 | |||
     | |||
Honorable Richard Shelby
Chairman
Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science
Committee on Appropriations
S-146A The Capitol
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Chairman Shelby:
We are a diverse group of stakeholders interested in ensuring accurate, comprehensive data to support policy development, program administration, and the prudent investment of fiscal resources in both the public and private sectors. We are deeply concerned about the level of funding ($727.4 million) the Senate Appropriations Committee allocated for the U.S. Census Bureau in the Fiscal Year 2006 Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations bill (H.R. 2862). We urge the Congress to appropriate at least $832.2 million in fiscal year 2006 to ensure thorough 2010 census planning, continuation of the full American Community Survey (including group quarters), and the continuation of other surveys and censuses essential to public and private sector decision-making in a rapidly changing world.
Planning for the 2010 census is at a crucial point. The Census Bureau will conduct its final field test in 2006 in Travis County, Texas and on the South Dakota Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation. Key operational innovations the bureau plans to test and evaluate include replacement questionnaires to unresponsive households, dual language forms, and automated field data collection, as well as improved enumeration methods on American Indian reservations, which have suffered historically from disproportionate undercounts.
In their committee report, Senate appropriators emphasized the importance of high mail return rates, which are essential for cost containment and data quality. A targeted second mailing to initially unresponsive households and English-Spanish questionnaires could boost mail-back rates significantly, but the Census Bureau will not pursue either method if it does not test them under census-like conditions. The use of hand-held computers to collect information during door-to-door visits holds great promise for boosting productivity, lowering costs, and improving data quality. Automated data collection would replace large amounts of paper questionnaires and reduce the vast infrastructure needed to implement non-response follow-up.
These promising innovations and other improvements to census operations are in jeopardy under the Senate funding level. The Census Bureau will cancel one or both 2006 tests, eliminating the final opportunity to assess changes to the census design before the 2008 Census Dress Rehearsal.
Equally alarming, the Census Bureau has said it will suspend the American Community Survey (ACS) after only one year of nationwide implementation and prepare to administer a traditional long form in the 2010 census if conferees adopt the Senate funding level. Congress has already appropriated nearly $650 million to develop the ACS, an investment that will yield substantial benefits in 2006 and beyond if the survey proceeds as planned, as more timely data for increasingly smaller areas become available. If the Census Bureau halts the survey, decision-makers at all levels of government and in the private sector will lose a long-awaited and valuable tool for monitoring change and emerging needs in communities across the country. Reverting to the 2000 census design in 2010 also will cost taxpayers an additional $1.3 billion.
The Census Bureau is an unsurpassed source of data on our population and the communities in which we live. These data guide countless planning and investment decisions, support program evaluation and enforcement, and illuminate conditions that require policy intervention. We urge the Senate to increase funding for the Census Bureau when it considers the Commerce Appropriations bill or, if this is not possible, to accede to the House in conference, to ensure full funding for 2010 census redesign, the American Community Survey (ACS), and other critical statistical activities.
Sincerely,
Charles M. Loveless,
Director of Legislation
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)
W. Paul Farmer, AICP,
Executive Director
American Planning Association
Dr. Sally T. Hillsman,
Ph.D., Executive Officer
American Sociological Association
Patricia C. Becker,
President
APB Associates
Dr. Wendy Manning, Ph.D.,
President
Association of Population Centers
Howard J. Silver, Ph.D.,
Executive Director
Consortium of Social
Science Associations
Edward J. Spar, Executive
Director
Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics
Dr. Sandra J. Newman,
Ph.D., Director and Professor of Policy Studies
Institute for Policy Studies
Johns Hopkins University
Karen K. Narasaki, President
and Executive Director
National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC)
Hilary O. Shelton, Director
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),
Washington Bureau
Joseph Stanton, Senior
Staff Vice President for Government Affairs
National Association of Home Builders
Arturo Vargas, Executive
Director
National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational
Fund (NALEO)
James P. Firman, President
and CEO
The National Council
on Aging
Sheila Crowley, President
National Low Income Housing Coalition
Doug Bibby, President
National Multi Housing Council
Amanda M. Burden, Chair,
New York City Planning Commission and Director
New York City Department of City Planning
L. Brooks Patterson,
County Executive
Oakland County Michigan
Anh Phan, Director of
Communications
Organization of Chinese Americans
Mark A. Wyckoff, FAICP,
President
Planning & Zoning Center, Inc.
Dr. Charles Hirschman,
Ph.D., President
Population Association of America
William P. Butz, President
Population Reference Bureau
Gary Petroni, President
Southeast Michigan Census Council
Gerald Storch, Vice
Chairman
Target Corporation
Tamara Lucas Copeland,
President
Voices for America's Children