you do in terms of the way you hired

enumerators, did you double them up to go into these areas?

Dr. GROVES. We made them proportional to the workload. And

these areas that you’re talking about have hot—by the very fact

that we’re talking about them having bigger workloads than others.

Ms. WATERS. Yes, but if they have bigger workloads, have you

accommodated that?

Mr. CLAY. And also, Mr. Groves, hasn’t the Bureau held back

funds to deal with the issues raised?

Dr. GROVES. Absolutely.

83

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I would hope they would specifically

identify, first of all, public housing projects all over the country,

whether we’re talking about Los Angeles or New Jersey or

Harlem——

Mr. CLAY. St. Louis.

Ms. WATERS. St. Louis, that’s right. All about Crossgrove Village

in St. Louis. Is Richardson Gardens still there? And tell us what

has happened with them and how you have doubled up your resources? It’s not clear to me, if there are extraordinary workloads

to be done, you would have accommodated that in the regular work

that you do, so if that didn’t get it, that means you’ve got to do

even more and so we want to know how you did that, with the enumerators you’re sending in, how much different than what you’ve

done already. We want to know whether or not you asked the local

newspapers to do special editions and to distribute them door to

door because a lot of people, poor people don’t buy newspapers.

We want to ask how you targeted these additional resources that

you’ve held back in ways that will do extraordinary work. When

can we get that, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. CLAY. The Director will respond verbatim, question by question in writing.

Ms. WATERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CLAY. If there are no other questions for this panel this

panel is dismissed. Thank you all for your testimony and we will

call up the second panel.

[Off the record.]

Mr. CLAY. The statement submitted by Congresswoman Laura

Richardson for this subcommittee shall be submitted for the record.

And without objection, so ordered.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Laura Richardson follows:]

84

85

86

87

88

89

Mr. CLAY. I will now introduce our next panel. Our first witness

will be Dr. Robert Ross, president of the California Endowment and

our host for this field hearing.

I also want to recognize that our host has done a magnificent job

of training, of conducting a training seminar for census workers

right down the hall today. So thank you for your efforts to conduct

a full and accurate census for Los Angeles County.

Dr. Ross has been president and CEO of the California Endowment since September 2000. During his tenure, the Foundation has

worked to increase access to health care for all children, strengthen

the community health centers, improve health services for farm

workers and ex-offender populations and to strengthen the pipeline

for bringing racial and ethnic diversity to the health professions.

The Endowment has led 2010 census outreach efforts in the

State of California raising more than $10 million to promote the

importance of participating in the census. Dr. Ross is a Diplomat

of the American Academy of Pediatrics and received his undergraduate, in Public Administration. Medical degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. Thank you for being here today and for

opening up this wonderful facility to the subcommittee, Dr. Ross.

We appreciate it.

Dr. ROSS. Thank you.

Mr. CLAY. Our next witness will be, we will hear from Ms. Gina

Montoya, chief administrative officer of the Mexican-American

Legal Defense and Education Fund. Ms. Montoya is responsible for

revamping MALDEF’s communication and technology. Ms. Montoya brings nearly 20 years of experience in nonprofit management

and legislative experience to MALDEF. She has served as the chief

of staff with two mayors and a State Senator. Founded in 1968,

MALDEF is the Nation’s leading Latino civil rights organization,

often described as the law firm of the Latino community. MALDEF

promotes social change through education, advocacy, employment

and political access. And thank you for being here, Ms. Montoya.

Our next witness will be Mr. John Cho. Mr. Cho is a KoreanAmerican actor and musician currently starring in the ABC television drama Flash Forward as FBI Agent Noh. Mr. Cho appeared

in the 11th Star Trek film as a young Lieutenant Sulu and I’m a

big Star Trek fan so I am so glad to have you here. His comedic

and dramatic credits include the Harold and Kumar series and the

1999 best picture Oscar winner, American Beauty. He has appeared on a variety of shows at East West Players, the Nation’s

preeminent Asian-American theater troop. Born in Seoul, South

Korea and lives in Los Angeles, Mr. Cho began acting while studying English literature at the University of California at Berkeley.

He resides here in Los Angeles and I thank all of our witnesses for

appearing today and look forward to their testimony.

