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THE 2010 CENSUS: ENUMERATING PEOPLE LIVING

IN GROUP QUARTERS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFORMATION POLICY,

CENSUS, AND NATIONAL ARCHIVES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Serial No. 111–82

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

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

http://www.oversight.house.gov

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

PETER WELCH, Vermont

BILL FOSTER, Illinois

JACKIE SPEIER, California

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

JUDY CHU, California

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois

BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri

ANH ‘‘JOSEPH’’ CAO, Louisiana

RON STROMAN, Staff Director

MICHAEL MCCARTHY, Deputy Staff Director

CARLA HULTBERG, Chief Clerk

LARRY BRADY, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFORMATION POLICY, CENSUS, AND NATIONAL ARCHIVES

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri, Chairman

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

DIANE E. WATSON, California

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah

DARRYL PIGGEE, Staff Director

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C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on February 22, 2010 ....................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Groves, Robert, Director, U.S. Census Bureau; Robert Goldenkoff, Director, Strategic Issues, Government Accountability Office; Peter Wagner,

executive director, Prison Policy Initiative; and Thomas Ellett, associate vice president, student affairs, New York University ......................... 18

Ellett, Thomas ........................................................................................... 50

Goldenkoff, Robert ..................................................................................... 28

Groves, Robert ........................................................................................... 18

Wagner, Peter ............................................................................................ 44

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

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

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

Ellett, Thomas, associate vice president, student affairs, New York University, prepared statement of ..................................................................... 52

Goldenkoff, Robert, Director, Strategic Issues, Government Accountability

Office, prepared statement of ....................................................................... 30

Groves, Robert, Director, U.S. Census Bureau, prepared statement of ....... 21

Towns, Hon. Edolphus, a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 12

Wagner, Peter, executive director, Prison Policy Initiative, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 46

(1)

THE 2010 CENSUS: ENUMERATING PEOPLE

LIVING IN GROUP QUARTERS

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2010

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFORMATION POLICY, CENSUS, AND

NATIONAL ARCHIVES, COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, Brooklyn, NY.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., at Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, NY, Hon. Wm.

Lacy Clay (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Clay and Towns (ex officio).

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

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

William Jusino, professional staff members; and Shrita Sterlin,

deputy communications director.

Mr. CLAY. Good morning. The Information Policy, Census, and

National Archives Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government

Reform Committee will now come to order. Without objection the

Chair and the panel will have 5 minutes to make opening statements followed by opening statements by any other Members that

may arrive.

Let me begin by welcoming all of you to today’s oversight hearing

of ‘‘The 2010 Census: Enumerating People Living in Group Quarters.’’ I also want to say I am so pleased to be here as a guest of

Chairman Towns and to be in this stately room.

The purpose of today’s hearing is to examine efforts to enumerate

group quarter populations as the Census Bureau prepares for the

2010 census.

I want to thank Chairman Towns for his leadership of the Oversight Committee and his recognition of the importance of the 2010

census. I also want to thank him for bringing us here this morning.

I always enjoy coming to New York, and especially to Brooklyn. I

truly appreciate the hospitality afforded by you and your staff.

Mr. Chairman, as you know, Kings County is one of the hardest

counties hit in the United States, so it is important that we are

here today to discuss efforts to reduce the undercount in the 2010

census.

The Group Quarters population consist of all persons residing in

the United States who do not live in housing units such as singlefamily houses, apartments and mobile homes. Group quarters consist of nursing homes, military barracks, correctional facilities, juvenile institutions, migrant worker, dormitory, convents and group

homes. Group quarters populations are different from housing as a

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unit population in counting people in group quarters and is very

different from counting people in housing units. Today we will discuss the various sites of group quarters and the special places that

contain them.

In the last census universities and military bases and correctional institutions were the most sizable special places. Skilled

nursing facilities and assisted living facilities are other examples

of special places. The populations are expected to increase with

baby-boomers retiring in record numbers.

We want this hearing today to focus on the challenges that the

Bureau and the group quarters organizations are facing as we prepare for the 2010 census. We want to know what you think about

your plan and how effective you think they will be, and we want

your input about how we can improve this process both now and

in the next census. Additionally, we want you to reach out and network with the people at organizations that you come in contact

with here today to further increase the chance in the county of

counting as many people as possible.

It is our hope through our hearing today we will gain a better

understanding of the plans for enumerating people living in group

quarters during the 2010 census.

And now I yield to Chairman Towns.

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

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Mr. TOWNS. Thank you very much, Chairman Clay. First of all,

let me welcome you to Brooklyn. And you’re right, we had some

problems in the past in terms of making certain that we get an accurate count, but I also need to point out that was before we—let

me make that very clear.

The 2010 census is a top priority for the committee. It has been

following it very closely. With only 6 weeks to go until census day

on April 1st, we want to make sure that the Census Bureau and

our constituents are ready for it. A fair and accurate census is the

only way we have to ensure fairness, and we join in the recognition

of enforcement of Members of the House and distribution of vital

services and benefits to those who need it the most.

Chairman Clay, it is my hope that this hearing will provide an

opportunity for the members of this committee to hear about the

preparation the Census Bureau has made to make sure that we get

the most accurate and complete census count ever. Several challenges to a successful census, of course, remain, but it is not too

late for us to work together to address them.

Let me make it very clear, I am not interested in the blame

game, I’m interested in the correction game. We are concerned

today about the counting of people living in what we call group

home quarters. This includes people living in group situations such

as college, dormitories, nursing homes, military barracks, prisons,

juvenile institutions, migrant workers, convents and group homes.

The Census Bureau counts people according to where they reside

on census day April 1st, even if that is not their permanent address.

In the past weaknesses within this system as well as other problems have led to some people being counted twice, some people

being missed entirely. Past censuses have not treated all communities equally. Historically many communities have been underserved by this census count. Many millions of the people out of the

population count. With millions of dollars in Federal and State

funding tied to the count and with so many in our community that

need our help, we cannot accept that this time around.

The Census Bureau and the Government Accountability Office

have studied the undercount very closely and we look forward to

hearing from them today as they address this issue. They share our

concerns about the harm that has been done to historically undercounted communities, and I hope you share our commitment to

making this right. In order to do that we must put more resources

into those areas that have been undercounted. We cannot continue

doing the same thing and then expecting different results.

I look forward to working with you, Chairman Clay, and the

members on this committee as we continue our extended oversight

of the 2010 census. It is a critical constitutionally mandated function, and we need to make sure we get it right.

I also look forward to hearing from our witnesses whose continued hard work has brought us to where we are today. And we will

help and it will help us ensure that we have the most accurate and

complete census count ever. We want to let the Census Bureau

know that we are eager to do our part to help make this happen.

And, of course, in order to do it, we might have to make some

changes based on information that might come forward in a hearVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:16 Nov 10, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\61799.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ing of this nature, and I’m hoping that there is the flexibility coming from some of the leadership.

On that note, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of the time.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Chairman Towns.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Edolphus Towns follows:]

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Mr. CLAY. I appreciate your opening statement, especially the

part about we cannot continue to do the same thing over and over

again. You’re absolutely correct.

Now we will move to the testimony portion of this hearing and

I will introduce our panel. The first witness will be Dr. Robert

Groves, the Director of the U.S. Census Bureau. Dr. Groves began

his tenure as Director on July 16, 2009. Earlier he was the Census

Bureau Associate Director for the Statistical Design Methodology.

In 2008 he became a recipient of a prestigious award in recognition

of the time he contributed to the development of the economic statistics. He is the author, the co-author of several articles. He got

his bachelor degree in statistics and sociology from the University

of Michigan. He also earned his doctorate in Michigan. Thank you

for being here.

