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) 512–2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

23–945 PDF 2005

HALFWAY TO THE 2010 CENSUS: THE COUNTDOWN AND COMPONENTS TO A SUCCESSFUL

DECENNIAL CENSUS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERALISM

AND THE CENSUS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

APRIL 19, 2005

Serial No. 109–80

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERALISM AND THE CENSUS

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio, Chairman

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

——— ———

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

JOHN CUADERES, Staff Director

URSULA WOJCIECHOWSKI, Professional Staff Member

JULIANA FRENCH, Clerk

ADAM BORDES, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on April 19, 2005 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Cooper, Kathleen, Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, U.S. Department of Commerce; and Charles Louis Kincannon, Director, U.S. Census Bureau ..................................................................................................... 14

Cooper, Kathleen ....................................................................................... 14

Kincannon, Charles Louis ........................................................................ 21

Naymark, Joan, director, research and planning, Target Corp., testifying

on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Andrew Reamer, deputy

director, urban markets initiative, Brookings Institution; and Jacqueline Byers, director of research, National Association of Counties ..... 36

Byers, Jacqueline ...................................................................................... 59

Naymark, Joan .......................................................................................... 36

Reamer, Andrew ........................................................................................ 51

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

Byers, Jacqueline, director of research, National Association of Counties,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 61

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

Missouri , prepared statement of ................................................................. 78

Cooper, Kathleen, Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, U.S. Department of Commerce, prepared statement of ................................................. 17

Kincannon, Charles Louis, Director, U.S. Census Bureau, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 23

Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 9

Naymark, Joan, director, research and planning, Target Corp., testifying

on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, prepared statement of ...... 39

Reamer, Andrew, deputy director, urban markets initiative, Brookings

Institution, prepared statement of .............................................................. 53

Turner, Hon. Michael R., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Ohio, prepared statement of .................................................................... 4

(1)

HALFWAY TO THE 2010 CENSUS: THE COUNTDOWN AND COMPONENTS TO A SUCCESSFUL DECENNIAL CENSUS

TUESDAY, APRIL 19, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERALISM AND THE CENSUS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Michael R. Turner

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Turner, Dent, and Maloney.

Staff present: John Cuaderes, staff director; Ursula

Wojciechowski, professional staff member; Juliana French, clerk;

Neil Siefring, legislative director for Representative Turner; Erin

Maguire, legislative correspondent for Representative Dent; Jim

Moore, counsel for Committee on Government Reform; John

Heroux, counsel; Adam Bordes and David McMillen, minority professional staff members; and Cecelia Morton, minority office manager.

Mr. TURNER. Good morning. We call to order the meeting on the

Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census of the Government

Reform Committee. Our hearing topic today is Halfway to the 2010

Census: The Countdown and Components to a Successful Decennial

Census.

Census day is April 1, 2010, and we have just passed the midway

point. The enumeration of all American residents will require the

greatest peacetime mobilization of temporary workers for a Federal

agency since the 2000 census. Having jurisdiction over the census

matters, the subcommittee called today’s hearing to review the

Census Bureau’s preparations for the decennial census.

Today, we will examine the three main components that are key

to the upcoming census: the America Community Survey [ACS];

the master address file [MAF], and the topologically integrated geographic encoding and referencing [TIGER], enhancement program;

and the short-form-only census. It is important for Congress and

the American public to understand the role and value of each of

these components for the implementation of a successful census.

The first component is the modern short-form census which asks

only seven questions. It will be mailed to every known residence

and will provide the national head count. The short form will be

complimented by the second component of the census, the American Community Survey, the replacement of the decennial long

2

form, which was fully implemented at the beginning of this year.

A quarter million American Community Surveys will continue to be

mailed out monthly, providing more timely characteristic data necessary for policy decisions regarding government programs such as

community block grants, school lunch programs and highway planning.

The MAF/TIGER Enhancement Program is the third component

critical to the success of the 2010 census. The MAF program is designed to be a complete and current list of all addresses. The

TIGER portion is a digital data base that serves to upgrade and

improve street location information, bringing that information into

alignment with Global Positioning System coordinates.

In addition to examining these three census components, the subcommittee will also seek lessons learned from prior censuses.

The census has been administered every 10 years since the Revolutionary War. The Constitutionally mandated enumeration of residents is politically important in that it directly affects the reapportionment of Representatives in Congress, the redistribution of tax

dollars for programs and services, redrawing State legislative districts, and public policy and business decisions. Considering that,

we must ensure that every effort is being made to achieve the most

accurate enumeration.

The 1990 census fell short of expectations primarily because of

costs. The census greatly exceeded its budget. In contrast, the 2000

census is considered a success. This traditional census was done on

time and within budget on account of better management, less employee turnover, and on emphasis of counting actual people.

Although the 2000 census was an improvement over the 1990

census, it was still expensive, used too much paper, and was, in

some cases, inefficient. Having learned valuable lessons from both

of those censuses, I am eager to hear from our first panel what the

Census Bureau has already accomplished, what efforts are currently underway, and what more is planned for the next 5 years

to make certain that we get the most accurate census count on

time and within budget.

On our first panel, we welcome remarks from the Honorable

Kathleen Cooper, Under Secretary of Economic Affairs at the Department of Commerce, and the Honorable Charles Louis

Kincannon, Director of the Census Bureau.

Our second panel of witnesses consists of representatives of the

stakeholder community who will share their views on the significance of an accurate census as it pertains to data collection and related subjects.

First, we will hear from Ms. Joan Naymark, director of research

and planning for Target Corp., on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of

Commerce. Second, we will hear from Dr. Andrew Reamer, the deputy director of the urban markets initiative at the Brookings Institute. Finally, we will hear from Ms. Jacqueline Byers, director of

research at the National Association of Counties.

3

I look forward to the expert testimony our distinguished panel of

leaders will provide us today. And we thank you for your time

today, and we welcome you.

At this time, I will yield to Mrs. Maloney and ask if she has an

opening statement.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Michael R. Turner follows:]

4

5

6

Mrs. MALONEY. I do have an opening statement, and I understand that Ranking Member Clay is on his way, but I will begin

right now and certainly thank you, Mr. Turner, and note that his

daughter, Carolyn, is here writing about the census for her school,

so that is great.

I am pleased to see the subcommittee paying attention to the

census early in the session. Many believe that work on the 2010

census is just beginning, but the truth is really just the opposite.

By the end of this Congress, the Census Bureau will have made

most of the important decisions on how the 2010 census will be

conducted. Our opportunity to review and comment without causing major disruption will have passed. As we saw in the last census, congressional intervention in the design of the census during

the last 2 years prior to the census is very, very costly. As a result

of those changes and poor budgeting by Congress, the 2000 census

was funded as an emergency. I hope we do not find ourselves in

the same situation to 2010. The funding request in 2010 for the

census will be somewhere between $6 and $10 billion, and we

should be preparing to pay that bill today.

Including funds appropriated for 2005, Congress has already spent approximately $750 million on the 2010 census. Those costs

have been in three areas: The American Community Survey, improving the census maps and geographic software, and in basic

planning.

The American Community Survey is nearing full completion. In

the last Congress, both the House and Senate could not find the

full $165 million necessary for the full implementation. Thanks to

the vocal support of many of the individuals and organizations in

the audience today, the Senate was convinced to go along with the

House mark of $145 million. However, almost full funding is not

good enough. If Congress will not commit to full funding for the

American Community Survey, we should just plain kill it and begin

planning for another long survey form in 2010. So getting the funding is tremendously important.

Let me be clear, I have supported the American Community Survey for nearly 10 years now. I believe in it, and I believe it should

go forward. However, partial funding will result in numbers that

are less accurate. Those numbers will be used to distribute billions

of dollars in Federal funds. That distribution will be less fair if the

numbers are less accurate.

When planning for the 2000 census begun, Congress asked the

Census Bureau to design a census that would be more accurate and

less expensive; we’ve got neither. According to GAO, the plans for

the 2010 census promised that the real dollar cost per household

will increase almost 50 percent. The Census Bureau is making few

comments on how accurate it will be and are even less forthcoming

of what we will know about the accuracy of the 2010 census.

The procedures for measuring the accuracy of the 2000 census

were well known long before the census. The methodology was

openly debated in professional associations and in Congress. We

are still waiting to hear how accuracy in the 2010 census will be

measured. I believe the Census Bureau should immediately present

to Congress a fully developed plan for how it intends to measure

accuracy in the 2010 census.

7

As GAO has pointed out, there is considerable technical work remaining to be done before the American Community Survey can

adequately replace the long form and shoulder the burden of distributing Federal funds. One of those hurdles is the accuracy of the

annual estimates that are used to control the ACS’s numbers. Last

year, New York City challenged the 2003 estimate for the city and

won. The Census Bureau increased the estimate for Brooklyn and

Queens, adding more than 29,000 people to the city’s population.

Just last week, the Census Bureau released the 2004 county estimates. Those estimates rely in part on data from the IRS but fail

to take into account the dynamics of the New York City low-income

population. New York will again challenge those estimates, and I

am sure that the city will once again prevail.

The issue is not just that the estimates for New York City are

wrong. New York City has one of the finest demographers in the

country, working to make sure that the Census Bureau gets it

right. Hundreds of cities across the country will be disadvantaged

because they don’t have the skilled staff to challenge the Census

Bureau. The ACS and the public will suffer from those inaccuracies.

One of the ways communities can work to make sure they get the

best census count possible is the Local Update of Census Addresses

[LUCA] program. Congress passed legislation in 1994 to allow local

officials to view the confidential address lists and make corrections.

Unfortunately, for most cities, that process was cumbersome and

confusing. Again, New York City took full advantage of the program because of its excellent staff. Most other cities did not fare

as well. The Census Bureau should be working now with local governments to help them prepare for the 2010 LUCA. Instead, it appears that the 2010 address list will be just like 2000, cumbersome,

confusing and full of errors.