It is the policy of the subcommittee to swear in all witnesses. I

would ask you to stand and raise your right hands, please.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. Clay. Thank you. You may be seated. And let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative.

We’ll start with the testimony. Dr. Ross, you may begin.

90

STATEMENTS OF DR. ROBERT ROSS, PRESIDENT, CALIFORNIA

ENDOWMENT; GINA MONTOYA, CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER, MALDEF; AND JOHN CHO, ACTOR

STATEMENT OF DR. ROBERT ROSS

Dr. ROSS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I can be brief in my remarks. Most of the remarks that I prepared had already been reiterated or mentioned in the previous panel which was an excellent

panel.

I’ll just make a couple of comments. I do want to acknowledge

our trio of terrific congressional Representatives that were here

today, Congresswoman Waters, and Congresswoman Watson, and

Congresswoman Chu. You have been warriors for social justice in

under served and voices in this community. We’re just so thrilled

to benefit from your leadership and have you here today.

A couple of comments just to reiterate and underscore the comments of the previous panel. A successful census count is important

to the building of healthy communities and may seem odd that a

president of a health foundation and its burdens are concerned

about this, but this is what it means to the State of California if

we don’t have a good census count. First of all, even though a grade

of 90 percent is typically a good grade in a math class, I wish my

son had ever achieved a 90 in any math test in his academic career, but a 10 percent under count in the State of California means

a loss of $40 billion over a 10-year period to the State. And in those $40 billion are resources where programs like the

Children’s Health Insurance Program, SCHP, mental health services, alcohol and drug treatment services, community health centers and community clinics, the MediCal programs, all of these programs are driven in heavy doses by formula funding and what’s

used to calculate that formula funding are census figures. This is

why an under count is so critically, critically important to this community and this is why I think the mayor was leaving here today

to go to the Sports Arena where literally tens of thousands of Los

Angelenos who can’t get health care are standing in line, hopefully

waiting for someone to provide with some charitable health care

because, in part, we’re not receiving our fair share of Federal resources. So this is how this issue is hitting us in the face today,

just a few miles from there, are many Angelenos that are not receiving the kind of health care they need.

On the solutions side, I really appreciated the line of questioning

from our Congresswoman, it’s a two-legged stool, it takes two steps

in tandem. One is the community organizations that know the communities, where to find the under counted populations, are trusted

by the community. Remember in the year 2000, $23 million in

State funding supporting these community-based organizations so

they had the capacity and the infrastructure to walk the neighborhoods and get these counts done. This year, that dollar figure from

the State because of the State funding crisis is down to $1 million

or less than $2 million which is why the philanthropic community

stepped in to try to—not make up for all the losses, but at least

for some of that. And we’ve been able to support this effort with

$4 million from our own Board of Directors headed toward an accurate census count.

91

The second piece that you heard from the first panel is trusted

ethnic media. And so if there are resources to answer the Congresswoman’s question, if there are resources to get at those under

counted communities, those are the two pieces that demand and require more targeted critical support. The community-based organizations in those neighborhoods, trusted by the community, highly

function in those neighborhoods and in those community organizations, and No. 2, ethnic media. The ethnic media has to be supported in terms of getting the messages out in their newspapers

and radio and other forms of communication. So I would underscore those two points.

And anything you can do, Chairman Clay, in your committee to

support the efforts of the Census Bureau to use those two vehicles

to really get at these under counted communities over the next several months, we’d be happy to do anything we can do to support

the efforts of bringing those folks together. But you have our full

support and I want to thank you for leadership in raising this issue

with the American public.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Ross follows:]

92

93

94

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Dr. Ross. You certainly can be assured that this subcommittee will work with the Members that are

here today, especially Representatives Chu and Waters and Watson

who have taken such a keen interest in the census, especially with

us having a full count of all communities throughout this country.

I appreciate your testimony, Dr. Ross.

Ms. Montoya, you’re recognized.

STATEMENT OF GINA MONTOYA

Ms. MONTOYA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee and guests, thank you for inviting the

Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund

[MALDEF], to testify at this hearing to examine ways to increase

participation in non-response followup. MALDEF appreciates this

opportunity to present to the subcommittee information about our

efforts to date and efforts for the enumeration phase, specifically

as we target the hard to count Latino population throughout America.

