Under the new plan, census enumerators must visit all unresponsive households, increasing the field workload from about 30 million to 45 million visits. Based on advice from many independent experts, the Bureau had planned to visit a large sample of nonresponders in each census tract and use that knowledge to estimate characteristics for the remaining households. But, the Supreme Court interpretation of current law requires the Bureau to count the population of each state without any sampling for congressional apportionment purposes. The Bureau has also increased paid advertising, will hire more outreach staff and enumerators, and double-check all households reported as vacant to conduct the best count possible without scientific sampling. The Bureau will check the quality of that count with a 300,000 household survey, in order to provide more accurate numbers for non-apportionment purposes such as redistricting and allocating program dollars to states and cities.
More funding is needed to finish the count and publish the data.
Funding for the census does not end in fiscal year 2000. In 2001, the Census Bureau must continue tabulating and publishing the enormous amount of information collected in Census 2000. The FY99 funding bill allowed the Census Bureau to spend money only until June 15, as Congress awaited a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on two challenges to the use of sampling in the Bureau's original plan. The Court handed down its ruling in Jan. 1999, and the Bureau unveiled a revised Census 2000 plan in February to comply with the decision. In May 1999, Congress agreed to lift the spending restriction and fund census preparations through the end of the fiscal year.