I would like the Census Bureau to provide the committee detailed plans on what it is going to do in 2006 to assist local governments to prepare for reviewing the 2010 address list. That work

should begin in 2006, and the plan should be before Congress right

now.

We all agree that the census is vitally important to the public

and its government. It’s the one thing that we all participate in.

That is why we will spend nearly $12 billion on the 2010 census.

If we are going to get full value for our money, we need greater

transparency, more public review and debate, and we need the information now.

I would like to close on what I consider a very discouraging note.

The Census Bureau has disbanded the Decennial Census Advisory

Committee and has put in place the 2010 Census Advisory Committee. The charters for these two committees are nearly identical.

It appears that the purpose of this change is simply to change the

membership of this committee. This does not reflect well on the

Census Bureau and does not inspire confidence that the advisory

committee process will be a meaningful one for the census as it was

leading up to the 2000 census.

I, again, want to thank Chairman Turner for holding this hearing. There is a great deal of work to be done in the next year, and

8

I am very glad that the committee is focusing on this very important issue and moving the process forward. So I thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:]

9

10

11

12

13

14

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mrs. Maloney.

We will now start with the witnesses. Each witness has kindly

prepared written testimony which will be included in the hearing

of this record. Witnesses will notice that there is a timer with a

light at the witness table. The green light indicates that you should

begin your prepared remarks, and the red light indicates that time

has expired.

It is the policy of this committee that all witnesses be sworn in,

so if you would please rise and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TURNER. Let the record show that all the witnesses have responded in the affirmative, and we will begin this panel with Honorable Kathleen Cooper, Under Secretary for Economic Affairs,

U.S. Department of Commerce.

STATEMENTS OF KATHLEEN COOPER, UNDER SECRETARY

FOR ECONOMIC AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE;

AND CHARLES LOUIS KINCANNON, DIRECTOR, U.S. CENSUS

BUREAU

STATEMENT OF KATHLEEN COOPER

Ms. COOPER. Good morning, Chairman Turner and Mrs.

Maloney.

As you mentioned, I serve as Under Secretary for Economic Affairs at the Commerce Department. My responsibilities include advising the Secretary of Commerce on economic policy, and exercising managerial direction over the Bureau of Economic Analysis and

the Census Bureau.

I want to thank you, Chairman Turner, and this subcommittee

for your support. Your predecessor, Representative Adam Putnum,

Chairman Tom Davis of the full committee, and Chairman Frank

Wolf also have been key architects in the direction of the 2010 census.

Those in Congress who may not be aware, as this group is, of the

cyclical nature of the census often see the period between censuses

as an opportunity to shift scarce fiscal resources to other projects.

Planning, testing and preparation needs to occur now for a successful count in 2010.

According to Article I, Section II of the Constitution, an enumeration of the inhabitants of the United States is the responsibility of the Congress. It is notable, perhaps for the Federalism Subcommittee, that the Framers did not put this responsibility under

the powers of the executive branch, nor did they reserve it to the

States. The Congress has delegated census-taking work to the Bureau.

Essentially, the Census Bureau is your data collector and statistical contractor. The 2010 census represents a sea change in how

we count our population. It also reflects our dedication to improving census procedures as our population and technology evolve.

In 1790, U.S. Marshals travelled door to door on horseback to determine the number of residents in the original 13 States. In 2010,

hundreds of thousands of enumerators will follow maps drawn with

Global Positioning Satellite technology. In 1830, printed forms were

15

used for the first time, replacing the Marshal’s notebook. In 2010,

enumerators will enter data in a handheld computer.

Over the years, more and different questions have been included

in the census. In 1840, questions on agriculture, mining and fishing

were added. In 1940, the Bureau determined that only a sample of

the population needed to complete the aptly named long form to

understand the changing characteristics of our population.

Importantly, the census will be taken in 2010 by short form only;

that’s because the American Community Survey is up and running,

resulting in two important deliverables. First, with the American

Community Survey in place, every household will receive a short

form questionnaire in 2010. The short form has a much higher response. All of our census taking, manpower and resources can be

dedicated to obtaining an accurate count of every person on April

1, 2010.

Second, by having a continuous American Community Survey,

Congress and the American people will have information on characteristics about our population every year. When city planners in

Dayton need to consider a new bus route, they can refer to ACS

data on commute times to work. Language needs in St. Louis

schools can be considered based on new ACS data, not information

from 2000. This year will see rich, long-form quality data for communities 250,000 or larger. Next year, we will have data for towns

of 65,000. And in 2010, we will see ACS data for the smallest

towns and neighborhoods.

Long form data provided a once-a-decade snapshot, the ACS is a

moving video image. Ultimately, the result will be increased accuracy in the 2010 enumeration.

In April 2010, you will see the maximum capacity of census resources focused on finding and counting people. I hope and believe

accuracy will be improved and the undercount narrowed.

The American Community Survey questionnaire is very similar

in content to the long form used in the census 2000. All the questions are responsive to a law, a statute or a court order. The Census Bureau has worked many years with Congress and other Federal agencies to ensure that answers provide the data to meet statutory requirements. Unfortunately, the Census Bureau has been

ridiculed in the past for asking questions some believe to be intrusive, for instance, does this house, apartment or mobile home have

complete plumbing facilities? But the Departments of Health and

Human Services and Housing and Urban Development use these

answers to determine public health policy and the condition of

housing in remote areas and in low-income neighborhoods. We ask

every question for a reason; every answer is needed.

A quarter of a million surveys are going out each month nationwide. Surveys touch every congressional district in the country, and

the results will too.

Census staff has made an impressive effort to alert congressional

district offices to the benefits of ACS data. We hope your offices

and those of your colleagues will encourage constituents to complete the ACS.

Let me stress for a moment the confidentiality aspect of census

taking. The answers provided on the ACS are confidential; the privacy of your constituents is protected.

16

Census employees swear an oath to protect the data and the privacy of respondents. I have observed that they take that promise

very, very seriously. And if they do not, penalties, including fines

and Federal prison time, are severe. Census professionals know

well that the quality of their products depends on respondent cooperation, and cooperation depends on trust. We are going to protect that trust.

We thank Congress for its support and look forward to continuing our work with you to ensure a successful 2010 count. And I will

be happy to take your questions at the appropriate time.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Cooper follows:]

17

18

19

20

21

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Mr. Kincannon.

STATEMENT OF CHARLES LOUIS KINCANNON

Mr. KINCANNON. Good morning, and thank you, Chairman Turner and Mrs. Maloney and other members of the subcommittee for

arranging this opportunity where the Census Bureau can update

the Congress on plans for the 2010 decennial census program and

progress so far.

I want to assure the committee that our primary goal is an accurate decennial census. In 2010, we will meet this goal through the

reengineered census process, a process that will deliver more timely data, reduce overall risk and contain costs.

The process includes three integrated components: the American

Community Survey; the MAF/TIGER Enhancement program; and

the 2010 census, which will be a short-form-only enumeration.

Today, I can assure you we are moving to take advantage of important technological and operational opportunities. Moreover, I am

pleased to report that we are on schedule and on budget as we proceed with the 2010 decennial census program.

The American Community Survey is the greatest revolution in

decennial census taking in 20 years. The American Community

Survey replaces the long form of the census, and it will deliver data

to governments in increasing geographic detail between next summer and the summer of 2010.

The American Community Survey, with the support of Congress,

was fully implemented this year. We are very pleased to report

that we have been able to keep up with this quadrupled workload.

The work is on schedule and on budget. In the first monthly sample, I am pleased to report that we have received a 97 percent response rate, which is a very substantial achievement. This demonstrates the payoff for a well-conceived and supported testing program. The American Community Survey will provide more timely

data for States and local communities, and it will allow the Census

Bureau to focus its efforts in 2010 on the core Constitutional responsibility to conduct an accurate enumeration of every person living in America.

However, this endeavor also depends on the MAF/TIGER enhancement program. The census, after all, has two principle requirements: to count every person living in America once and only

once, and to count every person with a correct address. Ensuring

accuracy of the addresses is the only guarantee for a fair distribution of resources and political power as they are distributed according to geographies, States and cities, tracks and blocks.

MAF/TIGER tells us where people live and gives us a reasonable

means of organizing our work. Moreover, the TIGER system is

used by the U.S. Geological Survey for the National Map by commercial of companies for products such as Map Quest, and by

State, local and tribal governments to improve their local GIS files.

Important objectives of the enhancement program include realigning the TIGER map in order to take advantage of GPS tables,

modernizing the processing system and expanding geographic partnerships with State, local and tribal governments. We have contracted with the Harris Corp. to realign the roads and features of

22

all the U.S. counties by 2008. Since 2003, the Harris Corp. has

completed the realignment for more than 1,000 counties, with approximately 2,300 to go. We are on schedule to achieve this objective.

We need to modernize the MAF/TIGER processing system, replacing the home-grown system developed more than 25 years ago

with a modern Oracle-based system. This will provide more flexible

integration with other operations and a more customer-friendly

product for users.

As we proceed, we are mindful that the TIGER system is a national treasure. We are working to expand partnerships that will

benefit stakeholders in the exchange of geospatial information.

This is an extensive effort, and we believe it will contribute to an

accurate decennial census enumeration. And thanks to the American Community Survey, the 2010 census will be a short-form-only

enumeration, meaning that we will focus our efforts on the quality

of the count and census coverage.

We began researching and testing for the 2010 census early in

the decade, far earlier than for any previous census. The testing

program began in 2003 with a national mail out. In 2004, we conducted census tests in Queens and three counties in southwest

Georgia. We successfully tested the use of handheld computers, like

this device that I have, to conduct field data collection. We also

tested new methods for improving coverage. We are conducting another national mail out test this year, focusing on improving the

completeness and accuracy of reporting on the short form. We will

conduct a replacement mailing for non-responding households, and

for the first time, we will mail a bilingual questionnaire in selected

areas. We believe these efforts will improve the accuracy of responses as well as coverage.