MALDEF is committed to an accurate and complete census count

to ensure Latino communities receive their fair share of public

funds and political representation. We have regional Census Directors across the Nation who have led our efforts to raise awareness

and encourage participation and ensure a more accurate count in

nearly every high Latino population area that is identified as a

hard to count area.

With the challenges of the current unparalleled level of distrust

in the immigrant community, with workplace raids, family separation, the Nation’s economic downturn, and what was a growing

senseless boycott buzz early in the campaign, MALDEF has met

the challenge with a multi-faceted outreach strategy that has endeavored to counteract the apathy in some cases, uncertainty,

mostly, much fear and even anger that surrounds the notion of

sharing personal information about our families.

In addition to the thousands of community hearings, presentations and town halls, church meetings, conferences, festivals,

schools and door to door canvassing, MALDEF has deployed a

multi-million dollar, multi-media strategy to complement and augment our outreach in targeted high Latino population areas. Our

outreach efforts have incorporated face to face, television, radio,

print, and the internet. MALDEF’s regional Census Directors, the

national Census Director, the president and general counsel, regional counsel, and nearly every MALDEF employee have instructed, provided materials, answered questions, and led the difficult work of calming the fears and concerns of America’s hardest

to count Latinos in persuading, encouraging, and convincing them

to participate.

We have enjoyed the support and participation of celebrities,

electeds, the clergy, and numerous trusted messengers, known and

beloved internationally, nationally, and regionally, including a $3.5

media campaign with Eva Longoria Parker that played in all of the

largest markets across America and two very well known in our

community actors and a very famous balladeer, who is an older

gentleman of ill health, who is beloved in our community and that’s

had a tremendous impact as well.

95

Our strategy to reach millions of Latinos has integrated a grass

roots campaign with a multi-media campaign, and a strong community education campaign. Some of the elements of our community

education campaign have been to include inserts in the largest

Spanish speaking newspapers. This is our motto and our image for

the MALDEF’s census campaign, [in Spanish] fear does not count,

because that’s the greatest emotion that we’re facing in our communities as they—actually, fear opening the door to someone who

appears, who may appear to be from the government. That along

with very simple messaging on how important, safe, and easy it is

to participate, this sort of fundamental messaging has been very effective in our community. It went out in half a million newspapers

across the country as an insert in daily newspapers.

The palm card bilingual is also a very effective tool as we passed

out these in the millions across the country at events. And our

newest enumeration flyer is again a bilingual message, a very important—I’ll get to that in a moment. We also did something that

works in our community. We did a comic novela that is in Spanish

and in English by a very well known artist. He’s in 50 syndicated

newspapers across the country. The Spanish is dated more for the

first phase. The English version actually has the enumeration message of how you identify someone who comes to your door and how

to feel safe when that person does come to your door. Very effective

tool, also used as inserts and at community events.

So this very brief overview describes MALDEF’s activities to

date, probably 10 percent of what we’ve actually done. MALDEF’s

outreach plans for the enumeration phase have begun with a

launch of a series of national days of action to conduct door to door

canvassing in concert with Spanish language media for even greater outreach as it plays on local and national newscasts. We have

created an enumeration phase, bilingual information flyer, which I

just showed you that informs people of the safety and confidentiality of this phase, how to identify an enumerator and critically important to show with our hard to count communities is the cautionary message that enumerators will never ask for and one should

never show Social Security cards, credit cards, immigration documents, home titles, rental agreements, etc.

For the first phase, MALDEF created an 8-minute informational,

instructional DVD and we’re creating a new one for the enumeration phase. These have been and will be distributed nationally and

played in waiting rooms of government offices, social service centers, clinics, churches, consulates and schools, etc. We’ve created

about 6,000 of those and we intend to distribute those across the

country as well.

We also plan TV, radio, and print media outreach for this phase

specifically. So to wrap, our enumerator phase and our folks have

been out for weeks now canvassing door to door, that face to face

contact, our individual staff persons and volunteers may not be

well known in the community, but they’re a warm face, they’re a

friendly face. They speak the language, were culturally sensitive.