Our next witness is Mr. Robert Goldenkoff, Director of Strategic

Issues with the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Mr.

Goldenkoff is responsible for reviewing 2010 census and government wide counting reform. Prior research areas have included

transportation securities, combative union trafficking, Federal statistics program. He received a BA in political science and a masters

of public administration degree from the George Washington University.

Next we will hear from Mr. Peter Wagner, executive director of

the Prison Policy Initiative. Mr. Wagner teaches, lectures and

writes about the impact of incarceration in the United States. His

current focus is on the U.S. Census Bureau counting of the Nation’s prison population. He has presented his research at national

and international conferences and meetings including to key note

directors at Harvard and Brown Universities. Thank you for being

here, Mr. Wagner.

Our final witness will be Professor Thomas Ellett, associate VP

for student affairs at New York University, which has an exemplary university housing system in the United States and the largest among private schools. He currently oversees a significant student affairs unit at NYU including residential life. He is an adjunct

associate assistant professor in the Steinhardt School of Culture

Education in New York. Professional Ellett received his Ph.D. from

Fordham University right here in New York. And I thank all of our

witnesses for appearing here today and look forward to your testimony.

It is the policy of the committee to swear in all witnesses before

their testimony. Please stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. CLAY. Thank you. You may be seated.

Let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative.

I ask that each of the witnesses now give a brief summary of

their testimony. Please limit your summary as I have mentioned,

and it will be included in the hearing record.

Dr. Groves, you may begin with your opening statement.

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STATEMENTS OF ROBERT GROVES, DIRECTOR, U.S. CENSUS

BUREAU; ROBERT GOLDENKOFF, DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC

ISSUES, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; PETER

WAGNER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PRISON POLICY INITIATIVE; AND THOMAS ELLETT, ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT,

STUDENT AFFAIRS, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

STATEMENT OF ROBERT GROVES

Dr. GROVES. Chairman Towns, Chairman Clay, it’s great to be

with you today here in New York.

First, it’s important for me to start by noting that the 2010 census has begun. We began on January 25th in a little native village

in Alaska called Noorvik, and we are mounting operations almost

daily to build on that.

Our advertising campaign is on the air and in print. The purpose

of that campaign, it’s important to get the word out about the census. Our data shows that knowledge, public knowledge about the

census is at an all time low for the decade.

In my last testimony in front of this committee I noted a set of

future activities and risks that existed in the late fall. We’re 60

days away from census day right now. We’ve addressed many of

those preparations for future activities. Some risks still exist. I’m

happy to talk about them later, but we have notable achievement.

All roughly 500 census, local census offices are open, staffed,

equipment is in place, computer networks are working to serve

them. We are now recruiting for the big push of census staff that

will hit the field. We now have over 2.4 million applicants in the

pool. We’re on schedule for that. We have exceeded our goals. We

had a goal of about 120,000 partnership organizations that helped

us get the word out. Just last week that number is now 200,000.

This is a fantastic comment, I think, on this country’s willingness

to work with us to get the word out about this census. We have

9,600, nearly 10,000 complete count committees around the country. Most of those are government base, some are with private sector workers.

We’re on track with all the printing of forms. In a matter of days

they’ll be 425 semi-trailers that will leave our warehouses filled

with forms that will hit post offices around the country. We started

on February 1st group quarters advance visits that are key to the

issue that we’re discussing today, I’ll be happy to expand on that.

And then we delivered to the postal service about 10 million advance letters to update these areas. So, a lot is happening right

now, the pace is picking up.

But let me turn to the chief focus on this hearing—the enumeration of so called group quarters, well defined by both chairmen in

their remarks.

I think it’s important, what I’ll do is basically give a lot of basic

definitions that give the historical background of why the census

has done what it does. We use what is called the usual residence

rule. This is based on the Census Act of March 1790, where the

first Congress expressed the mandate that we would count people

in their usual abode. Since the first Congress contained a lot of the

Founding Fathers as Members we interpret that as the will of

those who wrote the constitution. The concept of usual residence

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remains intact today. The usual residence rule is intended to count

people once and in the right place, that is where they generally eat,

sleep and work most of the time. So, the question of pertinence to

us today is how does that logic apply to group quarters.

What I’d like to do is go through some major types of group quarters to give you a sense of how this is applied. Let’s begin with

prisons and jails. We count prisoners and have done so every decade of our lives in those facilities because that is where they live

and sleep most of the time following the usual residence rule.

In prisons, which are generally State or Federal facilities, by way

of definition that incarcerates those convicted in criminal court and

sentenced to terms for more than a year. In contrast, jails contain

people incarcerated who are pending some sort of adjudication

process.

In those facilities the Bureau seeks to get an individual census

record filled out by each prisoner. For practical and logistical constraints in those facilities, we can’t do that always. Despite our efforts for security and other reasons and because of the wishes of

those who control the prison, we sometimes rely on administrative

records. That is an issue in counting of group quarters in general,

individual census records versus administrative records.

Let me turn to colleges and universities and seminary dormitories. College students fall into several categories. There are

those living away from their parental home while attending college.

They are counted at the residence where they live and sleep most

of the time where they are on April 1st. Foreign students studying

in the United States are counted at their household location, generally in college provided housing or off campus housing. U.S. students traveling and are studying abroad are excluded from the

2010 census as they have been for every census for many decades.

The only students enumerated as part of the group quarters operation are students living in a dormitory, fraternity or sorority or

any other housing arrangement provided by the college, university

or the seminar. College students in apartments, off campus and

other residential addresses will receive a census questionnaire in

the mail just like most households in the United States.

Let me turn to heath care facilities, a major component of the

group quarters population. They are quite complex for us to do censuses in because they’re so diverse. The operation in health care facilities enumerates inhabitants of long-term facilities such as nursing homes and various forms of assisted and unassisted living facilities. Group quarters operations also counts inhabitants of hospitals that are in mental and psychiatric units, long-term care

units, hospice units and patients with no disposition or exit plan.

Just as in prisons, census attempts a self enumeration process.

We do this in conjunction with hospital staff whenever possible.

There are enumerators which show up at a facility, ideally consult

with the staff, develop a plan for the distribution of these individual census requirements to the residents. As with prisons we must

exert or must implement some flexibility on this because of the

health status of individual patients and the need for extreme confidentiality under regulations governing health care units.

Let me now turn to a decision we’ve made in the last few days

with regard to releasing counts, census counts of residents of group

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quarters that we’re planning for May 2011. For the first time we

will supply block level counts as defined by Public Law 94–171

used in redistricting activities in the State. We will supply those

at the end of March 2011. In talking to those concerned, external

stakeholders about these things, we also learned that another tabulation would be useful for those involved in redistricting, and as

it turns out in our own count question resolution programs that

looks for anomalies in census counts.

So, for the first time we will submit for—we will release a table

from our Summary File 1 product plan, it’s called traditionally the

P–41 table. Some of those in the audience may recognize the P–41

table. We’re going to do that earlier than ever before.

That provides counts of the total universe of group quarters, institutionalized and non-institutionalized populations, that will include counts down to the block level of those in correction facilities,

juvenile facilities, nursing/skilled nursing facilities and other facilities. It will also include counts of college students in dorms, those

in military quarters and other non-institutionalized facilities. As I

said, we’ll provide these down to the block level. We will provide

it over a file transfer protocol downloadable from the Web for users

in the redistricting process.

I want to close by reaffirming the Census Bureau’s commitment

to an accurate count in the 2010 census. I also want to note, as evidenced by this hearing today, our commitment to work with the

data user community throughout the country that needs information for a diverse set of purposes.

