State aims to get all counted in census

With new deadline Monday, New Mexicans have a few extra days to participate

With time ticking toward the deadline for New Mexico to compete its U.S. census count, nearly 97 percent of the state’s residents have responded.

State leaders and census advocates want 100 percent, estimating each person not counted costs the state more than $3,700 in federal dollars.

Perhaps the state will get there — or at least closer to the goal — now that Wednesday’s deadline has been extended to Monday. And the state count has undergone a meteoric rise from the beginning of the month, when it was only at 73 percent.

“A few extra days gives us more time to get the word out and try to get people to respond,” said Krista Kelley, a consultant from Motiva Corp., the company hired by Santa Fe County for census outreach efforts.

Kelley said those extra days could help the state get its final numbers to 98 percent or 99 percent.

“Everyone has an interest in getting those numbers up,” she said. “I know all communities are going all out to do that push.”

Still, the new date, announced late last week by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, sends a mixed message, given it’s the third deadline to be set by the feds, said Cristina Caltagirone, a special projects coordinator for Rio Arriba County’s Economic Development Department.

She’s been overseeing efforts to increase census participation in the region — initiatives that have increased in intensity since early August, when the U.S. Census Bureau suddenly announced it would end the count by Sept. 30, a month earlier than planned.

Last week, a federal judge told the Census Bureau it must stick to its original Oct. 31 deadline. The Trump administration has since appealed that decision, and the legal debate about the issue continues to play out in the courts.

As a result, Caltagirone said, “It’s absolutely ridiculously confusing now for everybody — for the census count committee, for the volunteers helping with events, for the people we are trying to convince to do the census.

“It’s on again, off again.”

The U.S. Constitution requires the federal government to count the population every 10 years. The data is used to create boundaries for congressional districts, determines political representation and, at times, power. It also is used to allot federal spending on a broad range of programs — from highway maintenance to education, school lunches to Medicaid.

The money, of course, is of no small import. Based on Counting for Dollars 2020, a study authored by Andrew Reamer of George Washington University, New Mexico received $7,816,466,854 in the 2016 fiscal year from federal funds distributed through 55 federal spending programs, guided by data derived from the 2010 census.

Based on Census Bureau data released Monday, 96.9 percent of New Mexico residents had responded to census surveys. Only six states had a lower percentage than New Mexico.

Fifty-eight percent of New Mexico residents self-responded, meaning they filled out their census forms without contacts or help by phone or in person from Census Bureau employees or volunteers. That’s one of the lowest rates in the nation, and state leaders cited it earlier this month to raise red flags about the low number of people taking part.

Sometimes self-reporting data is all individual county leaders have. Kelley said Santa Fe County’s self-reporting rate was nearly 61 percent as of Tuesday, but she did not have data relating how many other residents were counted through census or volunteer efforts.

Caltagirone said the self-reporting figure for Rio Arriba County is 31.4 percent.

New Mexico is among the toughest states to get an accurate count, according to a 2017 City University of New York study. That analysis found 48 percent of New Mexicans live in areas where the population is hard to count.

And even with a few extra days to up those numbers, Caltagirone said the fact that some census partners — whom she described as “drivers and decision makers” — have already been pulled from the field will make efforts to increase participation challenging.

She’s concerned Rio Arriba County will finish with “a historic undercount.”

Still, she said, the extra time is a small gift.

“I’ll take anything I can get at this point,” she said. “Any extra time, any additional opportunity — particularly if we still have census enumerators on the ground counting — will help.”

Nora Meyers Sackett, spokeswoman for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, agreed.

“Certainly the administration is glad for any additional time,” she said in an email Tuesday.

“A month would be better, but a week can make a difference, too,” she said. “The governor is certainly as steadfast as ever about the importance of a complete count — New Mexicans who haven’t yet completed the census should go on and get it done.”