We will take the results of the research that we have conducted

so far into the field of 2006 as we conduct test censuses in a portion

of Travis County, TX, and the Cheyenne River Reservation in

South Dakota. One important goal of this testing program is to enable us to conduct a true dress rehearsal in 2008. We only get one

chance to take the census, and we do not want to be forced to use

untested procedures during the 2010 census, as that increases the

risk of failures.

In conclusion, we believe reducing the risk associated with the

census is an investment in the Nation’s future and one worth making. Congress has supported this investment thus far, and we ask

for your continued support in this regard.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity. And I remain

available to answer questions if you have them. Thank you, sir.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kincannon follows:]

23

24

25

26

27

28

Mr. TURNER. Thank you both.

I want to recognize Mr. Dent from Pennsylvania, who has joined

us.

And I want to thank Mrs. Maloney for recognizing my daughter

Carolyn who is with us. I have both of my daughters in town with

me today, and my daughter Jessica, who is 13, as I was leaving for

this hearing, telling her that I was going to a hearing on the census, I thought I would ask her what is a census, and she said,

‘‘That’s when you count all the people on the planet.’’ Now recognizing that your job is smaller than that, but still incredibly challenging and daunting, I appreciate your dedication to it. It is incredibly

important for the number of reasons that you set forth and in my

opening statement, specifically the allocation of dollars, the apportionment for representation.

You talked about the processes that you are moving forward with

in your preparation for 2010. In the past, there has been a significant amount of discussion concerning techniques, including sampling. So, for the record, does the census plan currently on using

sampling to supplement its numbers for purposes of apportionment?

Mr. KINCANNON. No, Mr. Chairman. Our plans are not to do

that. The reason is, in the first instance for apportionment, the law

prohibits that. A law passed in 1975, I can’t give you the citation,

but it prohibits use of sample-based estimates for apportionment.

But we have worked on the question of using sample and modeling-based estimates to change census results in an effort to make

them more complete for 30 years. And in the 2000 census, the Census Bureau worked for almost 3 years on trying to make a procedure that would work in improving the quality of results for the

major census products. We were unsuccessful in that regard.

Before I was named director, the Census Bureau made a decision

that it was not feasible to use the figures in the process that we

had in 2000 to provide adjusted figures for redistricting. And in

fact, as we continued to work on those estimates, we learned that

would have been a severe error. It was even more off as a measure

of results than we had thought when the decision had to be made

about redistricting.

We continued to work until the winter of 2002/2003 to see if we

could use the results to improve the quality of inter-census demographic estimates, the estimates program that Mrs. Maloney was

commenting on, and our conclusion was that we could not. The difficulty of using sample and model-based estimates to provide better

figures for small areas does not seem feasible to the professional

staff at the Census Bureau at this stage. So we have not requested

money and are not intending to try that kind of process in 2010.

Ms. COOPER. If I might just, if I may, add to that point. The director has given very good and useful answers to the question, but

I arrived in May 2001, and I remember vividly the hard work done

by the census professionals for many, many months trying to see

if they could make the process that they had developed in advance

work. And they simply could not. It is not a viable option, and that

is the reason that we are not asking for money and do not plan to

adjust in 2010. And from all that I hear from the statistical community, they support that decision.

29

Mr. TURNER. Well, I think it is important to acknowledge that

your answers, if I am correct, are that the decision is based on career professionals and scientific processes in rejecting looking at

sampling as a process for adjusting your numbers. Is that correct?

Mr. KINCANNON. That is absolutely correct. I took my office, director, on March 20, 2002, so earlier decisions in work had gone on

ahead of that time. But from that point on, I was involved in many

of the professional staff meetings where the results were drawn together and judgments were made about its quality. I asked questions, but that was a process run by and settled by the professional

statisticians, the dozen or 15 who had worked consistently on this

for years. So yes, that is a professional staff decision.

Ms. COOPER. Absolutely.

Mr. TURNER. My next question, Ms. Cooper, I am going to start

with you because it directly impacts the director, Kincannon, and

I also appreciate his thoughts on this. It relates to the census director’s position and whether or not the position should be appointed

for a set term.

Ms. Cooper, do you have thoughts as to benefits that we might

see from that.

Ms. COOPER. I think that is an idea that has come around before,

and I think it is a worthy idea, something that I am sure people

have thought about a number of times. BLS clearly has a fixed

term, and I see some benefit to having some continuity. So I think

it is something that is worthy of debate and consideration.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Director Kincannon.

Mr. KINCANNON. Mr. Chairman, I was deputy director at the

time of the end of the Reagan administration and the taking of office of President Bush’s father’s administration, and it took a long

time to get a new census director identified, nominated and confirmed. So the burden in the last year before the census of 1990

fell entirely on me, and I can tell you there are two jobs there. So

continuity and having someone in place to do that work is an important consideration.

On the other hand, having a head of the Census Bureau with

such a scientific task but nonetheless intentionally and Constitutionally a political purpose means that the President ought to have

someone in that office who is trusted by the administration. So I

think the Congress would have to weigh those issues, because I

think that they pull in different directions, and determine which is

the best way to have it. And be sure to put on the shoes of the

other side when you take that decision.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you.

I, first of all, want to welcome both of our participants and thank

you for your testimony.

Undersecretary Cooper, one of the most innovative statistical

programs in the Federal Government in the last 20 years is the

Longitudinal Household Employment Data [LEHD] program. And

the Census Bureau should be very proud in the role it has played

in assisting Dr. Julia Lane and her colleagues in making this

project so successful. One of the things that makes this project so

30

unique is that it takes existing data from the States and the Federal Government and creates new information that is more valuable than either data set alone. So far, Congress has not provided

the funds to make this program fully operational. What is the administration doing to assure that Congress gives due consideration

to the request for this program in the 2006 budget because it is,

by all estimates, an extremely valuable program?

Ms. COOPER. Thank you very much, Mrs. Maloney, for that question, and I agree completely with your assessment, that it is one

of the most innovative programs in a long time. I am very hopeful

that, in fact, in the 2006 budget that the Congress will approve

some funding for the LEHD.

I think the main——

Mrs. MALONEY. Well, has Congress sent over a request asking for

it?

Ms. COOPER. Well, it is in the budget. It is in the budget at a

certain level, and census has been working, over the last couple of

years, to try to develop this program so that it can indeed work and

explain it to a number of people, both up through the Commerce

Department. And then I am sure that there are some special activities to explain it on the part of direct census professionals. But this

is one of the programs and ideas that I certainly talk about on a

regular basis when I am out in the country because I think it can

be very helpful for us longer term.

Mrs. MALONEY. OK. Well, I hope you will keep your eye on it.

Director Kincannon, as I mentioned in my statement, I would

like the Census Bureau to provide the committee with detailed

plans on what it will do in 2006 to help local governments prepare

for the Address Correction Program. When can we expect to see

those plans? Will they be here at the end of April? At the end of

May? When can we see those plans?

Mr. KINCANNON. We produced a preliminary plan for how we

were going to use LUCA in the 2010 census 2 years ago, I believe,

and we can certainly provide that to the subcommittee and will do

so.

Our finding was that we did not believe it will be cost-effective

to do this before the national update of all addresses in 2009. So

we plan to carry out a pilot LUCA program in the dress rehearsal

in 2008, but LUCA itself will not be implemented until after we

have the updated addresses before the census.

Mrs. MALONEY. So we will have a dress rehearsal in 2008, but

continuing on the line of the address list program, can you tell me

what will be done to test the local update in the 2006 census test?

Are you going to do anything in the 2006 census test to test the

addresses?

Mr. KINCANNON. No. We won’t be testing that in 2006. These are

tests of partial areas, and we don’t think that is particularly productive. And we can report on our plans in more detail if you would

like.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, we would appreciate it.

The Gooden Center at the New York University has been conducting research on the inequity caused by counting prisoners at

the prisons rather than at the residence. A lot of people argue you

should count where they are going to live after being released. Is

31

the Census Bureau considering any changes in how it counts prisoners in the 2010 census?

Mr. KINCANNON. No, Mrs. Maloney, we are not planning any

changes. Since 1790, we have counted people according to their

usual place of residence. What that has meant for a number of decades is a simple concept of where people sleep and live most of the

time. Prisoners sleep and live mostly in prisons, and that’s where

we count them. This policy of usual residences was upheld——

Mrs. MALONEY. Is that how they are going to be treated in the

ACS also, prisoners——

Mr. KINCANNON. Yes, that’s correct. The U.S. District Court for

the District of Columbia upheld this specific policy and specifically

with regard to prisoners in 1992.

Mr. TURNER. Director, will you explain to the committee how you

will be measuring errors in the 2010 census? I am especially interested in how you will fulfill your promise to measure gross errors,

and I would like to know when and how this methodology will be

submitted for external review.

Mr. KINCANNON. We have commissioned a panel of the National

Academy of Sciences to help us study the best ways to try to measure error, gross and net, and we expect a report I believe in the

summer of 2006.

Mrs. MALONEY. My time is up. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mrs. Maloney.

Mr. Dent.

Mr. DENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Director Kincannon, my observations have been, there are two

types of people, those who want to be found and those who don’t,

and there seems to be a larger number in that latter category than

any of us would like.

In your testimony, you’ve talked a little of coverage, and it is encouraging to note that you are going to be conducting surveying in

English and Spanish to help with coverage. What are you doing beyond bilingual surveys, to improve coverage for the 2010 census?

Mr. KINCANNON. Well, there are a number of very important

steps being taken to do that. First of all, although we plan to mail

bilingual questionnaires in English and Spanish to selected areas—

and we will do our final testing of that over the next 2 years—we

do have both translated questionnaires in five or six other languages; we did in 2000, and we will have a similar program in

2010.