I’d also like to stress that the Census Bureau does not participate in any redistricting activities. Our job is a completely non-partisan objective enumeration of the population. Simply put, the Census Bureau collects individual information and reports aggregates

based on it. Fittingly, the Founding Fathers left it to Federal, State

and local governments to use the information for their political purposes. In that vein, the Census Bureau endeavors to compile the

group quarters information in the Summary File I mentioned for

its key data users and supply it as early as possible.

I want close by noting I believe the 2010 census is on track to

be a successful one. We are in a very critical time. We need every

political, social and religious leader to get the word out that participating in the census is in all of our hands. I look forward especially

to working with the committee in the coming months to let you

know how we’re doing and how the country is proceeding on this

task.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Dr. Groves, for your testimony.

Dr. GROVES. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Groves follows:]

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STATEMENT OF ROBERT GOLDENKOFF

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Chairman Towns, Chairman Clay, I am

pleased to be here at Brooklyn Borough Hall this morning to discuss the Census Bureau’s efforts to conduct an accurate group

quarters count.

As you know, group quarters consist of college dormitories, prisons, nursing homes and similar group living arrangements. Examples of group quarters right here in Brooklyn include Long Island

University, Brooklyn Hospital Center and the Crossroads Juvenile

Center.

During the 2000 census for a variety of reasons group quarters

were sometimes counted more than once, missed or included in the

wrong location. However, an inaccurate enumeration is critical because data from the census are used to apportion seats in Congress, redraw congressional districts, and help allocate more than

$400 billion each year in Federal aid to State and local governments. Census data are also used to determine the boundaries of

local election districts. So for Brooklyn, as with all localities, an incomplete count could have implication for political representation

and the borough getting its fair share of Federal assistance.

During the 2000 census Brooklyn’s total population of around 21⁄2

million people, around 39,000 or about 11⁄2 percent lived in group

quarters. Although Brooklyn had a smaller percentage of group

quarter residents compared to the rest of the United States. The

borough’s demographic diversity and other socioeconomic factors

make sections of Brooklyn particularly hard to count. What’s more,

Brooklyn’s range of group quarters including colleges, group homes,

convents and rooming houses, only add to the Bureau’s enumeration challenges here.

As requested, my testimony today will now focus on first, the extent to which the Bureau has strengthened its procedures for

counting group quarters since the 2000 census. And second, particular challenges and opportunities for an accurate group quarters

count in Brooklyn in 2010.

My remarks today are based in part on observations at 38 locations across the country including Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan

and Queens. The bottom line is that the operational change that

the Bureau has made since the 2000 census position it to more accurately count group quarters. Still, a successful group quarters

count, particularly in an area as diverse as Brooklyn remain a

challenging task, and special efforts will be needed to ensure complete count.

Now, following the 2000 census, the Bureau developed and tested

new procedures to address the difficulties it had in counting group

quarters. For example, in preparing for the group quarters count

the Bureau moved from a manual to GPS generated matchbox

which will help ensure group quarters are counted in the proper jurisdiction. The Bureau also verified group quarter facilities through

site visits rather than telephone interviews which should increase

accuracy. And then the Bureau combined the conventional housing

units and group quarters address listed to a single data base,

which would reduce the chances of double counting. The Bureau

also used a number of quality assurance procedures such as supervisory review of workers assignment. The actual count of group

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quarters residents will start at the end of March and last through

mid May.

Brooklyn presents challenges as well as opportunities. Factors

such as poverty, high levels of non-English speakers, complex

household arrangements, as well as a high percentage of rental and

vacant units, multi-unit buildings and crowded housing all contribute to making the borough one of the most difficult areas in the

country to count.

Moving forward, in light of these demographic and housing unit

challenges, it will be important for the Bureau to carry out remaining group quarters operations on time, according to plan, as well

as closely monitored key performance measures to ensure that the

group quarters count proceeds on track and quickly address any

glitches.

It will also be important for the Bureau to ensure that Census

workers have knowledge of the language, culture and living arrangements of each and every neighborhood in the borough.

That said, the Bureau cannot conduct a successful enumeration

on its own.

Census forms will soon be arriving at millions of households

across the country. It will then be up to each and every one of us

to fulfill our civic duty to complete the questionnaire and mail it

back. According to the Bureau, each percentage point increase in

the mail response rate saves taxpayers around $85 million and

yields more accurate data.

In closing, census day, April 1st, is right around the corner. A

few weeks from now the success of the 2010 census will be both literally and figuratively in the hands of Brooklynites and people everywhere across the country.

Chairman Towns, Chairman Clay, this concludes my remarks,

and I will be happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Mr. Goldenkoff.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Goldenkoff follows:]

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Mr. CLAY. Mr. Wagner, you may proceed.

STATEMENT OF PETER WAGNER

Mr. WAGNER. Thank you, Chairman Towns and Chairman Clay,

for having me here today. My name is Peter Wagner, I am executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative. And for the last decade

I studied how the Census Bureau counts people in prisons, and

we’ve worked to quantify the policy and legal implications that flow

from the technical decisions.

Fairly and accurately counting the prison population matters. On

census day, there will be about 2.3 million people incarcerated in

this country. That’s a population that’s larger than the fourth largest city in the country and larger than 15 individual States.

I’d like to just briefly address some of the distortions in representation that flow from the Census Bureau’s current practices regarding how incarcerated people are counted, and address some of the

long-term changes that will be needed to fully address this problem, while also commending the Census Bureau for making the

step to make prisons and other group quarter populations easier to

find in the data.

As Dr. Groves mentioned the Census Bureau counts people in

prisons as if they actually lived in the correctional facility, and this

procedure has been used since the first census in 1790. And while

it is the procedure that will be used in this census, it’s a growing

concern to the State and local governments that changes will be required in the future.

Specifically, the problems occur at the redistricting level. It turns

out there’s very little impact on how Federal funding is distributed,

because most Federal funded formulas are very highly sophisticated formulas that tailors the program to the needs, and so they

can directly or indirectly not improve prison populations, so the redistricting implications are pretty significant.

Just yesterday I just got back from a small town in Iowa called

Anamosa. It was a town that just recently had a city council ward

of 96 percent prisoners. In 2005, there was a city council election

and no one ran for office. And a man named Danny Young got up,

went to work for the county, came home and found out he had just

been elected to the city council. He wasn’t a candidate, he didn’t

vote for himself, but his wife and a neighbor voted him into office.

And this sparked a citywide movement to change the form of government in this city so that a situation in wards where they have

prisons that are the majority of the ward will go to a large government.

And we discovered that Anamosa is an extreme example, but it’s

far from unique. Waupun, WI has a district that is 80 percent prisoners. Lake County, TN has a district that is almost 90 percent incarcerated.

What we see in our research around the country, is that when

local governments—when citizens of rural county governments that

have prisons discover that their prisons are changing the representation that each district has, they asked legislature to change it.

So, in the case of Franklin County, NY, the legislature has taken

prisoners out.

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It’s very important about the decision that the Census Bureau

has made to make the prison population easier to find that will

greatly reduce the burden on some of these rural counties. Franklin

County, NY, as I said, always takes the prison population out, and

their—but they made two mistakes in the 2000 census to redistricting that would not occur this time.

When they were taking the prison populations out they made a

mistake and they also took out a nursing home, and this was the

subject of a lawsuit and they corrected it. And then after the district lines became official, they found out that they missed a prison.

A prison that they thought was on the county line, that they

thought was in the neighboring county turned out to be in another

county. So changing how the data was published, will greatly facilitate counties and other local governments that want to know what

their actual population is. It will give them the tools they need.

I just want to comment, Dr. Groves was very clear on this, but

there’s been some confusion. The Census Bureau is not proposing

in 2010 to change where people in prison are counted. What they

are doing is making it easier for State and county, local governments to find prisons and other group quarter populations in the

data.

