With 2020 Census looming, it’s time to make sure Texans count
Texas should fare well as a result of the 2020 Census.
If we don’t, it’ll be because a bunch of politicians based in Austin decided to shoot themselves, and the rest of us, in the foot by failing to fund the decennial counting effort.
The Lone Star State has experienced significant population growth over the past decade. The 2010 Census found the state had a population of 25.1 million people. The bureau’s most recent estimates show that by the end of 2019, the state had nearly 29 million residents.
That being the case, Texas is in line to pick up at least two seats, and possibly three, in the U.S. House of Representatives as a result of the 2020 Census and the reapportionment that will follow. The census also kicks off the highly political process of redrawing political boundaries, or redistricting.
Texans can also expect to see a boost in federal funding for education and Medicaid, among other programs, as a result of population growth.
But measuring that growth precisely is no easy task, says Victoria deFrancesco Soto, assistant dean for civic engagement and a lecturer at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Getting people to fill out any survey takes effort,” Soto told me this week.
And state leaders have decided to leave that effort, in this case, largely to civic organizations and local governments. The latter, to their credit, are stepping up to the plate: In Houston, for example, city and Harris County leaders are partnering with more than 50 organizations in pursuit of a complete count. Harris County set aside up to $4 million for this initiative last year, and the city of Houston is chipping in an additional $650,000.
In neighboring Fort Bend
County, officials are allocating $300,000 for census outreach.
“An inaccurate count means less resources for the residents of Fort Bend — over $2.3 billion in federal funding is at stake for the next decade,” said KP George, the Democratic county judge. “That’s new schools, new hospitals and roads for our communities.”
State leaders, however, have declined to pony up for any sort of census outreach initiative. Some Republicans consider promoting the census to be the natural purview of the federal government, of course. But it’s also true that the state’s population growth likely favors Democrats, knowing what we know about demographics; that might have dampened the GOP’s enthusiasm for a process that historically had bipartisan support.
“What’s just so frustrating,”
Soto said, “is that an undercount in a census hurts everybody.”
A small undercount — perhaps 1 percent of the population — could cost Texas nearly $300 million per year in federal funding for Medicaid alone, according to a study from George Washington University. And we’re at risk of such an undercount under the best of circumstances.
Roughly a quarter of Texas residents live in “hard to count” areas, according to the Center for Public Policy Priorities, meaning areas that had a low response rate in the 2010 Census. The various challenges that complicated the census a decade ago are well-known, and haven’t been adequately addressed.
Researchers have found that young children are at risk of being undercounted, especially if they live in low-income households; that’s a major concern in Texas, which is home to roughly 10 percent of the nation’s kids. Renters often miss out on the long-form questionnaire, if it’s mailed to a previous address.
Homeless Texans are often hard to locate in the first place. And although the census counts all residents — regardless of their citizenship or legal status — it’s often difficult to muster responses from those living in the country without legal permission, or people in mixed-status households.
This year, experts anticipate additional challenges in getting an accurate count of immigrant households. After President Donald Trump’s election, the U.S. Department of Commerce sought to ask about citizenship status on the 2020 Census. The courts ultimately blocked the plan, but confusion about the citizenship question persists. A new survey from the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) finds that 48 percent of Latino respondents believe there will be a citizenship question on the census.
State funding for a coordinated public-information campaign might have helped alleviate those concerns. But the battle over the citizenship question seems to have yielded a politicization of the entire process.
Texas isn’t the only state in which leaders have decided to leave the effort to volunteers; lawmakers in GOP-led Florida, for example, also decided not to pony up for any initiatives that might ensure a more complete count. California, by contrast, is spending $187 million in an effort to ensure that the state’s population is accurately counted.
I reached out to state Rep. César Blanco of El Paso, who authored a measure that would have established a statewide Complete Count Commission. The bill didn’t even get a hearing in the Republican-led Texas Legislature. I asked him why not.
“Politics,” said Blanco, a Democrat.
That’s the best explanation available, but for Texans, it shouldn’t be a satisfactory one. The census isn’t about ideology, just arithmetic. A statewide effort to ensure an accurate count would have been beneficial for all of us, especially since Texas is likely heading into some lean budget cycles over the next decade.
What’s done is done, though. Or not done, in this case. So local leaders and advocates with various organizations are gearing up for a herculean and highstakes challenge. The Census Bureau will mail out its longform questionnaires in midMarch, and will start gathering responses April 1.
Ramiro Fonseca, the community engagement manager for Project GRAD, a nonprofit that provides college access and career advice to low-income students, said he believes Houston is doing what it can to obtain an accurate count given its limited resources. He wishes state officials had also made it a priority.
Said Fonseca: “I feel it’s everyone’s responsibility to spread the word.”