We are also going to test mailing language guides in a number

of languages, along with the English language questionnaire, in

other areas where there are many sets of people who speak other

languages, perhaps, in their home. There are many neighborhoods

in our cities and in rural areas also where that would be helpful.

We are looking very closely at what we call residence rules,

where people are intending to be counted, to try to resolve in the

respondents’ minds how they should report if they have seasonal

residences and so forth. That is a source of duplication in some instances, and certainly of confusion.

Mr. DENT. Just a followup to that. How do you account for duplication? I’m in Pennsylvania, I have a lot of folks who spend a good

part of the year down south in Florida or South Carolina. How do

32

you account for people like that, just subtract for duplicates in general, beyond the seasonal residents in a given State?

Mr. KINCANNON. Well, in theory, we rely on trying to convey an

understanding that respondents should report themselves where

they usually live most of the time. Some people may divide their

time exactly half and half, but that’s rare, I think. Our success in

communicating that concept to respondents is not always perfect,

and it is confusing to them. So we are doing cognitive studies of

the way we explain that intention, and we are conducting detailed

tests in field circumstances to see if we can improve on the model

in the way we communicate that.

We also examine duplication in the course of evaluating the coverage of the census. We did that in 2000, and we will do that in

2010. But after the fact, it is sometimes difficult to resolve issues

of duplication. You can tell for sure there is a duplicate, but you

cannot tell for sure which case was right. And a year or more after

the census date, it is very difficult to followup constructively and

ask people to say, where were you on this date?

Mr. DENT. And how do you account for people who may not be

citizens of the United States, who may be here illegally or might

be here on a visa legally? How do you account for those folks in

the census?

Mr. KINCANNON. We don’t deal with the question of legality or

authorized presence in the United States. We count people who are

resident here most of the time.

Mr. DENT. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. We will go to a second round of questions just to

see if anybody has anything now they want to conclude with. And

Ms. Cooper, I wanted to ask you a question about ACS.

Today, we are talking mostly about how the census is going to

be done and how it will be improved and what it is for a tool. And

I would like to ask a couple of questions about its use and the importance of this data being correct.

Really, we have two groups that benefit from the census in their

planning; we look at business in our economy, local governments,

and issues of infrastructure. And I wondered if you could talk

about those two as stakeholders on the local level with our local

governments, businesses, and our community plan.

Ms. COOPER. Absolutely. Thank you for that question.

I spent virtually all of my career before coming to government in

2001 in the private sector, and I can assure you that businesses

certainly—which is where I spent my time—use this data for very

important decisions. They use it to determine where to locate,

where their best market would be, where to hire employees, and

what sorts of products to produce. So it is very important that they

have this data and have it on a timely basis. We have remembered

certainly having to look back and using very old data in the past

if we get to the middle part of the decade, and that is one of the

most important advantages of ACS. So I am very hopeful that this

will be helpful to companies as we go forward.

And I think it is also true, though I have less firsthand knowledge than you of State and local governments and how they can

use this data for planning. And here, again, the importance of its

coming every year rather than once a decade is crucial. There are

33

a couple of examples that I’ve heard about that I would like to

share with you.

Fulton County, PA, which is a sparsely populated rural area—

as you know, Mr. Dent—has used ACS data to develop employment

and a training services system, a rural transportation system, and

a help line for facilities to address health care and child care needs.

Another example is Springfield, MA. Community leaders and

public safety officials have used it to develop youth violence prevention programs for teens.

Final example, Bronx County, NY. ACS data has been used to

identify and develop intervention strategies for juvenile diabetes in

special populations.

I think these are just three examples out of many, that are out

there, and once State governments and local governments get used

to this data, know about its availability, they will use it ever more,

community-based organizations, transportation planners and so on.

And I think that’s the reason why we have had so much support,

not only from the business community, the National Chamber of

Commerce, the National Association of Home Builders, Target Federated Department stores, but also from a number of other government and local government organizations, including the National

League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, National Conference of State Legislators. There are a number of others.

So I see, going forward, this data being extremely useful for all

stakeholders, many American businesses and State and local government, to better plan for their futures and make this economy

even stronger than it is.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Director Kincannon, I have two questions for you. You spoke

about the 1990 census, and I think one of the things that people

identify in the 1990 census, when they speak of it critically, is the

issue of high turnover in staff. And certainly your census success

is impacted by the enumerators who are working on the project.

What work are you doing as you are moving forward to look at the

2010? Because people generally believe in 2000 there was a much

more stable team that actually performed the census. What are

your planning processes, and what are you looking toward 2010 for

stability in staff?

Mr. KINCANNON. Well, we certainly hope to continue a very important thing that was done in 2000. The Congress provided and

approved differential pay rates that were meaningful in different

areas of the country so that we could compete. We were even successful in recruiting very good staff in New York City because we

had competitive wages to pay. That’s a big factor. It’s a simple

principle, but it’s very important, and we hope to continue that.

I would not at all underestimate the significance of having a

short-form-only census. That means our job of training is far simpler, and the rigors of doing the job are far less difficult than trying

to followup on the long form. And I think those factors alone will

reduce turnover in 2010.

Mr. TURNER. Director, Mrs. Maloney spoke of the 2010 Advisory

Group as opposed to the Decennial Advisory Group. And I am not

really familiar with the differences there, so perhaps you could give

34

us some comments on why you’ve made this move, the differences

and what you hope to accomplish.

Mr. KINCANNON. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to do

that.

The Decennial Census Advisory Committee was chartered quite

a number of years ago, before the 2000 census. It originally had 25

members; membership grew over a period of time to about 40, I

think. It was a large group, where it was sometimes difficult to

have an effective collective discussion. A number of members—and

the members of that committee are organizations, not individuals.

The organization then sends a representative. Some organizations

were not faithful in their attendance sometimes not coming at all

and sometimes not sending a consistent person, which is, I’m

afraid, a very important part of the ingredient.

After the 2000 census, it was decided to continue that committee

because we had something quite marvel going on in the preparation for the ACS. And I think that was a correct decision at the

time. My desire, now, was to have a streamlined committee with

20 members of people who are going to attend and participate constructively, perhaps to get some different groups involved in the

process and also to make clear that this was to focus on the 2010

census. I think it is useful to draw a line around a particular census and focus attention on that and have some concentrated attention in that way.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Turner.

You raised the issue of a term appointment for the Census Bureau Director, and I have championed this position since before the

2000 census. The director made the point that there is an advantage to having a director that is trusted by the administration—

whomever the administration is—and that is just the point of my

bill. The Census Bureau director should be first committed to the

professional responsibilities of the office and, second, to the political agenda of an administration. If by some decision the majority

decides to pass my bill, I really want to underscore that it must

be done in a way that there is no partisan advantage attached, and

I just wanted to clarify my position on that.

I would like to ask the director, what information would be available to the public about error in the census measured for small geographic areas like census tracks or counties? Will you make that

information available in 2006 and 2008?

Mr. KINCANNON. Well, Congresswoman, we expect that we will

have a detailed plan developed after the report from the National

Academy of Sciences in the summer of 2006. I don’t know whether

we will produce error rates by tract or by county. It may depend

more on the population size of an area than on a particular boundary. But it is premature for us to say what we can do until we have

received this recommendation. We are committed and attempt to

carry out a program of evaluation of coverage at a level where it

can be useful to us and to the public.

Mrs. MALONEY. The Census Bureau director has repeatedly said

that it will measure and report errors of omission and of duplication in the 2010 census. However, when the Census Bureau disVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:00 Nov 14, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23945.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
35

cusses how it will evaluate the 2010 census, it says it will be evaluated based on net error. And as you know, net error allows people

of substantial means who are counted twice—because of the reasons cited earlier, living in two places—to substitute for the poor

and disenfranchised who are missed in the census. And why are

you willing to count those errors but not be evaluated on the basis

of your ability to avoid them? In other words, I think you should

let us see the information on double counts and omissions so that

we can evaluate better and maybe come up with better solutions

on how to get better counts as opposed to a net count.

Mr. KINCANNON. I believe that we have committed a good effort

to measure gross errors as well as net errors in 2010. In 2000, the

survey, the program, both of sampling and modeling, was designed

to measure net error. That is what we had always focused on.

There was a view that there had probably been duplicates in the

past, but we did not have a measure of the degree of duplication

as robust as we had in 2000. And so we see that the efforts, the

well intentioned certainly, efforts to improve the coverage of the

census may have resulted in duplications. It is also a product of different living patterns and that sort of thing.

But our commitment is that we intend to have an evaluation

process that focuses on both net and gross error.

Mrs. MALONEY. Good. And that will be made available to the

committee to process?

Mr. KINCANNON. Yes, when we have that, yes.

Mrs. MALONEY. That’s great. And what will be done in the 2006

census test to determine the errors of omission and duplication,

and how will those errors be reported to the public? Will you just

issue a report to Congress? Are you going to issue a public report?

How are you going to report this?

Mr. KINCANNON. It will be a part of our evaluation program. It

would not be necessarily the model that we would follow in 2010

because we would not have the benefit of the academy’s report and

our own final decisions on that, but there will be evaluations of aspect of coverage, and those will be reported publicly.

Mrs. MALONEY. Well, my time is up, and I thank the chairman.

Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Dent, any further questions?

Mr. DENT. Just one last question.

Mr. Kincannon, what is the status of the plans to use handheld

computers to conduct your field surveys for field interviewing work

in the 2010 census?

Mr. KINCANNON. Mr. Dent, we tested this in the test censuses in

Queens and southwest Georgia in 2004. This was the model that

was used, it would not be the model that’s used ultimately. But we

did learn that we could hire and train enumerators to use this device in finding their assignments, in taking down answers and in

relaying those electronically for data processing. So that was a very

important step forward, and we want to make sure of the degree

to which we can automate functions. Even automating only those

functions would be an improvement in efficiency, cost savings and,

in every way, a step forward. And to the extent we can carry it forward to other processes, we want to do that as well. We will test

36

that again in 2006, and then we will settle on what we are going

to do and rehearse that in 2008.