I’ll stop there and be happy to answer any questions.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Mr. Wagner.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wagner follows:]

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Mr. CLAY. Mr. Ellett.

STATEMENT OF THOMAS ELLETT

Mr. ELLETT. Chairman Clay and other distinguished members of

the Information Policy, Census, and National Archives Subcommittee, and Chairman Towns, Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify

today. My name, as you mentioned earlier, is Tom Ellett, and I

serve as the associate vice president for student affairs at New

York University, and I’m responsible for overseeing the university’s

residence hall system.

As background for those unfamiliar with the university, NYU is

the largest private non-private institution of higher education in

the United States with a student population, including undergraduates and graduate students, of approximately 40,000. 11,600

of those students live in 23 number of university residence halls.

The halls are located in the lower end of Manhattan spread

throughout a few mile radius interspersed between the New York

City general population. 95 percent of the first-year students reside

in our facilities and 1,000 graduate students. The facilities range

in size and level of amenities.

In my opening statement, I will briefly discuss NYU’s interaction

with Census officials to date and give an overview of the university’s efforts to assist in enumeration efforts. During the question

and answer period, I will be happy to expand on some of the difficulties encountered by NYU throughout this process and provide

my own thoughts about how Census officials may be able to ensure

a more accurate student count as they prepare for the 2020 census.

Census officials initially made contact with the university’s Office

of Public Affairs late December of last year. Shortly thereafter,

NYU administrators responsible for faculty housing, government

relations and career services met with Census officials. They were

seeking NYU’s assistance in getting the highest student return rate

as possible, communicating the importance of the census to our student body and to use university space to interview potential door

to door and local workers. Thus far, two meetings have taken place,

the most recent being late last week. We have scheduled an additional meeting where census officials will meet with our residence

hall directors, who oversee the facility, to explain the process of

getting an accurate count of students living in our facilities. The

RHD’s are key to this process because they reside in the hall and

are the professional/administrative staff who oversee the student

experience.

NYU is planning a series of proactive actions to both communicate to our students the importance of census participation and

assist officials in receiving the highest possible rate of return. On

April 1st, the university will send an e-mail to all students reminding them of the importance of completing the census forms. NYU

will also provide Census officials with a list of all 11,600 students

living in NYU residence halls. This list will be in the form of envelope labels that officials will use to send census forms to each residence hall. Residence advisors [RAs], undergraduate and graduate

students in each building, will then hold floor meetings to urge participation, then followup individually to ensure full participation.

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Census officials will then pick up these materials from each residence hall by the third week of April.

Professionally, I have served on the Executive Board of the nonprofit professional association, the Association of College and University Housing Officers–International and have queried my colleagues from across the country who also run large campus housing

programs. During the question and answer period, I would be

happy to share both my views and the thoughts of my colleagues

around the country about how universities could more effectively

work with Census officials on our share of ensuring a more accurate count of university residence halls.

Again, I thank the subcommittee for that opportunity to testify

today.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Mr. Ellett.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ellett follows:]

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Mr. CLAY. I want to thank all the witnesses for participating

here.

Chairman Towns.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you very much. Let me begin with you, Dr.

Groves. The 2010 census that’s been on GAO’s high risk list since

March 2008, GAO cited challenges including weaknesses in the acquisition of the management of information technology, problems in

handling computers and certainly over the final course of this,

we’ve covered some of these issues before, but I’d like to ask you

about one of them today.

It is my understanding that the technological concerns that GAO

had was with the limited testing of non-response followup and

group quarters count used in the paper base operation and control

system. According to GAO the test revealed problems that will

need to be addressed before census day. The test also did not evaluate the stress the system will face with processing the estimated

48 million housing units nationwide that will be involved in the

non-response followup. GAO added a few of the newer temporary

census employees who will actually conduct the operations involved

in the test.

These systems and others systems that the Census Bureau created will need to run very smoothly if we are going to ensure an

accurate and complete count, particularly in historically undercounted and overcounted communities. That’s my statement, now

here’s my question. Can you elaborate on the results of these tests?

Dr. GROVES. Sure. Thank you, Chairman. I’m glad this was your

first question, because I have a few things to say about this. First

of all, the GAO assessment we agree with these were data that we

supplied them, so there’s disagreement among us on this. Let me

give you an update on where we are on this. As I testified in front

of Chairman Clay’s subcommittee, gee, I think it was in October,

maybe September, this is the No. 1 risk that I worry about in addition to the largest risk, and that is how will the American public

respond to our request for completed questionnaires.

There was a test, there were two tests in December of the software. The software is now being developed because of the change

of plans that occurred before I got there in 2008, the dropping of

the hand held computers required the software to be written anew.

There were two tests in December, the first test did not include

this paper based operation control system that you mentioned as

part of the test. And also we discovered a problem in the payroll

system software. That was fixed. And another test was run about

2 weeks after that. In both of these tests there was an attempt to

simulate load, and on the first test there were indeed large numbers of users on the system.

There were problems found in the first test that were then fixed.

Problems in the second test were also found and those are on the

fix list, many of those have been fixed.

Let me tell you where we are right now. This software is being

released in three phases. The non-response followup phase that you

referenced is in the second release that’s just been released recently. It will actually be released, the non-response followup software itself will be released at the end of March, about a month before it’s needed, so we’re writing the software in a schedule that esVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:16 Nov 10, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00058 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\61799.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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sentially releases pieces of software about a month before they’re

used.

Is this a high risk endeavor? Yes. Are we aware of the risk? Yes.

How are we managing this process? I set up in August an independent assessment team that has outside computer scientists and

internal, our CIO as well as the commerce chief technology officer.

They’re meeting almost daily now overseeing a process that must

happen for us to be successful with this software. It’s a set of tradeoff decisions.

As we release these successive releases and we find things that

aren’t working optimally, then we form a list of fixes on those.

We’re also writing the functions for the next release. We will make

tradeoff decisions going forward that will have work around, manual work around for some of the functions that were on the list

that would have been the ideal list. I am almost in constant communications with our regional offices about turning computer assisted operations into manual operations to make sure we can do

those well.

The wisdom that is required on the part of the Census Bureau

right know and the external consultants I brought in is to make

those tradeoff decisions wisely, so that we have a set of core functions that allow us to do these operations. All I can say at this

point is we are on top of this problem, we’re attempting to manage

it as well as we can. The regions are optimistic they can do the

functions that are going into manual mode because they did them

that way in prior censuses as it turns out. But this is not over and

I’m happy to keep you and the committee up to date on this as frequently as you’d like.

Mr. TOWNS. Let me hear from GAO.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. For all of us here who are concerned about the

census I would agree with Dr. Groves. There are two things that

should keep us all up awake at night as we get closer and closer

to census day. One of those is the response rate which is the external challenge, but the internal challenge is the State of the IT system in particularly the PBOCS, the paper based operational control

system. We have been looking at it, the Commerce Department Inspector General has been looking at it and the Bureau is too, but

I think that we are maybe not as optimistic at this point from some

of the data that we’ve been seeing.

As we see it there are four significant issues with PBOCS. One

is people, the second is hardware, the third is software and the

fourth is schedule, and I’ll talk about each one very briefly.

The people, the folks who are the technicians who are working

on PBOCS they are working at capacity but they’re falling behind

schedule. It’s just not enough to train people to go around, and

they’re not available to train additional people to help out. And,

you know, in the days between when these operations, the census

operations go on line, they’ll be challenges to fix these existing

issues as well as deal with new issues that come up as the different

operations ramp up.

Hardware issues, there’s significant problems with the PBOCS

computer that limit the number of users that can use the systems

at any one time, that still needs to be addressed.

