Congressional funding an issue for the 2020 census

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Census Bureau is facing a host of challenges with 2020 on the horizon, including budget shortfalls, cost overruns and a shakeup atop the agency—the sudden resignation of Director John H. Thompson in June. There’s apprehension among some groups that President Donald Trump’s hard-line stance on immigration could depress participation, though questions are not asked about immigration status.

It all adds up to one central fear: a census that falls short of an accurate count of the population. The data from that decennial survey are used to map congressional districts, inform policymaking and steer billions of dollars in government resources where they’re needed.

The Government Accountability Office has already placed the 2020 census on its “high-risk list” of programs that are facing peril. There’s a precedent—the 2010 census was also designated a high-risk project, as was the 2000 census before it.

This time, though, there’s a bigger problem. The Census Bureau is readying new technology systems that still need testing, and a lack of funding has already forced the bureau to cancel or scale down some trial runs. “If you don’t test those mechanisms, you risk a failed census,” said Phil Sparks, communications chief at the Census Bureau during the Clinton administration and a co-director of the Census Project, a coalition of groups that rely on objective census data.

A new data-collecting and processing system in the works has been billed as a way for the Census Bureau to save taxpayers more than $5 billion over the decade, combined with other innovations. For the first time, the agency plans to let people submit their data online, potentially raising response rates and cutting down on costlier follow-up work with those who don’t reply. It also wants to use online technology to verify addresses ahead of the census rather than sending staffers into the streets.

For the follow-up fieldwork of contacting “nonresponsive” households, the Census Bureau plans to equip staff with handheld mobile devices rather than the pen-and-paper system used through the last census. The agency had attempted to make that technological jump in 2010. But major problems with the devices were revealed during testing, so following up with nonresponsive households—the bureau’s largest and most costly field operation—was again conducted using the old paper-based system.

That late decision to abandon the new technology plan raised the cost of the 2010 census by up to $3 billion, according to the GAO, making the 2010 test the most expensive ever. If the Census Bureau must fall back on the old methods for 2020, lawmakers and advocates fear costs could again balloon.

Because of the somewhat sparse funding levels now under discussion by Congress and the White House, Census Bureau officials in July indicated they will scrap key portions of the dress rehearsal at two of the three testing sites planned for 2018. One of those sites, a group of counties in southern West Virginia, was seen as a crucial trial of the government’s ability to reach households in rural, hard-toreach parts of the country.

“In rural areas, there’s lack of broadband, you have particular challenges in terms of addresses, etc., and all of these things needed to be tested because this is a new method of taking the census. And it’s apparently not going to be done,” Sparks said. A test planned for urban Providence, R.I., is expected to go forward in full.

At the top of the list of problems is serial underfunding by lawmakers compared to what the Census Bureau says it needs to adequately prepare for the next census starting April 1, 2020.

Congress appropriated $1.47 billion to the Census Bureau in fiscal 2017, an increase from the previous year but about $160 million less than what the Obama administration had requested. This year, the Trump administration and the House and Senate Appropriations committees have all proposed giving the Census Bureau about $1.5 billion for fiscal 2018, which begins Oct. 1. That would be a slight increase from current spending—but short of what may be needed as 2020 approaches.

Rep. Nita M. Lowey of New York, top Democrat on the House Appropriations panel, has called the proposed numbers “shockingly insufficient with 2020 looming.”

Census analysts have said the bureau likely needs $1.8 billion in fiscal 2018, about what the Obama administration had estimated would be needed then, according to preliminary Census Bureau numbers from last year.

Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said the 4 percent bump over current spending levels that House appropriators proposed is “inadequate and unrealistic” compared to the typical annual increase this far into the 10-year cycle.

“There was a 17 percent increase between ‘07 and ‘08 in preparation for the 2010 census,” says Cartwright, a member of the Commerce-JusticeScience Appropriations Subcommittee, which funds the census.