Mr. DENT. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. I want to thank both of you for your testimony and

your comments today and would ask if there is anything else that

you would like to add to your comments or in response to your comments today?

Ms. COOPER. No, thank you.

Mr. KINCANNON. No, thank you.

Mr. TURNER. In that case, we will thank you both.

And we will turn to our second panel, which will include Ms.

Joan Naymark, director of research and planning, Target Corp.,

testifying on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Dr. Andrew

Reamer, deputy director, urban markets initiative, Brookings Institution; Ms. Jacqueline Byers, director of research, National Association of Counties.

As you are taking your seats, I will acknowledge that, as with

our first panel, that you each have provided written testimony that

will be included in the record of this hearing. Witnesses will notice

that there are lights on the table that are timers. The green light

indicates that you should begin your prepared remarks, and the

red light indicates that your time has expired. It is the policy of

this committee, as I stated previously, for our witnesses to be

sworn in before they testify. And if you are all situated, if you

would please rise and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TURNER. Please let the record show that all witnesses have

responded in the affirmative.

And we will begin with Ms. Naymark.

STATEMENTS OF JOAN NAYMARK, DIRECTOR, RESEARCH AND

PLANNING, TARGET CORP., TESTIFYING ON BEHALF OF THE

U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE; ANDREW REAMER, DEPUTY

DIRECTOR, URBAN MARKETS INITIATIVE, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION; AND JACQUELINE BYERS, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COUNTIES

STATEMENT OF JOAN NAYMARK

Ms. NAYMARK. Chairman Turner, Mrs. Maloney, Mr. Dent, I am

happy to be here today. I am Joan Gentili Naymark, director of research and planning for Target Corp., the Nation’s second largest

general merchandise retailer.

On behalf of Target, I represent the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,

the world’s largest business federation. I represent the Chamber on

the Decennial Census Advisory Committee to the Secretary of Commerce. I am motivated by a desire to support the most accurate

census ever in 2010. I believe that partnerships with the business

community will help support that goal.

I will address three points: first, why business cares; second, to

reiterate our continued support; and, third, to stress that an accurate master address list is critical for the 2010 short-form-only census, as are strong partnerships and the American Community Survey.

37

First, why does business care? The business community and all

other data users across the Nation need an accurate 2010 census,

an annual American Community Survey [ACS], long-form data for

planning, operational, and financial purposes that together

strengthen the American economy and benefit the Nation as a

whole. Data users need high-quality data comparable over time for

small areas below the county and city level.

Let me share some examples from my company.

Target Corp. uses census data to determine capital spending on

new stores and remodeling, make decisions about merchandise,

marketing, and advertising, plan our work force, and support our

community giving program. Our new store-site decisions are made

for over 20 years. Each store costs nearly 20 million to construct,

and sometimes much more than that, and creates 200 to 500 jobs.

A wrong decision is not easily corrected. Building in the right location brings jobs, goods and services, and economic stability to local

communities. Smaller stores, restaurants, and services follow us

and depend on our research to be right.

Business must understand local communities. In Queens and

urban Chicago, data on housing stock and living patterns inform

our store-planning decisions such as the size and number of fitting

rooms and parking spaces and the demand for megapacks of paper

towels, bicycles, or patio furniture. Accurate race and ethnicity

data identify opportunities for multicultural and bilingual signing.

These decisions affect not only our bottom line, but are the economic anchor of most communities. Wrong decisions based on

faulty data could lead to bad financial decisions or perceived lack

of respect for the local area. Business failures hurt entire communities.

Socioeconomic data previously collected on the census long form

now depend on the ACS. These data are critical to estimate market

potential and consumer demand. We have high expectations for

greater insight and efficiency from ACS data, but without an accurate decennial foundation, the benchmarks, estimates and data

quality are at risk.

Second, I want to assure you that the business community will

continue to support enumeration activities. Target ran a census notice in our weekly newspaper circular, which you can take a look

at after the hearing. We provided assistance, guides, and language

in hard-to-enumerate areas. We set up kiosks in all of our stores

across the country. And we printed census bags promoting the census message. We also provided information to our thousands of employees and nearly 100,000 school partners.

Such partnerships were key success factors for the 2000 census,

helping achieve high mailback response rates, and breaking down

barriers with the difficult-to-enumerate populations.

I urge your enthusiastic support of a 2010 partnership program

that equals or exceeds the scope of the 2000 program. It must be

broad-based, with meaningful two-way communication, and start

early to be effective, especially with growing privacy concerns of

Americans.

Last, the master address file is among the most important requirement for an accurate census because the enumeration is based

on a housing unit model identifying where people live and then

38

counting who lives there. Housing duplicates and inaccurate digit

maps appear to be problematic in 2000. And failure to accurately

include multiple housing units, especially in cities, contributes to

the undercount.

Economic and demographic trends and high housing transportation costs are leaning to interesting applications of housing; higher-density units are occurring at the edges and in urban areas; demographic surges are occurring with the baby boom and echo boom

and new immigrants, and these will pose large issues for the 2010

count.

In closing, we urge Congress to support a successful 2010 census

by committing the necessary support and funding for a comprehensive address file. Strong partnerships and a long-term commitment

to the ACS will benefit our economic infrastructure and support efforts in both the public and private sectors to improve the quality

of life for all Americans. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Naymark follows:]

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

Mr. TURNER. Dr. Reamer.

STATEMENT OF ANDREW REAMER

Mr. REAMER. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Dent, Mrs.

Maloney. I’m Andrew Reamer, deputy director of the urban markets initiative of the Brookings Institution, and I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you on the components of a successful

decennial census, and will focus my remarks on the role of the

American Community Survey.

By way of background, UMI’s mission is to stimulate greater

public and private investment in urban communities through improving the availability, the accessibility, and the accuracy of data

on these communities. Better data will lead to better understanding of investment opportunities and more effective investment decisions.

From UMI’s perspective, we believe that the ACS is a highly essential and necessary data set. More than any other data set collected by the Federal Government, the ACS will enable investors

to obtain a complete current understanding of detailed demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the Nation’s metropolitan areas, central cities, and, as of 2010, its neighborhoods.

With the availability of the ACS, we expect to see businesses and

entrepreneurs use data to identify untapped market opportunities

and better understand the size and the nature of the labor force

available to staff those new and expanded businesses. We expect to

see local governments, metropolitan planning councils, and community organizations use ACS data to determine the need for and impacts of programs in transportation, health, education, work force

development, community, and economic development, and in many

other realms. We expect to see a multitude of Federal agencies use

the ACS to determine the geographic allocation of billions of dollars’ of Federal programs and services in similar realms.

Historically, public and private investors in urban areas have relied on detailed data derived from the decennial long form. For instance, as an economic development consultant in 1993, I used

long-form data to identify the need for a Hispanic supermarket in

a commercial district in Boston. My client and the city of Boston

read the feasibility study, rounded up partners and capital, quit his

job, and started a highly successful new venture. Two months ago,

America’s Food Basket opened up its third store, a 21,000 square

foot facility, and is planning a fourth. Such is the long-term impact

of good data.

However, I picked a good year to do the feasibility study, just a

few months after the census data were released. In most years, the

available long-form data are out of date. In fact, the once-a-decade

release of long-form data has meant the Nation’s investors almost

always suffer from a lack of reliable detailed neighborhood data on

which to base decisions and measure results. Consequently, hundreds of billions of dollars of public and private investment decisions are made in a state of statistical uncertainty.

The ACS addresses these concerns head on. By being collected

continuously and published annually and quickly, the ACS will provide urban investors with far more current data on which to base

decisions. For regional analysts, the preliminary version of the ACS

52

has well proved its worth. In the last 4 years I have created a set

of annual indicators on the characteristics of working poor families

by State, and this would not have been possible without the ACS.

So, in summary, UMI believes a full-scale implementation of the

ACS will provide economic benefits to the Nation many times the

cost to the Federal Government. At the same time, we recognize

that there are a number of challenges that need to be addressed.

I lay out these challenges in my written testimony, and I will summarize them in the form of three recommendations.

The first, echoing Mrs. Maloney, is that the ACS budget program

must be allocated budgets that are stable and sufficient from year

to year.

The second recommendation is that the Census Bureau should

manage an ongoing rigorous effort to evaluate the reliability of the

ACS and implement methodological changes as necessary. I want

to particularly emphasize a look at the reliability of the intercensal

population counts on which the numbers and the ACS rely. Those

are the control figures that the ACS uses.

The third recommendation is that the Census Bureau build a

strong and ongoing partnership with States and local governments

in three dimensions. The first is, as others have said, updating the

master address file not just once a decade but, ideally, on an ongoing basis. The second dimension would be encouraging working

with States and local governments, as census did in 2000, to promote public participation in the ACS. And the third is to provide

guidance to State and local analysts regarding effective uses of the

ACS. The ACL will be coming out in forms that are a little unfamiliar to people who have used long-form data, and so the census

guidance on this will be helpful to analysts in State and local government, as well as in the private sector.

On behalf of UMI and the Brookings Institution, I want to thank

you for the opportunity to provide observations on the value and

the challenges facing the ACS, and I am pleased to answer any

questions you might have.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Reamer follows:]

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

Mr. TURNER. Ms. Byers.

STATEMENT OF JACQUELINE BYERS

Ms. BYERS. Chairman Turner, Mrs. Maloney, and Mr. Dent, my

name is Jacqueline Byers, and I am the director of research at the

National Association of Counties. Thank you for the invitation to

testify on the importance of the census to county governments.

As old line Census Bureau folks say, the 2010 census will be my

fourth census, and I am pleased to share with you what I have

learned about its use by county officials throughout the Nation.