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Software issues, the critical software defects, the last piece of

data that we saw from the test, the critical software defects continued to mount. That’s not the trend you want to have when these

systems need to go live very soon. And system performance is lagging.

The fourth major issue is schedule. Time is not on the Bureau’s

side. These different operations have fixed start dates, so the various IT systems need to be ready when according to the schedule

of the start date of these different operations, otherwise things

start to get pushed back and it has a cavitating effect in all the

downstream operations which can affect the data quality and also

add to the cost. And so, to deal with that, one of the things, as Dr.

Groves referred to as a tradeoff, one of the things that’s happening

now is different functions of the PBOCS are actually being taken

off, and so the focus now is just on those critical systems, which

is probably a good thing in terms of risk management, but it’s still

going to create some challenges in the future for the Bureau.

Mr. TOWNS. So you’re not quite as optimistic as Dr. Groves.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. They are working as hard as they can on it,

but here it is, it’s the 11th hour and there’s a lot of work that

needs to be done and not a whole lot of time remaining.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We will have an additional round of hearings scheduled.

Mr. CLAY. Let me start with Mr. Ellett. Tell me, how does the

educational campaign in NYU plan to improve, for example, campus awareness and to let parents of dormitory students know not

to count their children in the household, how do you deal with

that?

Mr. ELLETT. I can’t say that’s an area that we have talked to the

Census about. We have certainly talked about educational campaign for why students would want to complete the census, and we

think that we have good followup process to ensure that every student will know that they should be doing it, and will have multiple

times should they not turn it in that our staff will be going to them

to remind them to turn in their census.

Mr. CLAY. Have you any recommendations on how you can improve group quarters enumeration at universities.

Mr. ELLETT. Yes, I do. I have queried, as I mentioned, colleagues

at colleges and universities in Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Florida, Illinois and other parts, Texas and other parts of the northeast. And some of the challenges that have been faced have been

the untrained temporary Census staff who are not aware of the

university housing structure and how to engage with universities.

There seems to be a gap in the confusion between group quarters

as relates to apartments in residence halls. A number of large

housing universities have apartments that they manage that are

directly off campus. And as the age of partnerships grow between

profit organizations in college and universities, some of those facilities are now considered partly through the university, and whether

those are being captured or not are in question as group quarters

rather than individuals.

The geographical issue for my colleagues in urban areas are very

challenging where there will be two or three different geographical

areas and working with two to three different Census offices rather

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than one. In the time line the census is challenging. Like spring

semester you see a 5 to 8 percent decrease in student housing

across universities and colleges as students who will leave the campuses and be abroad, etc. And the end of the semester is challenging because students will start finals in the very beginning of April

and may disappear leaving the college campus, and whether they’re

being counted at the college campus or back at home is in question.

We do have some solutions for some of these. If you’d like to hear

those I’d be glad to share those. One is the data dump. We think

that we can actually save the Census a lot of money and time by

giving you what you want. We have the information to the top

three questions already in our hands at every college, university

and we can turn it over very easily without printing paper, being

a little bit more green friendly, and also just giving the information

without Census staff having to come back four or five times to our

college campuses.

Most of my colleagues think that the on line system that is being

talked about may not be as successful as the data dump that we

can provide quickly. I will note that some of my colleagues, actually

in Florida, some colleges in Florida, are giving the data dump directly to Census officers, while the majority are not.

Mr. TOWNS. Without the Census office asking for it.

Mr. ELLETT. With the Census office asking for it in some jurisdictions, but almost every other jurisdiction they are not asking for

the data dump, which means they turn over the records in the

numbers of those students.

Last one would be each college or university is assigned one Census office to work in, even though they may be located in two or

three different geographical areas. NYU, for instance, has three different census areas that makes up NYU campus.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you.

Mr. Wagner, what changes in the past are—considering past

knowledge to require changes in how and where the prisons are

kept?

Mr. WAGNER. Currently Oregon, Wisconsin, New York, Illinois,

Maryland and Florida have bills pending that will apply to State

or State and local legislative districts or counties. Some of those

States are developing procedures working with the Department of

Corrections to figure out where incarcerated people come from and

do an adjustment to put people back at home. And then a number

of those States have bills that would require incarcerated population be removed from the count. And then Virginia, Mississippi,

New Jersey and Colorado have existing laws passed in the previous

census cycle, will require local governments to remove prison populations prior to issuing.

Mr. CLAY. So is that how you envision a workable solution to

what we have now?

Mr. WAGNER. For this cycle the next step of the solution for the

2010 cycle is at the State and local level, the State and local government to develop their own procedures.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much. Chairman Towns.

Mr. TOWNS. Let me just add, listening to some of this really requires getting additional information out to people. I mean, it sort

of makes sense that they fully understand what’s going on.

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I guess, Dr. Groves, is there any way at this stage of the game

that through the discretionary funds that you might be able to put

it into some of these areas and make certain that people fully know

and understand? Because when you look at—and of course over the

past 30-years we’ve gotten bad counts, for 30-years that I know and

I’m sure it’s probably even before that.

And of course I see some of the things developing again that

maybe we still would be in a position to correct by looking at ways

and methods to get resources into these areas in a different kind

of way. In other words, local news, local press, NYU newspaper, I

mean things of this nature that we might not have tried in the

past.

I know it’s late, I know the hour is late, but the point is that

there are things called discretionary funds. And let me just say to

you that we are not up here to beat up and blame, no. We are up

here to try to get an accurate count, and you won’t find anybody

more cooperative than the Chair of this committee and of course

be the full committee, in terms of working with you to make certain that we get the information out to people, because we want to

make certain that we get a count.

In this instance, Mr. Wagner, that a whole prison population was

missed, I mean there’s something wrong in this day and age when

we have these kind of problems. And when I look at what’s happening in our city—basically the prison population comes from seven

zip codes in our city. Which means those are the areas which probably need the most help, and those are the areas that may end up

being undercounted.

Dr. GROVES. Thank you for the question. I think there’s a lot for

all of us to do. With regard to the group quarters, the so called

group quarters population, the challenge is multi-full because each

population presents its own issues, so it’s back to colleges and universities. I think the biggest challenge is to make sure that the student population understands that it is their job to enumerate themselves to be part of that enumeration, not their parents’ job. That’s

a big barrier we have, especially a barrier for the students who live

off campus.

The situation with four roommates living in an apartment near

a college campus is one that’s a real challenge for us because no

one really is used to taking responsibility as the head of the household. We have census forms there where everyone should, every

member of that household should be written down. So that’s one

set of problems.

There are colleges and universities around the country that are

doing wonderfully creative stuff on this, really spectacular work, I

think. My old institution has started a contest where the pro-vos

is giving a price for the best YouTube commercial done by the college students about this whole issue to get the word out, and there

are great student newspaper articles and so on, exactly what you

said.

I think for non-institutionalized populations, as you mentioned

earlier, are strongest tool in reaching out to local partners. And the

New York city officials and the complete health committee in this

city are wonderfully organized. We’re trying to advertise in the

local press. We’re advertising in 15 different local newspapers for

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the African American and Caribbean population. Getting the word

out down to the grass roots, I think, is the key thing.

We will also be publishing publicly, you and I, all of us can look

at participation rates daily by track, by census track starting about

the third week of March. We’ll all be alerted to this. And what we

hope, with regard to your notion of discretionary funds, is to target

any advertising to the tracks that aren’t performing as well as we

all hope them to perform despite the good work of the partners and

so on. So, there are a lot of different tools we have. They depend

on different group quarters and different living situations, and

we’re always open for good ideas.