We know the fears that they’re feeling and so they open the door

and they agree and they pledge to participate. And so we’re going

in front of the enumeration phase that launches officially tomorrow

96

to tell them they’re coming because you didn’t do this, now participate, and do your civic role.

We also did media language rollouts in indigenous languages because in the labor camps of California, you have farm workers who

don’t speak Spanish or English. They speak their own obscure—in

California or in the U.S. indigenous language. We did those in four

separate native Mexican languages. Very effective. We’re playing

those in little supermarkets, ice cream trucks, and they play on

radio in the Central Valley in San Diego, in Los Angeles and in

Phoenix.

MALDEF’s view of participation as a civil right of all is the motivation behind our outreach efforts. Our recommendations are simplistic and in line with everyone else’s here. We need a major, massive purchase of Spanish language, this is specifically for our community, television and radio time in high Latino population areas,

especially in Arizona.

With what has occurred there in the middle of a national census

in a State whose census response rate was already below the national average is inconsistent with our national constitutional imperative of completing a full count of U.S. residents. We need an

army of trusted, religious, and celebrity messengers on TV and

radio and we also need to conduct an intensive media outreach

campaign to inform the Colonia residents of south Texas, another

very, very heavily impacted, confused crowd. They were willing and

then it’s like you’re not going to get it in the mail. We’re going to

come to your door. Confusing messages don’t help, but we’re trying

to work together to get in front of that to say ‘‘look, the plan

changed’’ or ‘‘it’s different than what we thought.’’ ‘‘We’re going to

be there with you.’’ ‘‘Please participate,’’ and they’re eager to participate. We haven’t found people to be abruptly antagonistic about

the census necessarily. They just want more information and they

want to know that it’s confidential. And having that legal piece

about the confidentiality has been an incredible boost to our messaging effort. That carries an impact that’s very different than

what they’re used to in their home countries. So it means something to hear that. A person who violates that confidentiality may

spend up to 5 years in prison. That’s very important.

Another very popular element that works in our community is

the telethon on Spanish language television. Telethons allow individuals to call in and ask questions anonymously and that’s a very

popular modality for our community. They trust the figures that

deliver the news day in and day out and along with trusted community messengers, answering phones, telethons are a very effective way of getting those questions answered.

Again, the purchase of print ads in large and small daily and

weekly periodicals, especially the Spanish-speaking magazines and

newspapers, and especially Catholic newspapers are very effective

in our communities.

Thank you.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Ms. Montoya.

We will now hear from Mr. Cho. You’re batting clean up.

97

STATEMENT OF JOHN CHO

Mr. CHO. Good afternoon, Chairman Clay, and members of the

subcommittee. I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify at

today’s hearing on an issue I consider vital. As an actor who has

been in many youth oriented films, the phrase I hear most from

Asian American kids is ‘‘thanks for representing,’’ something I’m

sure you hear. Because there are relatively few Asian actors in film

and television, my presence makes them feel seen and heard by the

entertainment industry that they support with their time,

viewership and dollars.

A generation ago, I felt a similar pride watching George Takei

on the bridge of the Enterprise in the original Star Trek series. In

a small way, his presence made me feel that I was a legitimate

part of the larger American culture, something I didn’t always feel

growing up as a Korean immigrant.

I am speaking here today because the census, much more than

appearing on television, is a real opportunity to represent our respective communities.

Thanks to the Asian Pacific Legal Center for this bit of data,

over 5 million Asian Americans and 280,000 Pacific Islanders live

in California. We make up roughly 14 to 15 percent of the Golden

State.

Paul Ong in UCLA’s Urban Planning Department estimates that

150,000 to 175,000 Asian American Pacific Islanders in California

were missed and not accounted for during census 2000. To put that

into perspective, that’s like missing the entire city of Pasadena to

the tune of roughly $2.1 billion in appropriations lost over the

course of a decade.

Being counted ensures that your community receives the dollars

it deserves and needs to provide services like education, health

care, and voting rights. So I want to urge those listening to open

their doors to the census workers, secure in the knowledge that

they are federally prohibited from sharing their data or otherwise

invading your privacy. They are forbidden from collecting Social Security Numbers and cannot ask or determine whether you are an

undocumented resident.