Every county in the country uses census data every day. It is the

only controlled and reliable population baseline and demographic

data available on a national basis. This data is used to plan classrooms, curriculum, and the number of teachers. It is used to attract

businesses and economic development, to determine how long it

takes for residents to get to their jobs, where they are going to

work, and how much money they make. All of this information is

necessary for a county to plan effectively for the future.

In addition, census data is used to allocate the Federal funds

that most local governments receive. Since county governments are

the level of government closest to the people and are charged with

direct-service delivery in many areas, it is vitally important that

the data used to allocate Federal funds that help fund this service

delivery system is current and correct.

There are three points I would like to make today. The first is

NACo’s continuing support of the American Community Survey.

We would like to express our thanks to Congress for seeing that

this vital program was properly funded in the current budget. The

American Community Survey will provide the most current demographic data possible to all counties. The biggest task involved in

the complete implementation of ACS is education and outreach.

This means educating the public so that they will respond to this

new kind of survey and educating local officials so that they know

of its availability and value.

The second point is the importance of the master address file and

TIGER programs. Capturing the new address and map information

is a continuous process, not one that can be completed in the 18

months prior to census day. With the expansion of the ACS, the

continuing update and resulting improved accuracy is more important than ever.

The third point I would like to speak to is the 2010 short-form

census. NACo has supported the ACS because it provides much

more current demographic data about counties throughout the decade, and because it created the possibility of an all short-form census. However, it is important to realize that outreach and education about why you should respond to the census is still just as

vital as it was for the 2000 census when historic outreach efforts

were conducted. The partnership activities and the mobilization of

stakeholder organizations that was accomplished for 2000 need to

be replicated for 2010, because the very people who are often

missed in the census are the most likely to require additional governmental services. Funding and support for the partnership activities including involvement of stakeholder groups, schools, local,

60

State, and national level organizations, continue to be a necessary

part of preparing for the 2010 census.

We strongly urge that the Census Bureau receives the appropriate allocations so they can do what they do best.

This concludes my testimony. I look forward to any questions

that you may have.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Byers follows:]

61

62

63

64

65

66

Mr. TURNER. I thank each of you for participating today and for

the information that you bring to us on the important work of the

census.

I have a two-part question for you that I am going to direct to

Ms. Byers and Ms. Naymark. And then, Dr. Reamer, I would like

your comments when they are finished.

The two parts of the questions are, if you could talk about information from the ACS that you see that is most helpful from your

perspectives, both business and then government, and if you have

thoughts of what we are missing? What would be helpful that we

are not currently addressing in information that we are looking toward?

And then, Dr. Reamer, I would appreciate your thoughts globally

on the matter.

Ms. Naymark.

Ms. NAYMARK. What information is the most important, and

what are we missing on the American Communities Survey?

Mr. TURNER. Yes, please.

Ms. NAYMARK. The private sector makes extensive use of the demographic and economic data that’s available for planning purposes. We do that along with all the public and nonprofit sectors

as well.

The most important information from the American Communities Survey is not necessarily a particular item or any item that’s

missing, but at the geographic level at which it’s available. We are

still in that data void until 2010 when we will be able to get the

census track level information. And we are very eagerly looking forward to the point after 2010 when we will start to receive the information on an annual basis. Population estimates, short-form characteristics, age, sex, race, relationship to household head, housing

stock are critically important for us. Long-form data items are critically important for us, but I would say that they rank third in priority to the annual estimates of population and short-form information. The market information on income, education, transportation,

length of residence are taken in combination in a wholistic approach, depending on the application that we are interested in, but

it’s the getting of the information at a small level that we can aggregate to trade areas or tracks, market areas that are critically

important for us. And we are grateful to have all of the information

that is available in there.

I would not suggest to add anything at this point. I am just delighted that it is all on there and will be available annually. Thank

you.

Mr. TURNER. Ms. Byers.

Ms. BYERS. I think the information that the counties receive

about who we are and what we are becoming—and that is our basic

demographic information about age, race, education, economics—is

very helpful, because we have seen a huge influx of immigrants.

We have seen a lot of in-migration and out-migration of people

from various communities for various reasons, some for lack of economic development, some pursuing economic development and an

opportunity for employment.

If there’s anything that we would ask for, it would be additional

information about housing. There is quite a bit of information

67

about housing, but housing is starting to become a very big issue,

especially affordable housing, for counties across the Nation. So

anything that could help us with that and help us fulfill our roles

in providing housing for our residents would be very helpful to us.

Mr. TURNER. Dr. Reamer.

Mr. REAMER. I think the most important figure is actually the

total number of people. And beyond that, the combination of demographic characteristics of age, sex, race, with socioeconomic characteristics, income, educational attainment, I think, are the most

used, certainly in investment decisions. Planners use the data

about how people get to work, which is very important as well. And

in terms of data that might be additionally useful, one source

would be the ACS, which is now going to be carried out in parallel

with the current population survey, which is the survey that the

Bureau of Labor Statistics uses to measure unemployment every

month. So I would be interested in knowing more about how the

two surveys will be run in parallel and could support each other.

I don’t know much about that, so I am just posing that as information I would like to know about. And that might involve some adjustment in the ACS questionnaire. I don’t know.

Mr. TURNER. When the first panel spoke of the partnership program for 2010—and you all have suggested that the partnership

program was a key success factor in the 2000 census—in your opinion, how is the partnership program for 2010 developing, and how

might each of your organizations participate or assist in that process?

Ms. Naymark.

Ms. NAYMARK. The partnership program in 2000 was a key success factor. I joined the Decennial Advisory Committee in the midnineties, and it was just getting kicked off, along with the other

components of the 2000 plan. Its goals were clearly stated and differentiated from the other parts of the programs, such as paid advertising, and yet they all came together to support the core message. It was broad-based and inclusive. It reached out and welcomed all levels of government, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. I think those were all key components of its success.

It’s 2005, and the ACS is just underway, and we are delighted

about that. But I think adding the ACS will add another level of

complexity to the partnership program. It is a little bit early to

start making actual plans. I am not aware at this point of what the

partnership program will look like in my role on the advisory committee, in the old advisory committee. I am hoping to rejoin that

committee. But I think that it will become a high priority over the

next couple of years to develop that plan, the integration, with outreach to the local level for American Community Survey once the

program is in that particular community, and I think partnerships

will play an even more critical role to break down the barriers,

bring out the count, and have local communities embrace what’s

happening.

In the context of working with the Bureau, I am wondering if the

current restructuring of the Decennial Advisory Committee that’s

currently underway may alter some of the longstanding relationships with stakeholders. I will be interested to see how the outreach and continuity program with those prior members will conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:00 Nov 14, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00071 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23945.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
68

tinue. I think they were important stakeholders sitting at the

table, understanding what was happening with the Bureau’s plans,

and it will be important to continue to have them be members for

partners in 2010 as well.

Mr. REAMER. Brookings as an institution, and myself personally,

were not involved in the Census 2000 Partnership Program, and

we are not a membership organization, so we wouldn’t be involved

in the partnership program for the ACS in 2010. So I really can’t

comment.

Mr. TURNER. Ms. Byers.

Ms. BYERS. I think one of the biggest things that contributed to

the success of the 2000 census was the outreach and the partnership program that was conducted. One of the things that we recognize—and I think many other people in this room recognize—that

many of our newer residents in this country find it completely foreign to take a piece of paper and fill it out with a lot of information

about themselves and then turn it in to the government. That is

not the reality that they lived in in their former countries. So to

be able to penetrate into these communities and get the gatekeepers to these communities, you have to involve the stakeholder

groups, you have to involve the community-based organizations,

you have to involve maybe the priest that is speaking in the church

or the school teachers that are teaching in the schools. All of that

partnership and outreach was done and achieved very successful

results in 2000.

I have, as Ms. Naymark said, not heard anything at all about the

partnership activities that are going to be conducted in 2010. I had

the privilege of being invited to do a keynote speech at several

kickoffs for big local government activities that were done in connection with the census prior to the 2000 census. And I was very

pleased to see the mobilization, the local contribution of funds, the

local efforts that were going on. All of this was led by activities

that were initiated by the Census Bureau and their partnership coordinators, and I would think that kind of effort would necessarily

have to be replicated for 2010.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I really want to thank all of you for your testimony and for your

support for a successful census. But I would like to start with a

question that I would like each of you to answer. As you know, the

cost of the 2010 census is extremely high; $72 per household compared to $13 per household in 1970. And those are in real dollars.

So I would like each of you to tell me how important each of the

following measures are in evaluating the census. And I would like

to start probably with Mrs. Naymark, since she started first, and

just go down the line.

The first is the small area accuracy. How important do you see

that as measuring and evaluating the census, the small area accuracy?

Ms. NAYMARK. I think small area accuracy is critically important.

All of the larger numbers buildup from the smaller numbers. It

must be consistent, unbiased information that can be trusted; can’t

have overestimates in some geographies and underestimates in anVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:00 Nov 14, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00072 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23945.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
69

other. And I think to not provide adequate funding or support for

accuracy at a small level would just create higher costs later on.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you.

Mr. Reamer. Dr. Reamer.

Mr. REAMER. Highly important, because most retail and service

businesses, their market areas are quite small. So to analyze the

investment opportunities for those businesses, you need a high

level of accuracy.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you.

Ms. Byers.

Ms. BYERS. Well, housing patterns are the things that are captured most correctly at the small-area level. And in order for counties to plan accurately and to capture all of the nuances of the

changing population, it is absolutely important that the accuracy is

maintained at the small area.

Mrs. MALONEY. Would each of you comment on the number of

omissions and duplications for both population counts and for housing units? How important are they as measuring for evaluation and

the census omissions and duplications for population counts and

housing units?