Mr. TOWNS. We have situations that you have an area that has

housing shortage or the fact that the cost of living is so high that

people double up and triple up, you know, that kind of thing. And

of course we found some interesting things, and even in our housing developments that wherein you have a daughter who gets married and then it’s her and her husband still living in the apartment. And then you have a son that gets married and also lives

in the apartment. Now, when the count comes they’re not going to

give us that information because, let’s face it, they feel that creates

problems for them in terms of continuing to live there, and where

we would like to have that information because it helps us to make

the point that additional housing is needed in order for them to be

able to have their own apartment.

So, I think that advertising and talking about the fact that it’s

important that we get accurate information and at the same time,

you know, let them know that the information that the Census Bureau is collecting is not used otherwise. I think that, you know, if

we can sort of get that across. And I don’t know in terms of what

more we can do that we’re not doing. But the point is that I want

you to see us, the lecturers, as a partner with you to be able to address this issue.

Dr. GROVES. Well, you and many of your colleagues have been

wonderful in putting out PSAs that are being broadcast locally. On

the issue of doubling up houses, this census is facing a challenge

that the last census didn’t face on this nationwide because of the

foreclosures that have occurred and people moving out of houses

that they were buying and living with relatives or friends. In areas

where that is a big problem we’re trying to get the word out that

those households need to be counted fully. So if your brother-in-law

is living with you because they’ve lost their home, brother-in-law

and sister-in-law and their kids, because they cannot be counted in

any other place, they should be included on your census form. And

that message we’re trying to hammer out, and when officials and

leaders of the community help us in that message it helps a lots.

There’s a companion message that we need, I think, for some of

those households, especially rental units where that doubling up

may not be—or that doubling up might be frowned upon by the

owner of the property.

We need everyone to understand that the information that is provided to the Census Bureau is never passed on to any enforcement

agency at the local, State or national level, it’s not passed on to

landlords. We have the job of enumerating everyone who lives in

this country, and that information is kept private under very, very

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strong confidentiality laws that we could all be proud of, I think,

to protect those data. That message needs to be delivered over and

over by a lot of trusted voices in these communities.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Dr. Groves. You may want to

share the story that you shared with me about President Harry

Truman. You want to share that with the committee.

Dr. GROVES. I’d be happy to. This is a story that’s told at the

Census Bureau, I’m trying to get the hard data on this, but here’s

the story. Part of it we know is true. When Harry Truman was

President they remodeled the White House, and during the remodeling phase they had to move out the President’s family. They tried

to find a house in Washington for the family to live. They located

a house. And at that point the concern of the Secret Service was,

well, is this a safe neighborhood for the President. And the Secret

Service approached the Census Bureau and asked for the census

forms of the neighbors for the new President’s residence. The Census Bureau Director said ‘‘well, I can’t do that. We have this law

that protects that information and I can’t give it to you.’’ And I

want to remind us of the story, this is the Secret Service coming

to the Census Bureau asking about the safety of the President. The

Census Bureau Director said no, that is a law that’s been upheld

in the courts over and over again. It’s a wonderful law for all of

us to know about because it means that when you say something,

when you give an answer to the Census Bureau, it doesn’t go anywhere in any way that can harm you or your family.

Mr. CLAY. And I guess Chairman Towns has a point about

stressing to our constituents that all information and data collected

by the Census Bureau will be confidential and it cannot be shared

with any other governmental institutions, and that’s the point. And

that should be part of the communication, part of the speech of

enumerating that has to go around, that should be part of their

verbiage also.

Let me ask you, Dr. Groves, Mr. Ellett suggested that the colleges have a data drop to give to the Bureau with the first three

questions on the form for each student in residence, does the Bureau use this data to develop and is it helpful at all in enumeration

of coverage measures?

Dr. GROVES. In many of the group quarters in 2000 the majority

of the prison records, the majority of the reports on people in those

facilities came from administrative records. So, for example, in correctional institutions about 56 percent of the people were enumerated through administrative records. This happens in colleges as

well. The findings of the quality of those records is such that

they’re variable over institutions. I don’t want to comment on the

university records system at all, but I do know across prisons at

a State level the nature of the variables that are collected on

records and missing data rates are highly variable, so we have to

do a lot of what we call imputation. We have to estimate the answers when the records are deficient.

As I testified before, looking forward record systems are getting

better and better of all sorts. Thinking ahead for censuses in the

future, I can’t imagine effective cost efficient censuses that are not

exploiting the existing records in new and useful ways. In looking

forward in that way we have to realize that record systems vary

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over institutions. We have to be real worried about consistent information when we use them, but we’re using this when we can and

we’ll continue to use it I’m sure.

Mr. CLAY. Dr. Groves, out of curiosity, how are Mormon students

who are assigned to missions counted, are they counted any differently than other students studying abroad.

Dr. GROVES. You mean the Mormon students on missions?

Mr. CLAY. Yes.

Dr. GROVES. Or students or non-students. I assume the Mormon

missionaries in general, how are they counted.

Mr. CLAY. Yes.

Dr. GROVES. Those who are abroad during the time of the census

are not included in censuses, they haven’t been. The only exception

for this are those who are serving in the military and abroad because we obtain administrative records from the Department of Defense for those, counts off of personnel records and those who are

working for other Federal agencies formally stationed abroad. We

do not attempt to count American citizens living abroad in general.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. That’s correct. The reason for the difference is

that if you were a civilian or a non-Federal employee on a military

or civilian affiliated with the Federal Government, the reason for

that is because your mission is part of your duty to the government

to go overseas, and so those folks are included in the State count

but not for purposes of the redistricting. For all other Americans

overseas it’s considered that you’re doing that out of your own volition, and therefore you’re not included in the census count.

Mr. CLAY. Is that an area—I mean, would you suggest it be an

area that this subcommittee look at for future census.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I mean, GAO does not take the position on

who should be included, who shouldn’t be included, that’s a congressional perogative. We have weighed in on the operational aspect of it after the 2000 census was a big issue with the State of

Utah counting the 11,000 Mormon missionaries at that time that

were serving overseas. It’s something that to the extent this is a

concern of different States, and there are other States that also

have a number of people living overseas or in different countries,

some of the border States, for example. To the extent that it is an

issue it could be something that the Bureau examines for the future, but it’s something that should be done early in the decade because, I mean GAO has looked into the operational aspect of counting people overseas.

You may recall the Census Bureau did a test of counting people

overseas, they ran a test in Mexico, France and Kuwait in the

early—this was right after the 2000 census and whereas we didn’t

take a position on who should be included in the census, we said

it would be very expensive and have other operational issues. And

so, it should be something—it’s going to take a long time how to

figure that out, how to do it if that’s the way Congress and the

Census Bureau want to go. It needs to be done early in the decade.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you very much. You know, Mr. Wagner mentioned something that I think that—and I realize that the Census

Bureau is not concerned about redistricting, I understand that, but

I must admit, elected officials and these individuals you talked

about in terms of prison, in prisons, the individuals in prisons they

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are counted in the facility that they’re located in. This practice, excuse me, the redistricting process, I mean, it’s a serious one. I

mean, if you think about an area where you have a prison and you

have a tremendous population there and they’re counted there in

that particular facility, don’t you feel that could, Mr. Wagner, I’d

like to hear your views on that, I think that is creating problems

because they’re not there permanently.

Mr. WAGNER. Actually, legally speaking prisoners have never left

their homes. In New York State and most States have constitutional clauses or election law statutes they very explicitly say that

incarceration does not change their residence, so legally speaking

the people in prison are still back at home. And then our system

of representative democracy requires that legislative districts each

contain the same number of people, so each person has the same

access to government regardless of where they live. That process

breaks down when this data that States rely on to draw the district

or the counties rely on does not reflect where the people are.