And I want to say particularly to the sons and daughters in families where English is not the primary language, please assist your

parents. As a junior high school student I helped my parents fill

out FEMA forms when our home was damaged in the Whittier

earthquake. And I know there are kids out there who do much

more; children who translate in the emergency rooms, who translate principals’ notes, Medicare and tax forms, and translate customer orders for their family run businesses.

Your parents might be reluctant to allow strangers into their

home. I know that’s the way mine are, but it’s time for you to step

up and explain to them how important an opportunity this is, and

how easy it is. In doing so, you will be representing your family,

your race, culture, and neighborhood.

So thank you for allowing me to speak. Asian Americans have

been historically under counted in the census and it’s a privilege

to be a part of the effort to accurately portray the composition of

our country.

98

And finally, I want to say to those who have already sent in their

forms, and those who plan to cooperate with the enumerators who

will be coming to their doors, ‘‘thank you for representing.’’

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cho follows:]

99

100

101

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Cho, for that perfect and powerful

message and for you representing, too.

At this point we will go into the 5-minute question period and

we will begin this time with Ms. Chu.

Ms. CHU. Ms. Montoya, your array of programs for the census

are just very, very impressive, particularly since they’re so culturally specific. You use forums that are familiar to the communities like the novelas to reach out to them.

I was wondering where you got the funding for that?

Ms. MONTOYA. We have been very fortunate to receive national

philanthropic funding. We received funding from the California

Community Foundation for a very innovative Internet Web application that actually incorporates a game for texting to youth, that

they can then link on to a Web site that shows the United States

of America and how people are pledging to participate, that in

turn, gives the participant a 25-song iPod card which is pretty interesting, pretty neat and innovative.

The Ford Foundation, the House Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, we have operations all across America, so some of our funding

is specific, for example, in Chicago and it’s mostly foundation support.

Ms. CHU. How has the coordination with the Census Bureau

been?

Ms. MONTOYA. The coordination in Los Angeles has been great.

The coordination has been varied in other parts of the country. The

coordination here in Los Angeles—we actually have a very close relationship with them and we share a lot of information, so it’s good

to have that relationship to be able to share information as it’s occurring in real time so that we can spot react and be proactive.

Ms. CHU. You mentioned the Arizona law, but are you going to

be doing something to address that going forward?

Ms. MONTOYA. Relative to the census?

Ms. CHU. Yes.

Ms. MONTOYA. It has actually had the impact of encouraging, especially young people, especially students to volunteer in greater

numbers. And so we’re working very closely with them to help message correctly to negate the great amount of fear. Some of the

homes that we’ve gone to previously are now empty and that’s of

great concern and it’s a tragedy really. As you know, MALDEF had

its press conference yesterday and we do intend to bring a lawsuit.

Ms. CHU. And Mr. Cho, what might have made your parents

more likely to open up the door to an enumerator?

Mr. CHO. I think the message that would have been useful for

my parents to hear is that it’s safe, the information is safe, but also

the emotional message that would have helped would be this is a

way to ensure your children’s future. I believe that an accurate

count is the beginning of ensuring rights for their children and I

think that message would have been something that would have

been very powerful for people like my parents.

Ms. CHU. Thank you. I yield back.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Congresswoman. Congresswoman Waters,

you’re recognized.

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much. I would like to thank our

witnesses for appearing here today, sharing with us your thoughts

102

about the census and sharing with us actual activities that you’re

involved in.

Ms. Montoya, you identified several sources of funding, mostly

foundations. Do you get any funding from the U.S. Census Bureau

at all?

Ms. MONTOYA. MALDEF is prohibited or we have by our charter,

as a nonprofit organization, we do not accept government funding

at all at any level of government.

Ms. WATERS. How much have you organized in private foundation money?

Ms. MONTOYA. About $1.2 million.

Ms. WATERS. I beg your pardon?

Ms. MONTOYA. $1.2 million.

Ms. WATERS. So you’re continuing some of the challenging areas

that were identified today, some of those ZIP Codes, the ZIP Codes

that you need to be paying attention to, how do you plan to up the

activities, what does it take?

