Census Count

An accurate census count is a vital national imperative. It not only means critical resources to under-served communities, but also accurate political representation -- an underpinning of democracy. African-Americans face great challenges. Our communities are disproportionately impacted by a host of social and economic issues. A correct census profile can help address this by ensuring appropriate funding for government services, strong political representation and civil rights enforcement.

The Hispanic population's growth in Maryland and several other states far outpaced previous estimates, according to an analysis of census data released this week. In Maryland, the 2010 census counted about 46,000 more Hispanic individuals than the Census Bureau had estimated were in the state, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan group that studies the country's Hispanic population. At 10.7 percent, Maryland's was the fourth-largest underestimate in the country, behind Alabama, Louisiana and Kansas, the center reported this week.

Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher has decided not adjust the census count, a decision that mayors say will cost cities millions. Statisticians have said the census missed about 5.3 million Americans. Mosbacher said he preferred to stick to tradition and not adjust the figures based on statistics. What do you think? Should the census numbers be adjusted, or not? Were you counted, or not?The call is local and must be made from a touch tone phone. The SUNDIAL number is 783-1800 or, in Anne Arundel County, 268-7736.

Maryland residents who have not mailed their census forms will be visited by one of the roughly 12,000 census takers who began door-to-door surveying this weekend. Through July 10, the Census Bureau will attempt to conduct the 10-question surveys in person with the estimated 26 percent of Marylanders who did not send back their census forms by the April 16 deadline. The in-person interviews are part of the federally mandated 2010 census count. Census takers began canvassing the state on Saturday, with about 2,500 being deployed to Baltimore City, said Sylvia Ballinger, media specialist for the Census Bureau.

Bathed in the spotlight of Capitol Hill, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke told a House subcommittee about what the city thinks is a clear mistake in the 1990 census count in Baltimore.Schmoke said the census-takers missed the Chesapeake Commons Apartments, a building he rides by each day.But, in spite of the mayor's contention that Chesapeake Commons' residents were not counted, the building apparently was visited by census-counters.Chesapeake's property manager, Diane Younger, said yesterday that she provided a census worker with all the information needed to count the people in the building who had not sent in their forms.

Because an estimated 101,000 Marylanders went uncounted in the last federal census, the state of Maryland has formed a committee to ensure an accurate enumeration in the year 2000.The census count is considered important because millions in government funds are awarded based on population and income criteria. Political representation is also based on the census count."By providing a statistical profile of our communities, the 2000 Census will tell us and future generations about the way we lived at the dawn of the new millennium," said state Planning Director Ronald M. Kreitner.

HARRISBURG, Pa. - One neighborhood is urban, largely black and poor. The other is suburban, virtually all white, and middle and upper class. But they represent two sides of the same coin, the yin and the yang of the problems the Census Bureau experiences in trying to carry out a count of the United States' population.Statisticians estimate that in 1990 the Census Bureau counted too few residents on the Hill, the low-income neighborhood on the south side of this state capital, while it tallied too many in New Cumberland, a small bedroom community across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg.

1990: Census count up 174 million since 19001994: Estonia ferry sinks; 900 dead1994: 4.4 million-year-old hominid is foundPub Date: 12/08/99

Mayor Kurt Schmoke has directed the city to join a lawsuit seeking an adjustment in the 1990 census, charging that the federal government had political motives for not raising the population count.Schmoke said yesterday that city lawyers are moving to have Baltimore join the lawsuit filed by New York City and 31 other cities, states, organizations and individuals. The suit, which seeks a court order to adjust the census count, is pending in federal court in New York."I had been reluctant to join the suit, thinking that it would be better to work with the Census Bureau," Schmoke said.

Pearl Rzeczkowski has lived in the same house on Gough Street for 40 years, but when the Census Bureau did its Baltimore count it somehow missed her."Nobody has been around," Rzeczkowski said today.Asked whether she heard that the census was being taken, she said, "I may have heard it but I didn't pay it any mind."Rzeczkowski apparently is not alone. City officials say she is among an estimated 20,000 Baltimoreans missed during the recent census count. As a result, Baltimore is asking the Census Bureau to adjust preliminary figures showing that the city has lost 66,000 residents -- 8.5 percent of its population -- over the past decade.

W ith the April 1 deadline already passed for citizens to complete the census questionnaires sent out by the government earlier this year, only 45 percent of Baltimore City households have filled out the forms and mailed them back. That's the lowest percentage of returns of any jurisdiction in the state, according to the Census Bureau, and even worse than the 2000 census, when slightly more than half the city's households had responded by this time. Although for technical reasons it's difficult to make direct comparisons with previous counts, the drop-off in returns this year should be sounding alarm bells for a city government facing a $120 million budget shortfall and the prospect of painful cuts in municipal services.

With apologies to Peter Schmuck, I'd like to examine and comment on a few of the major, ostensible goals of the census: Item: Collection of demographic data to include age, sex, race, national/ethic origin, living arrangements, and dwelling type. My take: All of this to be spit back at us in charts and graphs to further advance class/group envy, divisiveness, pitting one American against another and the perversion of our cherished motto from "E pluribus unum" into "E pluribus squared."

An accurate census count is a vital national imperative. It not only means critical resources to under-served communities, but also accurate political representation -- an underpinning of democracy. African-Americans face great challenges. Our communities are disproportionately impacted by a host of social and economic issues. A correct census profile can help address this by ensuring appropriate funding for government services, strong political representation and civil rights enforcement.

NEW YORK - The city with the largest American Indian population, according to the 2000 Census, is not Phoenix. Not Los Angeles. It is New York City. The news is a surprise even to some Indians living in the city. "You're kidding, right?" said Rosemary Richmond, the director of the American Indian Community House in Manhattan. The census counted 41,289 American Indians and Alaska natives living in the city in 2000. And although the Census Bureau's form allowed people to claim more than one race, helping increase the numbers from previous years, when the census counted those people who claimed only some American Indian or Alaska native heritage, New York City was still No. 1, with 87,241.

PERHAPS IT STARTED with the U.S. Constitution, when slaves were counted as three-fifths of an American. Years of struggle put matters right. Yet, minorities still face policies and decisions that seem to diminish their standing. Florida's failed election system prevented an alarming number of African-Americans from voting. U.S. Civil Rights Commission chairwoman Mary Frances Berry, after hearings in Florida, lamented a lack of urgency to reform a system that may have discriminated against black voters.

With more than $1 billion in federal funds potentially at stake, census workers are making an 11th-hour push to count Maryland's uncounted, a large portion of whom live in Baltimore. After a deluge of Census 2000 mailings and hundreds of thousands of knocks on doors, state and city officials are hoping the telephone can capture the strays. The U.S. Census Bureau has given the state a two-week extension, until Friday, to run toll-free hot lines allowing people to make themselves known. Besides manning the hot lines, the bureau has sent 1,080 enumerators to Baltimore's streets to check and recheck new buildings and those listed as vacant and abandoned.

Mayor Martin O'Malley will pay Democratic political strategist Cheryl Benton $61,000 to get an accurate count of Baltimore residents for the 2000 U.S. Census and to serve as a Capitol Hill lobbyist. O'Malley pointed to Baltimore's ranking as 91st among 100 cities in the accuracy of its 1990 Census count as his reason for Benton's hiring, announced yesterday. The census, a national count of residents undertaken by the federal government every 10 years, is critical to cities such as Baltimore that receive much of their federal funding based on population estimates.