Census disruptions to cost Arkansas, groups lament

FAYETTEVILLE — The covid-19 pandemic disrupted more than a year’s worth of planning by groups seeking as complete a count in the 2020 U.S. census in Arkansas as possible, spokesmen for several of those groups said Wednesday.

The scrambling is expected to impair the tally for historically hard-to-count groups, including children and the elderly, they said. Each also noted the irony

that Arkansas would be better prepared for the current pandemic if it had had a better count in the last census.

Federal taxpayer dollars are distributed on the basis of population — especially health care spending, several of those interviewed pointed out. Arkansas had a participation rate of 69% in the 2010 census, U.S. Census Bureau figures show, meaning 69% of those households receiving census forms mailed them back. This was a full 5% less than the national average, according to bureau figures. Although the bureau sends workers to homes that don’t initially respond, the gap can never fully be made up that way, advocacy groups said.

“We were going to open assistance stations with computers and phones at our community centers. Covid hit us the week before we were to start,” said Maricella Garcia, multicultural liaison for Little Rock.

Groups all over the state started planning in early 2019 for rallies, get-togethers and meetings at churches and other gathering places to boost census participation, said Brad Cameron, communications chairman for the Arkansas Counts statewide committee, the group encouraging and coordinating census participation statewide.

“Food trucks, festivals, meetings at public libraries — all those plans are shelved now,” Cameron said. “Now we’re looking to get the word out in more old-school ways.” Newspapers, for instance, will now play a greater role in trying to reach people in rural areas, he said.

Advocates are concentrating efforts on social media and any other outlets they can, according to Garcia. Even many poor families often have access to a cellphone, which has become a necessity, she said. “We’ve been flooding those with messages and can see they are being talked about,” she said.

“If we can lift the restrictions on gatherings in May or June, we will hit the ground running” on in-person events shelved now, Garcia said. Planned events will go forward with greater urgency but with less advance notice, she said, since advocates don’t know when bans on public gatherings will be lifted.

Those delayed community outreach efforts, though, are a key strategy to reach groups hard to reach by any other means, said Mireya Reith of Fayetteville, founder of immigrant advocacy group Arkansas United. They are also the best forums for addressing the specific concerns of any particular group of people reluctant to participate, she said. People they trust, such as clergy or community leaders, can answer their questions and address their concerns.

“The hard-to-count are now harder to count,” Reith said.

Groups as diverse as Arkansas United and state and local chambers of commerce have made a better count in this census a priority, according to news accounts from across the state. Besides affecting federal spending, the size of the population decides how seats in the U.S. House of Representatives get divided and is a deciding factor in state legislative district boundaries.

Demographic information gathered by the census is vital to businesses deciding where to locate their outlets or factories and where to market their goods, say community groups such as the Northwest Arkansas Council.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Census Bureau also is trying to adapt. Online filing of census responses due to end July 31 will now extend to Aug. 14, at least while field operations set to begin in April were pressed into May, the bureau said.

Arkansans who already have completed their census responses make up, as of Wednesday, 37% of households, according to the bureau. The national response rate at the same time was 38.4%.

Benton County’s response rate stood at 41.6% Wednesday afternoon, compared with Washington County’s 38.2%. Jefferson County’s was 37.4% and Pulaski County’s 39%. The lowest response rate of any Arkansas county on Wednesday was Newton at 4.5%. The highest was Baxter County at 44.7%.

The U.S. Census Bureau pushed back any field operations, including hiring more workers who will go door to door to fill in gaps, until at least April 15. The bureau announced the decision Saturday and advised interested people to watch for further updates.

Arkansas communities such as Pine Bluff could lose first-class city designation if hard-to-count populations are omitted from a census, said Sen. Linda Chesterfield, R-Little Rock. That designation is vital to receiving federal taxpayer funds for a variety of programs, she said.

The biggest challenge will be reaching Arkansans without regular internet access, Chesterfield said. “There are parts of Little Rock that don’t have that,” she said. “If you have internet access, you can fill out the census in minutes. You’re stuck at home. What else are you going to do?” This is the first U.S. census to allow online completion of the form.

Mary Liddell of Pine Bluff was appointed to head up the census count for the city. By this time, she said, she would have held a number of public meetings. She said Wednesday that she had planned to visit school districts, had set up stations “all over the city for people to be bused to do the census online.” Those efforts were set to start Wednesday, she said.

“Of course, none of that materialized,” she said.

Instead, Liddell said, she mobilized her Complete Count Committee, consisting of 150 people who have pledged to assist in the census effort in Pine Bluff, to begin a telephone, text and email campaign. She also began reaching out to churches, the NAACP and the National Association of University Women to enlist their help.

“I kicked off a number 20 campaign and asked every Complete Count Committee person to contact 20 people and to have them ask those people to contact 20 people,” she said. “I’ve contacted all of the fraternities and sororities here because they were all on board before the virus came.”

She said she also has contacted the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and Southeast Arkansas College to mobilize people there as well.

“They may be closed, but they’ve got people at home working,” she said.