Ms. MONTOYA. Well, we were out there today. Our census staff

and volunteers, today was one of our national working days on the

census and so we were in several of those ZIP Codes today with

little armies of students and volunteers to go door to door, to knock

on those doors to share that message. And again, I want to reiterate how important it is to have that face to face contact. It isn’t

so challenging once people understand the good that can come from

the census, that it’s safe, that it benefits your community in all of

these many ways, and in some instances we tell people MALDEF

will be there to protect you, if you are violated in any way.

Ms. WATERS. Do you screen your volunteers the way the U.S.

Census Bureau screens volunteers?

Ms. MONTOYA. No, we do not and I’ve taken complaints from various community groups throughout the State that are very distressed, and throughout the Nation actually, are very distressed

about the conflict in what the Department of Justice evidently approves for a hiring process, and what the U.S. Census Bureau has

restricted itself in terms of hiring. It’s been very frustrating and

very disappointing to people who thought they might have an opportunity to be helpful.

Ms. WATERS. Including volunteers and others to help do this

work, have you run into the kind of problems that the Census Bureau, by the way that it acts, would have you believe that they

have to work so hard to keep these bad people from being employed? Do you run into these bad people out there who we say ‘‘no

way can we let you work with us.’’ Is that a problem at all?

Ms. MONTOYA. No, it hasn’t been. We do a very intensive training. We provide everyone with the message points that they’re to

do.

Mr. CLAY. Ms. Montoya, can I ask you to speak directly into the

mic, so we can get the recording?

Ms. MONTOYA. Of course. So to answer your question, in short,

no, we have not. We invite people to volunteer. We do not screen

them in that manner. We do provide a training and we do a lot of

role playing to make sure that they have the messaging right. We

provide them with those message points and it’s a very brief interaction, actually, that they’re doing door to door and our Census ReVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:57 May 09, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00106 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\64923.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
103

gional Directors are on top of all of it as we go door to door canvassing.

Ms. WATERS. Thank you. Perhaps we can get you to train the

U.S. Census Bureau on how to do this. They obviously do it differently.

Dr. Ross, thank you for allowing us to be in this beautiful space

here and your participation—have you received any requests from

other ethnic organizations to do the kind of work Ms. Montoya has

been doing? Those were wonderful materials that were produced

there. They are so appropriate for the outreach that they are doing.

I haven’t seen that in the Black community, in the Asian community. I haven’t seen it anywhere. I’ve just seen it here.

Have you had any requests for assistance?

Dr. ROSS. In fact, Congresswoman, we’ve had more requests than

we could handle. There’s a group of actually 10 foundations in the

State of California with about $16 million in funds. We’re funding

over 200 organizations across the State. The majority of them, ethnic organizations, many of them African-American organizations,

and we’ve got more requests than we can handle.

Ms. WATERS. Any from the NAACP? Someone was here today

from the NAACP. Did they request funding?

Dr. ROSS. We did get a request from the State Chapter which we

could not accommodate, but I think we’re funding a local NAACP

Chapter, but I can get back to you with exact funding on that. But

I would say the following is at the stage that we’re at now, using

a comment that Mr. Cho might be familiar with, now that we have

information about the specific information and data about the

under counted ZIP Codes, we all need to go into work drive on

those under counted ZIP Codes.

And actually, we’ve had good cooperation from the local Census

Bureau representative, Mr. Jaime Christy, but if there are, in fact,

resources available, Federal resources available, particularly to

focus on those under counted areas, we can all get in one room

with maps about these under counted areas, then perhaps we can

target all these more assertively and strategically in combination

with Federal dollars and see if we can get more bang for the buck.

But we’ve had far more requests for funding these organizations

than we’ve been able to handle.

And in fact, Congresswoman, as we’ve had budget planning for

our budget last year, we didn’t have any money set aside for census

outreach because we didn’t see it as the nature of our business.

Our grantees are usually health centers and hospital and mental

health providers and so now we find ourselves in the business of

trying to make up for what State government has not been able to

do. But I can tell you we’ve had far more requests than we have

been able to handle.

Ms. WATERS. You’re absolutely right, and as I said earlier today,

the government should pay for this count and this is the responsibility, a constitutional responsibility of the government to pay for

this count. However, for those foundations and organizations who

take it upon themselves because they understand what it means in

terms of resources to communities, we’re very appreciative for that,

very, very appreciative for doing this kind of work.