Mr. TOWNS. So you can have a prison with 50,000 people and of

course they can’t even vote in that area, but it’s part of that industry.

Mr. WAGNER. Correct. And in the two States where prisoners can

vote, they have to do so absentee back in their home district.

Mr. TOWNS. I mean, that’s something that you might have to

take a look at and see in terms of how we should address that and

come up with a system kind of operation, some States do it, other

States do not.

Mr. WAGNER. Absolutely. I think that this is the only opportunity

for States in this cycle to do things at the State level, but I think

it would be ideal for Congress and the Census Bureau to come up

with a good system very early in this decade for the 2020 and future censuses.

Mr. TOWNS. You know, when you have people living in these

large facilities, when this happens, are you sure that we’re really

getting an accurate count, you know, in these facilities, Mr. Ellett.

Mr. ELLETT. I can speak for NYU and I will assure you that we

will get every person who lives there in our jurisdiction. I can’t say

for all colleges and universities that’s accurate, because I am, you

know, you’re dependent on undergraduate residents assistants to

go to the floor and collect the forms, and whether or not someone

turns in their form or not, I would say would probably not be a

hundred percent accurate. And I would be surprised if the numbers

that you get back aren’t consistent with the university’s number of

how many paid students are living in housing as of April 1, 2010.

I think there would be a large discrepancy between those two numbers, because universities know how many people are in their jurisdiction because they’ve paid to be there and are receiving payment

from those students. Will the census receive all of those forms back

from that institution, I would say it would be a high unlikelihood

that would happen.

Mr. TOWNS. I guess in terms of you, Dr. Groves, are you satisfied

and feeling comfortable now with the training that people have had

up to this point and that the—in terms of the community, in terms

of the services, in terms of the language and culture and lifestyle,

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do you feel comfortable that we’re ahead of where we were the last

census and the census before that.

Dr. GROVES. The question phrased that way, I am quite comfortable. We are the unanticipated beneficiaries of this horrible recession we’re living through. The quality of the staff that we’re now

recruiting and the quantity of people applying are at unprecedented high. So, relative to the 2000 census the quality of the staff

and the experience they bring to the task is something that I think

we could always be quite comfortable with.

We are hiring, as you know, Congressman locally. That puts a

constraint on our recruitment, but there’s a big payoff of that constraint, and that is we have people who know the neighborhoods

that they’re working for non-response followup phases, they know

the streets, they know the comings and goings of people, and I

think we’ve learned over the decade that is a very important step.

We’re hiring people with language skills that are needed in the

neighborhoods. That too is a constraint on our hiring, but is a huge

payoff in terms of the quality of the data we get.

Mr. TOWNS. You’re not going to get this one from the Members

of Congress, but I want to put it this way. What can we as Members of Congress do to help you, you’re going to hear that too many

times.

Dr. GROVES. I’ll take advantage of it though. This is an important few weeks we’re all living through. We really need you to

speak out to say that the census is a deeply constitutional thing

that we’ve done, it’s important, it’s the cornerstone of the democracy, that we have made it an easy thing to do this decade by having just the short form that should take you 10 minutes. And it’s

a very safe thing for all of your—the people who live in your district to participate in this census. You can assure them that they’ll

never be harmed by doing this. They only get their fair share of

the benefits of congressional representation and the over $400 billion a year of taxpayer money that is returned to local neighborhoods and cities and States based on these data. That message

we’re trying to get out in the advertising, we’re trying to use trusted voices in any way we can, and this is the moment we need you

to speak out as loudly and as widely as you possibly can, and I

know you’ve done that and I thank you for what you’ve done.

Mr. TOWNS. Let me ask you, is there a pattern here that seniors

don’t turn it in or young people don’t turn it in, is there a pattern?

Is there anything that’s been established that can be worked on

and talked about to try and make certain that we really get this

accurate count this time.

Dr. GROVES. If there are there are influences on behaviors that

seem to be present over and over. Right now I’m terribly worried

about young people who are being asked to fill out the census for

the first time. Last census their parents filled it out. If you look

at—there was a recent PEW study that asked people, ‘‘have you

heard about this thing called a census.’’ Thirty-one percent of those

18 to 29 said ‘‘no, I haven’t heard of a census.’’ Then the interviewer said, ‘‘well, let me tell you what a census is. A census is a

count of everyone who lives in the country. Now that I’ve told you

what it is, have you heard of it?’’ That 31 percent goes down to 17

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percent, only to 17 percent. So, we have a massive challenge in

front of us and it happens every decade.

For someone who is newly establishing themselves as head of the

household, they’re living independently, they have no experience

with the census, they don’t know what it is. And so, young people

traditionally are tough groups to get participation on and it’s true

this decade, we have the data to show it. We’re trying to use special outreach to those groups, advertising in media that they watch

and they care about, we’re using more digital media than we’ve

used before. We need everyone to target that group. And I can go

on and on, but let me stop. I just chose that one to start with.

Mr. TOWNS. Let me just say that I’m trying to look at ways and

methods that we can get to where we need to go. Now I know that

you have regions and all of that, I understand that. Have you

thought about just specializing in certain areas of specialization,

that you would have a person who only deals with seniors and senior homes, senior housing, seniors in nursing homes and just sort

of specialize in these areas to be able to sort of go in and sort of

get these kind of counts as an expertise in these areas where people are out there all the time and be able to just sort of go and get

this information in a special kind of way. That would be his or her

job, she is director of all of these senior homes, senior housing, this

person is in charge of nursing homes, this person is in charge of

hospitals, whatever it is that you would have in terms of specialization, residence and regional kind of things.

Dr. GROVES. So an organization that’s sort of functional rather

than geographical.

Mr. TOWNS. Right.

Dr. GROVES. I think it’s a good idea and one to talk about. I

think there are seeds of that kind of functional specialization within the region, so. One of the wonderful things that happened this

decade, the stimulus money that the Census Bureau received allowed us to hire specialists of that sort. Some of them—so there’s

a partnership specialist in the Boston Regional Census Center

that’s specializing in the colleges of Boston, so there’s going to be

a competition among the colleges in Boston because of this person

for participation rates, and they’re trying to do that.

And we really tried to specialize on language and cultural subgroups, so our partner specialists nationwide speak over 130 different languages, and every area of the country really has different

pockets of different language and new immigrant groups. We’re trying to exploit local ties and that way most of these partnership specialists were hired out of those communities. They have deep and

rich ties inside the community in order to get the word out through

formal and informal networks. We could always do more. I am impressed with how much more we could be doing, but we’re trying

along those lines.

Mr. TOWNS. Let me just go down the line and just ask, what

more, what do you think that should be done that’s not being done

at this particular time?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I don’t know how much more we could do at

this point that the Census Bureau isn’t already doing. I think what

we all need to remember—I agree with everything that Dr. Groves

has said, but let me put sort of a future look on this. That what

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the Nation needs to do and Congress needs to do is not lose sight

of the census in those intercensul years. Where are we going to be

come April 1, 2011, we all disappear. You know, after the 2000 census I think we gave our last hearing sometime in 2000, the next

hearing wasn’t until 2006.

Mr. TOWNS. He wasn’t the chairman.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I mean, the chairs came and went. And, again,

you know, we’re not trying to point fingers at anybody either. I

mean, other priorities come up and there’s a tendency to think,

‘‘hey, it’s 10 years away, why are we looking at something that’s

10 years away because we have priorities here and now.’’ But the

thing is, you can’t do that because so many things buildup.

