STATE OF THE STATE
Illinois could lose dollars, clout if
everyone isn't counted in the Census
by Burney Simpson
You have to play to win, goes the old saying. The same could be true for the decennial Census. Every person counted can mean more in federal dollars for states, counties and cities. That money can be used to help poor people, provide nutrition for infants, buy school books, shore up public transportation and build roads.
When folks are missed, they miss out.
Chicago officials, for example, contend that an undercount of 159,000 residents in the 1990 Census cost that city as much as $200 million. This time around, every person missed could cost the city $3,391, according to Mayor Richard M. Daley in his letter to the Chicago Sun-Times last April.
And it's not just residents of cities who could lose out. Rural residents can be missed too. Wherever they live, those most likely to be missed are those who might benefit the most from being counted: the poor, children and seniors living on their own.
Along with money, the Census can mean political power. According to Census Bureau estimates from last July, Illinois is in danger of losing one of its 20 seats in the U.S. Congress. This is because the state's population has remained flat, while the sunbelt continues to grow.
"We're on the bubble to lose a seat," says Charles Wheeler, director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield. "So if we do a haphazard count, and other states do a better job, we would lose a seat."
"My estimate shows we will lose a seat," says Sue Ebetsch, a coordinator with the state's data center that studies the Census numbers. "We're just trying to keep our 20th seat. Our goal is to retain that."
In fact, Illinois lost two seats after the 1990 Census.
Some other states that lost seats last time around have chosen to look at the Census as an opportunity, a way to reach the uncounted. They've invested in fresh campaigns to promote the count. But for the most part, Illinois has relied on the Census Bureau and its outreach efforts to do most of its work.
And thus far, the numbers indicate Chicago, the state's most populous city, hasn't learned much from its 1990 experience. Activists working to pump up the numbers are saying if the count is down the city will have no one to blame but itself.
The problem should be simple to remedy.
Even states that have the most reason to be complacent are going all out to count the undercounted. According to preliminary Census figures issued last July, Georgia could pick up two congressional seats and California at least one, if population growth trends continue. Still, those two states have targeted the undercounted.
California budgeted $24.7 million for its Census efforts last year and organized local outreach committees composed of leaders in the political, religious, business and education communities. Representatives of the state's ethnic groups were included. The thinking was that the undercounted would be more likely to respond to an appeal by a respected figure in their neighborhoods than a government worker, says Ditas Katague, deputy campaign director for California Complete Count.
"They are going to work with those they trust: the local priest, health care giver and educator," says Katague. "You have to use the infrastructure."
California lost $2.2 billion in federal money from the 1990 undercount. But state officials determined they could break even on a $25 million investment this time around by successfully reaching 1 percent of those who were undercounted last time around.
That state surpassed its goal easily, says Katague. California has garnered a response rate of 68 percent, beating the national average. As a result, that state could receive an additional $1 billion in federal aid over the next decade. And, of course, it stands to win that congressional seat.
Meanwhile, Georgia spent nearly $3 million on its Census efforts in the last two fiscal years, according to Robert Giacomini, a director of research at the Georgia Institute of Technology,
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and an adviser to that state's Complete Count Committee. He says the 1990 Census missed 143,000 residents of Georgia, costing the state a congressional seat. This time, the effort included live phone banks and television ads aimed at reaching African Americans and the poor. In one ad, Gov. Roy Barnes warns, "If you don't answer the Census, Georgia will be educating children in New York for the next 10 years."
Georgia reversed a downward response trend, and 63 percent of its residents sent back the mailed Census form.
In contrast, Illinois put no money in its budget for ads or outreach. And no one was named to coordinate the effort. This state rested on an executive order Gov. George Ryan sent to his agency chiefs last December, which urged them to promote the Census to the people they worked with, and asked for a weekly progress report, according to a spokesman in the governor's office. The order is not on the state's Web site and was not made available to the press.
"The governor's office directed us to do outreach to our customers and clients. That could be homeless centers or employment training centers," says Brian Reardon, a spokesman for the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs. "There was a concerted effort to get the word out. They knew what each state agency was doing."
Reardon argues it made no sense to do advertising when the Census Bureau itself was doing ads.
But some community activists who have been promoting the Census believe the city and the state have been asleep at the wheel. The leader of one prominent Hispanic organization says attempts to contact the governor were ignored.
"I called the Latino affairs director and never got anywhere. They had no budget to do anything," says Ana Maria Soto, regional Census director for the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund.
Soto says she began working on promoting the Census nearly two years ago. Efforts included public service announcements by Latino celebrities on Spanish radio and television, articles in community papers, a cable access program and promotion at neighborhood festivals.
But there has been no coordination among city, state and county officials, according to Jeryl Levin, director of the Countdown 2000 Project at the Illinois Ethnic Coalition. Levin says she attended 30 planning meetings over the course of two years but no one from the state ever showed up. The coalition has 2,200 members and works with more than 100 ethnic groups, primarily in the Chicago metropolitan area.
Levin believes Chicago and state officials counted too much on ads and outreach by the Census Bureau itself. But the agency's campaign targeted members of the middle class, who were going to send the form back anyway. "You needed public relations to sell it to those who have had a bad experience with the government or don't trust the government," says Levin.
Still, the Census Bureau finds the Illinois response pretty good. By the end of April, 67 percent of Illinois households had responded, 2 percent better than the national rate. This initial response rate is used as a measure of how well a locality has done. And to determine where to send the enumerators who have to walk door to door to reach the undercounted.
In Chicago, the response rate on mailed forms was only 52 percent, despite the $800,000 in city money and another $750,000 in corporate in-kind donations spent to encourage residents to participate.
Chicago knows who is being missed, according to Don Davis, the city's point man on the Census. Children under 14 make up a third to a half of the undercounted.
Another 25 percent of those missed are "unidentified households," which could include a family in a new building. Adult males 25 to 65 years old make up about another 25 percent of the undercount. "Men are more mobile. They could be
temporarily sleeping on their brother's couch, or at a girlfriend's," says Davis. Homebound seniors and public housing residents who may be violating a lease make up the rest of the undercount.
Davis argues the city numbers will improve after the enumerators are done in July. "The [initial] response rate is an indicator, but sometimes it is overplayed."
It's not just the state's biggest city that could undercount some of its citizens. Impoverished East St. Louis had a response rate of only 47 percent. And communities in remote areas could have difficulty with the count. To rely on the Census Bureau to find everyone is a mistake, some argue.
"The federal government never asks the local governments to help," says Rep. William Black, a Danville Republican. "They say trust us Ñ we know what we're doing. It's a typical federal bureaucracy." Black says some school systems in his district didn't get all the money they deserved last decade.
In outlying areas, there may not be mail delivery so people pick it up at a central post office. When the Census uses Zip code maps to determine what school district a child is in, that student can be misplaced. "This is not a compact, contiguous metro area," says Black. "There might be three school districts in that Zip code."
About 110 children attending the Oakwood school district outside Danville weren't counted in 1990, and that district lost $1.6 million in poverty funds over the decade, according to school Superintendent James McNellis. "The Census isn't sure what district the child is in. A digitized map may not have all the roads where people live," he says.
Oakwood didn't get all the money it expected for its lunch programs, so the district had to pick up that cost. Now, school officials are scrambling to find the money to replace the 98-year-old building the district has been using. "We have classes on stages, we convert closets, and we use the custodian's room. We need the revenue," says McNellis.
Oakwood learned the hard way that you have to be in the numbers game to score federal dollars.
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