Ms. NAYMARK. I am glad you are not asking me to choose between A or B, because these are critically important as well. If the

housing units are not correctly counted, there are lots of new density and zoning changes to accommodate work force housing and

gated communities; there are lots of different things happening in

the American housing structure. You need to have that in order to

achieve the accuracy level. I do think there tends to be a bias toward undercount in the urban areas where you may miss housing

units and the people living within the areas. That leads to underinvestment, lots of issues. Overcounting in the fringe suburbs may

lead to overinvestments and market saturation, which doesn’t help

anyone. There’s lots of practical implications. So all of these are

critical.

Mrs. MALONEY. Dr. Reamer.

Mr. REAMER. I will echo those remarks and expand on them a

bit by saying that, in urban areas, the undercount often happens

around multiunit buildings where there is a miscount. And then in

suburban areas and fast-growing areas, it is just difficult to keep

up with the count. And so it is very important to keep evaluating

the accuracy of these things and finding ways to lower the level of

inaccuracy.

Mrs. MALONEY. Ms. Byers.

Ms. BYERS. The missing of or the omission of housing units is absolutely devastating to county governments. We find that it creates

the biggest problem because the houses that are notoriously missed

have high-density population, with many children. And as we are

trying to staff schools, prepare classrooms, and hire teachers, you

hear the horror stories of brand-new school buildings opening up

with portables in the back yard already. That’s the reality of missing kids. And largely this exists because of missing housing units.

And that omission is glaring for counties.

Duplication is on the other end of the schematic. Generally, the

duplication occurs in the wealthier areas, because everybody is

very conscientious about reporting, and the husband and the wife

70

are both responding, and that sort of skews our data notoriously

because it could raise our per-capita income and give a false reality

about what the economic situation is in our communities.

Mrs. MALONEY. Ms. Naymark, could you comment on the net

error at the national level? How important is that, the net error at

the national level, in evaluating the census?

Ms. NAYMARK. In business, you need to measure and audit your

results. You need to understand in order to make the application.

I think at the national level we need to know the overcount, the

undercount. I think it’s just critically important in order to have

confidence in the data below the national level.

Mrs. MALONEY. Dr. Reamer.

Mr. REAMER. Yes. It’s a measure of the confidence we all can

have in the census, I think. So it’s important to track that and to

try to rectify it if it’s too high.

Mrs. MALONEY. Ms. Byers.

Ms. BYERS. They have said it all.

Mrs. MALONEY. I have several others, but my time is up. So I can

continue later.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Dent.

Mr. DENT. No questions.

Mr. TURNER. Mrs. Maloney, if you would like to continue.

Mrs. MALONEY. OK. The national mailback rush rate, how important is that to the Chamber of Commerce?

Ms. NAYMARK. Again, I think it’s one of those measurements of

the implementation, the components of the census that require additional help; the higher and earlier the response rate, the less

costly it will be. Partnerships would be an important member. Paid

advertising, I think, was extremely successful last time in getting

early back response rates.

Mrs. MALONEY. Dr. Reamer.

Mr. REAMER. I agree.

Mrs. MALONEY. Ms. Byers.

Ms. BYERS. I had the opportunity to write a column for our county newspaper during the mail-back response period last year, and

referred many of our counties to a Web site that was being maintained by census. And I actually challenged our counties to check

that Web site frequently to find out how other counties were doing

in their mailback response, trying to set up some contests between

our counties to encourage it. It is absolutely important. And I was

very proud to see some of our counties actually responding to that

challenge.

But to put it bluntly, it’s absolutely the most important thing to

get an awareness of the census is to have a good mailback response

rate.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much. I would love to see your

article.

Ms. Naymark, how important to business is the Black/non-Black

undercount differential as measured by demographic analysis? Is

that an important evaluating tool in the census?

Ms. NAYMARK. The differential undercount at the Black level?

Extremely important. We missed opportunities after the 1990 census because of the differential undercount and then greater

undercount in urban areas. We came back and evaluated after the

71

2000 county and realized there was more there than we thought.

And we had to do a careful analysis between the two censuses to

see if there had been growth between, or if it was simply an adjustment of a count.

Target is very active in our urban corridors, and we need to have

good information. The differential undercount leads us to make inaccurate decisions about merchandising and content and distance,

etc. It needs to be corrected.

Mrs. MALONEY. Dr. Reamer.

Mr. REAMER. Again, for urban investment decisions, it is very

important.

Mrs. MALONEY. Ms. Byers.

Ms. BYERS. Well, for governmental service delivery, it’s vitally

important. I remember Maynard Jackson, when he was mayor of

Atlanta, arguing that the undercount showed—hit him disproportionately. He knew he had about 39,000 more people, because he

was feeding them, clothing them, and housing them every day. So

it is very important, especially in our urbanized counties.

Mrs. MALONEY. You have a lot of experience from having been

through four censuses. It’s incredible.

And my final one that I would like the panel to evaluate for accuracy and evaluating the census is the use of new technology for

nonresponse followup. How important was that, or is that, do you

think?

Ms. NAYMARK. I don’t have technical expertise. I am excited by

the use of technology and innovation. I am delighted at what I see

the Bureau doing. I think it would be important. I am a paper person. I get nervous about not having a record to go back and followup and check on. But I’m sure that there must be electronic ways

of verifying the electronic records as well. I am just pleased with

what I see them doing.

Mrs. MALONEY. Dr. Reamer.

Mr. REAMER. Anything that will raise the productivity and lower

the cost of the census I think is valuable, and it’s exciting to see

the experiments of new technology.

Mrs. MALONEY. Ms. Byers.

Ms. BYERS. I had the opportunity to travel with the nonresponse

enumerator in southeast Washington and do some housing. And it

was amazing to watch this woman—who I would imagine had

about a high school education—be able to work very effectively on

this computer. And she was showing me exactly how to do things.

She was very proud of it, and she would go into the places and sit

down and pull it out and say, OK, we’ve got to put your information into the computer. So it worked very effectively for her. And

it also, I think, maintained the level of accuracy that, if there was

a paper copy, it might not have been there if she had been able to

introduce more subjectivity into the situation.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much.

Ms. Naymark, I was thrilled with your presentation of all of the

things that Target was doing to draw attention to the 2010 census.

And this display of corporate, I would call citizenship or partnership, is something that this committee and Congress should be paying attention to. And what do you believe the Census Bureau

should be doing in the 2010 census in order to get more corporaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:00 Nov 14, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00075 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23945.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
72

tions and independent businesses and so forth to be active in the

2010 census as Target was so active in 2000? You did a fantastic

job, and I’m glad you brought all of the examples. But how can we

get more businesses involved? How did Target get involved? How

did it happen, and how can we make more people come in and help

us with it?

Ms. NAYMARK. Thank you for your commendation. We are very

proud at Target of being involved in our communities. We have

been for decades. We give $2 million a week back to our communities. So supporting such an important civic activity as the decennial census was really a no-brainer for us. As with most things,

personal involvement, my interest from my demography background was what drew me in. But I think my greatest surprise for

the 2000 census was how extensive business support was and had

been for prior censuses.

I think the Bureau understands how to reach out to business. I

think working through business organizations, using what they did

before, and certainly through government contacts with businesses

were effective, will continue to be effective. Leverage the existing

businesses.

I was surprised that I wasn’t asked to do a little bit more outreach to business communities, but I also was surprised to see that

they had a very strong program set up for specifically outreach to

business. It wasn’t necessarily coordinated. I don’t know if that was

really a good use of Census Bureau funds for the 2000 census. It

clearly worked. We did our own thing. 7-Eleven did their own

thing. Wal-Mart did their own thing. Businesses around the country all pitched in; they understood the importance of this. I don’t

know if it needs to be fixed. I think anything that can get business

involved would be important.

Mrs. MALONEY. Did the Chamber of Commerce play a coordinating role in getting business involved?

Ms. NAYMARK. I worked with the Chamber, and I believe that

they worked within their network across the country as well. But

I primarily worked on behalf of Target at this point in time.

Mrs. MALONEY. My time is up, but I do have some more questions for another round.

Mr. TURNER. One of the things that I think is important for us

to know is, are we on track for the 2010 census? We have talked

about how the census works, the information that it provides, opportunities for ensuring that the count is correct. But I would like

to ask each of you your opinion as to whether or not you think

we’re on track for the 2010 census—if you see any warning signs

or anything currently that we need to be concerned with as to

whether or not we will be successful.

Ms. Naymark.

Ms. NAYMARK. As I said a little earlier, I am delighted that the

American Community Survey is out in the field. I think that needed to be addressed and concluded before many parts of the 2010

census could begin planning. And now I think we are officially at

the point where we know what the short-form census will look like,

we know what needs to be done.

There is a lot of good information and innovation from past discoveries; the reconstituted Decennial Advisory Committee will be

73

ready to be in working groups and understand what the plan will

be to react from the user and stakeholder community. And I believe

that we are on track.

I don’t have specific knowledge; I can’t say to you exactly what

the plans are at this point, other than what the framework of what

we heard this morning from the director. I don’t have any reason

for concern, but I do think it’s time to pick up the pace and particularly understand how to integrate the American Community Survey data with the outreach and partnership program, with the data

program, the accuracy, the estimates, etc.

Mr. TURNER. Dr. Reamer.

Mr. REAMER. At Brookings, our focus has been on the American

Community Survey. And we are very pleased to see that’s been

fully implemented, went into full implementation as of January.

We were disappointed to see that Congress wasn’t able to allocate

funds to do the full ACS and left out money for group quarters. So

we are hopeful that—we would see the ACS as being fully on track

if money were allocated, the full amount, in the next fiscal year.

We would like to see also some improvements made on the

intercensal population counts because we think that will lead to a

more accurate ACS. And, as mentioned earlier, I think a continuous update of the master address file would also be helpful as well.

As I said, our focus has been on the ACS, so I’m not familiar with

the details of the other components of the 2010 census so I can’t

comment on that.