Census after census we always seem to be starting from square

one, the advertising, the building of the access, that has changed

somewhat with ACS. This whole notion of building census awareness, what we need to do is we need to put it in people’s consciousness early, build that into the curriculum in school systems for example as part of civics classes. You know, if they started learning

it in first grade, you know, when you’re in first grade 2010, by

2020, well, that’s 10 years later, they’ve heard that same message

for ten consecutive years and so now it’s part of their sense of consciousness and so their parents are aware of it, you know. So, those

are the type of things that need to be done. We can’t just disappear

come 2011. It just needs to be on our radar screen continually.

The same is true with the enumeration of prisoners. I mean, this

has been—you know, for those of us, you know, the census stakeholders, the census geeks, we talk about this throughout the decade, but nobody starts listening to us until, you know, again, 2008,

2009 when it’s too late to do anything about it. So, you know, I’ll

just close here by saying we need to keep up the momentum and

sustain that momentum, keep holding hearings, keep the focus on

GAO, hold us accountable for providing new information during the

design phase of the census. Hold the Census Bureau accountable.

We’ve already, you know, Dr. Groves and I we meet on a regular

basis and we’re talking about not only current issues, but we’re

talking about 2020 issues. So, I think we all need to be doing that

and we all need to get down to the States and the school systems.

Businesses need to get involved too because they benefit from census data. But we just have to keep it on our radar screen.

Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Wagner.

Mr. WAGNER. The census needs in this decade and—but some of

the most important decisions and support needs to come in 2011,

2012.

Mr. TOWNS. What do you think of the specialization concept to

having a person deal with the prisons, having another person deal

with as previously described, what do you think of that, I’m just

curious.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I think in terms of actually collecting the

forms and working with institutions, I would imagine that possibly

should work very well in urban areas. I imagine it would be a challenge in rural areas where there’s small jails and some small hospitals, I think that would be very complicated in rural areas. But

I do think in terms of designing the group quarters count, that

greater and greater specialization and expertise I’m sure will be

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very helpful. And I’m sure this is probably some of what the Bureau did when they overhauled the group quarters count over the

last decade with bringing more of the subject matter experts, but

I do I think that the specialization would work, would have an

easier time in the urban areas.

Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Ellett.

Mr. ELLETT. I would say your suggestion is brilliant and I would

say that the professional association could benefit from that too.

The professional associations which I participated in would certainly have loved to have some outreach, that their monthly newsletters and magazines certainly have some featured article on the

census upcoming for students living in residence homes across the

country. None were featured and I think there’s a potential opportunity there that you could use for not only college and university

housing professional associations, but I’m sure that the prison system has a special association and others that may be in other areas

which we could work with in the future.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Goldenkoff, I’ve never heard the term census geek.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. You’re looking at four of them.

Mr. CLAY. Let me ask you seriously though, do you believe the

addition of group quarters from the—will reduce the number?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Yes, mainly because there were two separate

lists in the past and this is what happened with some colleges, for

example, because of just the kind of the uniqueness of dormitory

addresses. If they had a street address, for example, they would

sometimes show up in the Census Bureau housing unit data base,

but they’d also show up in the group quarters data base and they

can get counted twice and raise the risk of counting them then

twice, so by combining them to a single data base, it’s either for

the Census Bureau to clean up the record.

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Ellett, many college students have mailboxes that

are separate from their dorm rooms, how can the Census deal with

this situation and are census forms mailed to the mailboxes or delivered to their rooms, how does the process work?

Mr. ELLETT. I’m sure it varies from college to college. I know in

our conversation with Census we determined together that it would

be best if they were to label, we would give the label to the Census

Bureau. They would put the label on the envelopes, deliver them

to each individual residence hall to our staff and our staff by floor

would go knock on each of the doors, collect them after they’ve been

completed in their folded envelopes and then we would return

them, the Census would come back and pick it up. That varies from

institution to institution. I talked to some colleagues who they were

mailing out, but the majority was that they were working in concert with the Census to come on the campus and to do the same

model that we described at NYU.

Mr. CLAY. Dr. Groves.

Dr. GROVES. The NYU model is the ideal model from our viewpoint because it engages local knowledge and then it utilizes proper

confidentiality controls, people who know the population quite well

to help us enumerate. It works quite well.

Mr. CLAY. Members of Congress usually reside in two places, one

in their home district and Washington.

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Mr. TOWNS. Some of them in the office.

Mr. CLAY. Well, they wouldn’t get the questionnaire there. Which

one do you want us to answer for the primary residence?

Dr. GROVES. You’ll get a questionnaire—I don’t know your living

situation, I’m guessing——

Mr. CLAY. I’m sure I’ll get one.

Dr. GROVES. I certainly hope you’ll get a questionnaire. Let’s say

you get two questionnaires because you have a place in St. Louis

and you have a place in Washington, you are to fill out the questionnaire as to the place where you usually reside. You know that,

I don’t know what that is. And the other residence, if you live by

yourself in that other residence you should put down zero people

currently living there and the person who filled it out has a usual

household elsewhere, that’s the proper thing. And that’s the same

as would apply to someone who spends their winters in Florida but

their summers in New York, they may get two forms, so you fill

out the form where you usually live.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. What does that really mean? You know, if I

could just suggest, you know, if you look at the form there is—you

know, that could lead to a certain amount of confusion because

where you usually live—well, what does that really mean, it’s not

tied to anything quantifiable? And, you know, maybe a suggestion

for the future is have the Bureau say ‘‘well, where do you spend

either most of the time,’’ or, ‘‘do you spend more than 6 months of

the time at this household.’’

I think it could be—if you look at the form it could confuse people, geeks and non-geeks alike. Because I have looked at it and,

you know, I don’t know if I would be clear if I had two residences

and the time was more or less split so that some people who work

in one location, you have two residence like Members of Congress,

you know, Monday through Friday in one location and then on

weekends you spend it in your other location. What you would consider your home because that’s where you have an emotional affinity to, but technically you should be enumerated where you spend

most of the time, which would be your Monday through Friday address even though that might be a small apartment somewhere.

Dr. GROVES. It seems like you figured it out.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. But the thing is remember I’m a geek. So, anyway, I just wanted to point that out as something, that maybe

something that the Census Bureau can work and quantify it in

terms of a time period versus something a little bit more subjective.

Mr. TOWNS. First of all, I want to thank you. That’s why the

hearing is so important. Just having a chance to exchange ideas,

get information out, get input, you know, because generally when

you have a hearing like this I’ll get a bunch of notes from people

in the audience later on, that will indicate—which also is very

helpful. And you have some active leadership here on the census

and of course we want to work with you, we want to make certain

you get a good count. We recognize how important it is. I mean,

no doubt about it. And that we lose resources when we don’t get

it on the count. And we’ve had experience here, you know, with of

course in this borough of not getting a strong count.

We had some very serious problems over the years, that’s the

reason why I’m happy to be able to have a hearing here, so we’re

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able to get the executives in the room and everybody gets a chance

to introduce city council members that were here and, you know,

because they’re also concerned about the census and they’re working hard to make certain that people in the communities are aware

of the fact that the count is now getting ready to start. Of course

we’re hoping that this time around we’ll be able to get a good

count.

I want to thank you, Chairman Clay, for coming to Brooklyn

with the hearing because we feel that it’s important to have this

dialog, so thank you very, very much. I look forward to working

with you, I look forward to working with you, Dr. Groves, to be

able to strengthen it as we move forward.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Chairman Towns. Let me also

thank the people in the borough of Brooklyn and particularly

Chairman Towns for your hospitality and to the subcommittee’s

hand to help us raise awareness of the importance of the census

of counting everyone in order to get an accurate snapshot of what

America looks like and who resides where on that particular day

April 1, 2010. We thank the entire staff for your hospitality, and

thank you to the witnesses also for making this hearing possible.

Without objection the committee stands adjourned. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 11:30 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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