104

So Dr. Ross, since you’ve entered into it already, let me just say

that for the communities for which I’m going to be working with

the chairman and the Bureau to take a very, very close look at, in

the Los Angeles area, we have a number of organizations in these

areas, whether we’re talking about—there were several ZIP Codes

that they named today, but you have the Watts Gang Task Force

and we will see what we can do looking at what kind of resources

they have in government. We’re going to look and see if you’d like

to again align yourself with, but including seeing what you can do

to help us out. Appreciate that.

Dr. ROSS. Be happy to.

Ms. WATERS. Thank you. Let me just say, someone was talking

about young people assisting parents. It’s a very effective way of

working. As a matter of fact, what I think a lot of people are beginning to understand is it was a very effective operation in the

Obama campaign with the older Jewish community in Florida.

What they did was they asked the young people to go in and work

with them and to talk with them about the issues and no one had

really done that before. And sometimes, there was a matter of

translation, but other times it was a matter of just understanding

the issues a little bit better. And they created a whole data base

and it worked wonderfully well.

Now what you said here today is right on, but you’re not going

to see that in a census media because again, what they do is not

culturally sensitive. They act to reach out, but the ads were basically American ads that were translated, rather than being culturally sensitive language that everybody has been referring to

here today.

How we get them to do that kind of work, I don’t know. But it

surely is missing and based on what we saw today, people are not

going to open their door simply because it says be friendly and kind

to your census taker. It just doesn’t get it. So I’m hoping, Mr.

Chairman, we can try one more time to see if in this last stage that

we can get them to be more culturally sensitive with the dollars

that may be available to help with this push.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you. Let me ask Dr. Ross, you know, California

is home to 10 of the 50 counties in the Nation that have been identified as being the hardest to count. Can you tell us your outreach

efforts in these 10 hardest to count counties? As a matter of fact,

the census tract that we are situated in today where the California

Endowment is located, had a mailback rate of 57 percent.

What kind of outreach efforts do you see being needed, to get as

close as we can to a full count?

Dr. ROSS. The 200 organizations, the coalition of philanthropic

organizations as identified across the State, represents a wide

swath of African-American, Latino, Asian Pacific Islander-led organizations. So local, for example, it might be the community coalition or SCOPE or the California Alliance here in Los Angeles.

These organizations that have worked in these communities, know

these neighborhoods intimately, know the issues intimately and I

think at this point what I would welcome and certainly would be

in support of, we can work with the Foundation, but also with the

Census Bureau on this is let’s get a war room set up, let’s get the

105

maps on the wall, let’s get some numbers and data and targets up

there and let’s really make the next several months of this campaign to put the private sector funding in support with the community-based organization and advocacy organization leadership, organizations like MALDEF, like the NAACP, like Asian Pacific

American Legal Center. And let’s get all in one boat and each rowing in the same direction about how it is we’re going to get those

better numbers coming out of those ZIP Codes and out of those

neighborhoods.

There are elements of that sort already underway, but I think we

need to move with a sense of urgency and a sense of collaboration

and a sense of real team work and hopefully, I think based on the

folks we’ve been working with, folks are really able to do that and

I think if the Census Bureau asserts that kind of leadership in this

next phase, we’ll be there in support. The private sector will be

there in support, and the community-based organizations, the ethnic organizations, the trusted messages, and the trusted messengers, will all be in support. But I think the next several months

are going to be absolutely critical.

Mr. CLAY. It seems like there has to be a buy in of the Census

Bureau with the Regional Director really being the coordinator of

this effort and an active participant that’s directing these resources

toward this effort.

Dr. ROSS. And we found that the Regional Coordinator has been

responsive and has been supportive, but let’s get a sense of urgency

over these next several months.

Mr. CLAY. As you say at warp speed.

Ms. Montoya.

Ms. MONTOYA. If I may, I just passed along a DVD of the 8-

minute informational instruction that we created that we’re now

going to transfer into the enumeration phase message. I’m not certain that they’ll be able to play it, but just so that you get a contrast of how significantly different our own messaging is. I’m not

certain that they’ll be able to play it, but perhaps just a few seconds of it.