Ms. BYERS. I think the biggest step in the right direction is to

all short-form census for 2010, and I think that was the absolute

correct move. ACS outreach and partnership efforts I think are absolutely important, and the continuous update of the master address file. That’s one of our biggest challenges at county levels because of the continual growth and development. And we see it right

here. Just in the last week we have seen the top 10 fastest-growing

counties in this country released. And in order to keep abreast of

that and try to capture that information, it has to be done in a continuous basis. It can’t be done in the last 18 months prior to the

mailout of the census.

Mr. TURNER. I would like Dr. Reamer’s and Ms. Byers’s thoughts

on the issue of how the census data is used. We are making a huge

national investment in this data base and in the information. Ms.

Naymark spoke as to how businesses use it in making decisions for

their investment. On the State and local level, my sense is that we

can do a better job in utilizing this information for investment of

public dollars, and our committee is going to look at that issue and

hold hearings in the future as to what the census data tells us, how

it can be utilized in decisionmaking.

What do we need to do to do a better job of educating people on

the State and local level and decisionmaking processes, and how

this data can be used so we can make certain that our public dollar

investments are wisely spent? Ms. Byers.

Ms. BYERS. Well, I think the very quick answer to that is that

there is somebody in every county government and every city government in the country who recognizes the value of the census data

already. I think what you are talking about is a broader outreach

to our elected officials and other people who are not aware of it.

74

Census data is absolutely important to every decision that’s

made at the local government. No place else in the world can local

governments get the kind of data on a uniformed basis across counties, across cities, that the Census Bureau provides.

I think it is the biggest thing that we can do, and the step has

already been made because there is an outstanding publication on

the census Web site right now, the State and local handbook that

refers them to ACS. Now, I stumbled on it on the Web site. I think

promoting that information and getting it in the hands of all of our

local officials so that they can educate themselves about the absolute value is important. Our planners know; our community and

economic development directors know; our human resources people

know. These folks already know the value of census because they

use that data every single day. By I agree with you, it needs to be

in outreach to the elected officials.

Mr. REAMER. I had a jarring experience this weekend. I bumped

into a colleague who just stepped down from heading a planning

department for a medium-sized city. And I hadn’t really talked to

him since I had been at Brookings. And he said, what are you

doing? And I explained. And he said, you know, the issue with the

census data is it only comes out once every 10 years. And I’m

going, ‘‘Well, have you heard of the American Community Survey?’’

And here is the head of a planning department who had not, and

I was shocked.

But that speaks to the notion that there is still a need to reach

even the upper-level planners. I think the lower-level ones do

know. And to then start setting up processes by which those officials and their elected leaders are basing decisions and basing annual assessments of local conditions on these new data.

And as I said in my testimony also, these data will be different

than what were previously released. We are going to see 5-year

rolling averages for neighborhoods. In past years in the long form

you got a point estimate for a neighborhood, for this is the education level, this is the income level, and so forth. The way the ACS

works is you don’t get enough households in a census track until

you do this for 5 years.

So teaching planners how to use 5-year rolling averages, teaching

planners how to look at there is another innovation here of the

Census Bureau is going to be providing confidence intervals. They

are saying these are estimates, and people in the past have taken

the number and taken that as the gospel truth. So the Bureau is

coming out with there is a 90 percent chance that the actual number will be between this upper and lower bound.

And so planners need to learn how to work with this notion of

a confidence interval. This is new stuff for a lot of people, and so

I think that the Bureau can provide assistance that I think is needed.

Mr. TURNER. Concluding questions for Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you.

Dr. Reamer, would you explain to the committee why the accuracy of the intercensal estimates is important for the quality of the

American Community Survey?

Mr. REAMER. My understanding is the American Community

Survey is sent out to a sample, and in the basis of that you get

75

a sense of a distribution of certain characteristics within a population; what percent of people have a high school degree, what percent of people earn above a certain level, and so forth. And you get

percentages. But to translate those percentages into estimates regarding numbers, you need a total population count so you can say,

you know, there are 1,000 people here, you know, 30 percent have

a high school degree; that means 300 have a high school degree.

So the numbers are important that way. They are the controls by

which the ACS figures are weighted.

Mrs. MALONEY. And, Dr. Reamer, today we have talked quite a

bit about the census master address file. And can you explain to

the committee why an accurate master address file is so important?

Mr. REAMER. Well, for two reasons. One is that the master address file is the universe of households in the country. So it’s the

file from which the ACS sample is drawn. And the census 2000

forms go out to all those addresses. So the accuracy of the master

address file dictates the validity of the sample and the comprehensiveness of the 2010 census. Also, the master address file, if it were

updated on a regular basis, would inform, improve, the intercensal

population estimates.

Mrs. MALONEY. So updating is very important.

Mr. REAMER. Yes.

Mrs. MALONEY. And, Dr. Reamer, there are a number of commercial firms that sell data similar to that produced by the census.

Claritas is one of those companies that I’m aware of. And can you

explain how these companies use census data and how their products differ? Are you familiar with that at all?

Mr. REAMER. A bit. Not as much as some others. But basically

Claritas, you mentioned, has built a whole business around taking

long-form data and doing what the ACS is doing now, filling in

each year with estimates based on other data sources. And so in

many, many businesses and governments use Claritas data to do

analysis because they are adding value to the traditional census

data. So there is a big business around that.

I assume that they will take an added value to the ACS as well.

Mrs. MALONEY. And, Ms. Byers, what role did NACo play in

helping communities participate in the 2000 LUCA program? And

has your organization been contacted by the Census Bureau to help

prepare for the 2010 LUCA program?

Ms. BYERS. Well, NACo played a very positive and, we hope,

large role in preparation for the LUCA updates in 2000. We wrote

several columns. We worked closely with our State associations to

educate individuals, and we worked with the regional offices

around the country to help pull together governmental groups. And

we supported strongly the creation of local census groups in cities,

counties, and regions to work on this together.

We also asked and were able to review any of the correspondence

that was going out from the Census Bureau so that we could eliminate a little of the gobbledygook to make it a little bit more intelligible to our local officials. So that was what we did do.

So far, we have not been approached. NACo has had a seat on

the Decennial Census Advisory Committee since its creation. We

anticipate that if we are invited to participate in the newly conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:00 Nov 14, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00079 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23945.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
76

structed advisory committee, that we will be asked again to help

them with this process.

Mrs. MALONEY. And, Ms. Naymark, why is the accuracy of smallerror data from the census or from the ACS so important to your

company, and, I would say, other companies? Why is it so important to you? You mentioned earlier it was important to you.

Ms. NAYMARK. I will tie it in to the question that you asked just

a moment ago about the outside data companies, Claritas and

other data vendors. The accuracy of their estimates is based on the

accuracy of the census itself. We often will be looking at subcounty

or small-city areas down to 5,000; census tracks smaller geographic

units. And we must understand the differences, the dividing lines,

when a neighborhood starts to transition, when you are moving

from an urban to—along the urban continuum to a fringe area, and

to be able to track and identify the turnover that’s occurring from

an older to a younger neighborhood.

Many new Americans are joining our outlying suburban areas.

There is lots of new patterns of migration streams, etc., that would

be extremely difficult to track.

Right now the data vendors take 2000 census information and

they build models and extrapolate and trend. But they will be the

first to tell you that by 2005, you know, it’s 5 years later. And so

the integration of the American Community Survey data for short

and long-form information will be absolutely critical, as they are

the primary delivery agent to the business community, these valueadded processors. They just make it easier to grab the information

and rearrange it in the ways that business needs it in a very

speedy fashion. So accuracy is key.

Mrs. MALONEY. And, Mr. Chairman, from the line of your questioning today, I am very, very pleased to hear that you are interested in my bill, but it’s a little late to pass this bill for the 2010

census. The Census Bureau has already taken off the table the possibility of correcting the errors in the census, and I believe this

puts a partisan stain on this census that cannot be removed. Even

the GAO has said that there was no basis for that decision.

And I would be happy to work with you to produce a bill that

has no partisan implications. And, again, I thank you for moving

forward with an oversight hearing this early. I think it’s important.

The census is important. Our panelists have pointed out how it’s

so important to the businesses and the governments and the people

of our country, and it’s important that we get it as accurate as possible. So I thank you.

And now we want to hear from Carolyn, if she has a complete

report. It’s great you were here, Carolyn.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mrs. Maloney, for recognizing my

daughter again.

I want to give you each an opportunity if you would like to put

anything else on the record in closing. Do you have any closing remarks for us today?

Ms. NAYMARK. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I

think it’s wonderful that there are a couple of hearings scheduled

on key components of the 2010 census. I am glad people are paying

attention. The stakeholder community is ready, eager, willing to

support an accurate program. And thank you very much.

77

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

I want to thank each of you for taking your time to share with

us the important issues of your work with respect to the census,

and those who spoke on panel I. I appreciate your willingness to

share your knowledge, experiences, and thoughts with us today.

And contrary to Mrs. Maloney’s comments, I think the record

today reflects that there is not any partisan aspect of what we reviewed today in the preparation of the 2010 census that will lessen

or have any impact upon our successes.

There is a lot involved in planning the 2010 census, and I am

pleased to see that the Bureau is making every effort to assure

that this decennial census is the most successful yet. I am encouraged by the implementation of the American Community Survey

and its promise to provide characteristic data with the short-form

census, and it will provide the best population enumeration.

Also, I am pleased to hear that the MAF/TIGER portion of the

decennial is ahead of schedule and will allow for a better layout of

this Nation for the purposes of mapping and data collection. However, we are not out of the woods yet. Clearly, obstacles remain.

But I am confident that by working together we can ensure that

the 2010 census is the best census ever.

Again, I want to express my thanks to our witnesses for their

time today. In the event that we may have additional questions

that we do not have time for today, the record will remain open for

2 weeks for submitted questions and answers. I want to thank you

all for attending. And this committee will continue its efforts in

looking at the census and the usefulness of it as a tool both for

State and local governments and for businesses and economic decisions.

Thank you so much. We will be adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:53 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay and additional

information submitted for the hearing record follow:]

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

Æ