Every 10 years, the federal government wants to know who lives where on a certain date for the U.S. Census, a roll call of sorts mandated by the U.S. Constitution.
The first was held in 1790 when “free white men and women,” plus slaves were counted. The 2020 Census will be the 24th.
The information derived from the census determines how many elected representatives a state will have in Congress, plus funding for public programs at the state and local level.
Way back in March — as the COVID-19 pandemic was being acknowledged within the U.S. — households received their official census form via the U.S. Postal Service with information on how to respond by mail, phone or online.
The point was to tell the U.S. government who was living in a household as of April 1, whether they were citizens, non-citizen legal residents, non-citizen long-term visitors and undocumented immigrants. There wasn’t a citizenship question on the form despite efforts by the Trump administration to include one.
Now, census workers are going door to door to get stragglers to fill out their forms. They have until Sept. 30 to get this job done.
There is controversy over this deadline. Recently, the deadline had been Oct. 31, which had been extended because of the pandemic. But the feds decided to push it back to Sept. 30.
The motivation? We guess politics because the pandemic is far from over.
By the way, federal law provides for penalties of up to $5,000 for not responding or for willfully providing false information, but we aren’t aware if that has been enforced.
Next March, the Census Bureau will send redistricting counts to states that will be used to redraw legislative districts, if necessary, and funding formulas based on population changes. Such funding includes programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, Title 1 and school lunch programs.
How are we doing locally on returning the completed census forms? Better than many other places but still a ways to go.
So far, according to Rep. Paul Mark, the national response rate is 63 percent. The state’s rate is 53 percent. And locally, it’s better with Franklin County at 69.5 percent and Greenfield, 71 percent.
But that’s not close enough to 100 percent.
Jessica Atwood, economic development program manager at the Franklin Regional Council of Government, estimated that for every person not counted, a district loses $2,372. If the county is undercounted by 3 percent, it would lose $50 million over the next 10 years.
That’s a lot of money.
Why don’t people return their forms? We chalk it up to a general mistrust of the federal government and that the information gathered could possibly be used against them although by law, any identifiable information from those responding can’t be released.
Actually, it’s only after 72 years that the info is available to other agencies or the general public. The most recent census data being released is from 1940.
Consider the loss to federally funded programs that matter and losing out on our share of the $1.5 trillion that depends solely on census information.
If you haven’t completed your census form, we urge you to make it a priority.
Here are the options: visit my2020census.gov to fill it out online; call 844-330-2020; or mail in the form that came to your address.
It pays to be counted.