Mr. CLAY. We’ll continue with the questions.

Mr. Cho, do you believe that government distrust still exists and

hampers the ability to fully count the Asian community or do you

attribute that to additional factors? What can we do to allay the

fears? Just like you connected to young people in your testimony

and showed how?

Mr. CHO. I’m not an expert, but yes, I do believe government

mistrust is a problem. I know my father was a preacher for many

years in Glendale, CA which is a few miles away. And he had a

largely immigrant congregation. My experience was that whenever

there were any issues with the congregant’s legal problems, school

problems, police problems, they would come to him first. Then they

would respond. They would go to him for counsel, because they

came from countries and communities where there was a less incentive trust with essential government, so that certainly is an attitude that needs to be combatted and to be dealt with, absolutely.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you. Are we ready for the video? No, you’re not

sure.

Representative Watson, you may ask.

106

Ms. WATSON. I have been informed that most of the clusters are

in my District, the 33rd District. And I wanted to describe the

boundaries of it so you’ll be really clear. We go from 79th Street

out south all the way up to that Hollywood sign and then we go

all the way over to where the 134 and the 5 intersect at Riverside.

And then we take in the University of Southern California and go

on down.

It is the most diverse district in the State and maybe the most

diverse in the country and there are certain kinds of cultural pockets that I don’t know who you address. I have a big Armenian community up in Hollywood.

Mr. CLAY. Really?

Ms. WATSON. Oh yes, yes.

Mr. CLAY. We’ll play it now.

Ms. WATSON. Just filling in time.

[Video was played.]

Ms. MONTOYA. That’s just an example. You see how starkly different that is, but that resonates in our community because those

are real people and those are the people that we’ve focused our efforts on, the hard to count Latino population. Yes, some of us live

on pretty little streets like the commercial and that’s perfectly fine,

but we all answered right away. Now we’re at the second layer, at

the really hard to count population and that’s who these folks represent.

Ms. WATERS. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CLAY. Yes.

Ms. WATERS. One of the things that I noticed about the Census

Bureau was a 30-second ad. You don’t hear about anything in 30

seconds. It’s gone like that. And I noticed what you just showed us

was longer than any 30 seconds and even though I did not understand all of the words, it sure looked good.

Ms. MONTOYA. Thank you. Well, we were also blessed to hire a

two-time Emmy award winning international journalist, but thank

you very much. It is an 8-minute—that’s why we play it in waiting

rooms across the country.

We also have the 30 second spots, but this is our 8 minute.

Mr. CLAY. Representative Watson.

Ms. WATSON. What I find is that with all of the languages that

are spoken, the translation from one language, say Japanese to

English is not always accurate, but there are words that are not

translatable. The actions are. And so what we need to do is see

that we have moneys, Mr. Chairman, into these various ethnic and

these pockets and let them come up with what will reach them, you

see.

You know, you look at scripts on TV and you’ll see a Black person speaking. I say, ‘‘they would never speak this way in a certain

place. Who’s writing the scripts?’’ You know immediately. And so

I think what is so catchy about this is that people on the streets

are speaking to each other. And I think if we were to direct that

money that’s in reserve to a responsible organization like MALDEF

in the Hispanic community, if we were to direct it to people who

can then come up, write a little script, have people who look like

them speaking, I think that would make a difference.

Ms. MONTOYA. Much agreed.

107

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much. Let me wrap up this hearing, but

thank the California Endowment for their hospitality. Let me also

thank my colleagues who helped make this hearing what it was

today, to help us heighten the awareness throughout this community and throughout this country and over the last year or two,

they have tolerated me and put up with me in our persistence in

getting to this. And what we will do is when we go back to Washington next week, we will draft a letter to Director Groves asking

him to actually come together with groups here in this community

and across America to bring those extra resources, to bring it to the

regional level so that we can collaborate. Who better knows than

those Regional Directors what are really needed. And we have to

get this right. We have to get it right.

So let me conclude by saying thank you to this panel and thank

you for your involvement in the census. We appreciate it. That concludes the hearing. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 4:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Diane E. Watson and additional

information submitted for the hearing record follow:]

108

109

110

111

112

Æ