From: Census2000 <Census2000(a)ccmc.org>
Census Bureau Completes Follow-up Visits Ahead of Schedule
Plus: President Nominates New Commerce Secretary;
House Panel Plans Hearing on American Community Survey
Census takers have counted or declared vacant the 42 million households
that did not return a questionnaire by mail, finishing the 'nonresponse
follow-up' (NRFU) phase of Census 2000 about a week ahead of the
scheduled July 7th completion date. Commerce Secretary William Daley
and Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt announced the milestone on
June 29 at Bureau headquarters in Suitland, MD. Sixty-six percent of
the 120 million households on the Bureau's master address list mailed
back their forms by the April 17 cut-off date, reversing a decline in
mail-back rates since the census first relied primarily on mailed
questionnaires in 1970. According to Associated Press reports of the
announcement, Director Prewitt praised the work of agency staff for
helping to make Census 2000 an operational success. "There had been a
sense that this was an incompetent federal agency, that we could not do
things right," the director said, referring to criticism of the 1990
census. "I think we erased a lot of those negatives." The AP wire
service also quoted a spokesman for House Census Subcommittee Chairman
Dan Miller (R-FL), in response to the announcement. "If the bureau has
completed its work and done so in a quality manner, that's good and they
are to be congratulated. But we are not prepared to make that judgment
yet," the spokesman said.
Census takers are now revisiting about 12 million housing units as part
of quality-check activities to improve the accuracy of earlier counting
operations. 'Coverage improvement programs' include revisiting housing
units previously identified as vacant or nonexistent, to be sure there
are no occupants or that the address does not exist. Census enumerators
also are gathering responses from housing units that were built after
the fall 1999 cut-off date for address list development. A separate
group of experienced survey takers is revisiting a sample of households
nationwide as part of the Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation (A.C.E.)
program to measure undercounts and overcounts in the direct counting
phases of the census. Visits to the 224,000 out of 314,000 households in
the A.C.E. sample survey that were not contacted by telephone in May and
early June are scheduled to run through mid-August.
President nominates new Commerce Department head: President Clinton
nominated former California Representative Norman Mineta (D) to succeed
outgoing Secretary of Commerce William Daley. If confirmed, Mr. Mineta
would be the first Asian Pacific American to serve in a Cabinet
position. Secretary Daley announced his decision to step down last
month; he will head Vice President Albert Gore's presidential campaign.
The Census Bureau is an agency of the Commerce Department.
Mr. Mineta represented the San Jose area in the U.S. House of
Representatives for 10 terms, eventually chairing the Committee on
Public Works and Transportation. After retiring from Congress in 1995,
he took a position with Lockheed Martin Corporation, a large
defense-oriented company with a growing presence in the transportation
sector. The son of Japanese immigrants, Mr. Mineta and his family were
sent to an internment camp in Wyoming during World War II when he was 10
years old. He eventually returned to San Jose, where he served on the
city council and then as mayor before winning a seat in Congress in
1974.
According to published news reports, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), chairman
of the Commerce Committee that will consider Mr. Mineta's nomination,
said he supported Mr. Mineta's nomination and would schedule
confirmation hearings as quickly as possible after Congress returns from
its July 4th recess. "He's a good man. He's highly qualified," Sen.
McCain is quoted as saying. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS)
also reacted positively to the nomination, saying, "It's a good choice.
..We all know him and knew him to be an effective legislator."
As a member of Congress, Mr. Mineta was actively involved in debates
over census content and methods during the 1990 count. He fought to
ensure the collection of accurate data on Asian Pacific American
population subgroups and opposed efforts to exclude undocumented
residents from the state population totals used for congressional
apportionment.
House panel to review long form replacement plans: The House
Subcommittee on the Census will hold a hearing on July 20 to review the
Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS). The Bureau hopes the
ACS, which is currently being tested in 31 sites around the country,
will eliminate the need for a traditional census long form starting in
2010. An additional 750,000 households nationwide also are receiving
the ACS questionnaire this year, to help the Bureau compare census long
form data with information collected through the ACS.
The congressional hearing will be the first to focus on the ACS as a
possible replacement for the long form. The census oversight panel has
not released a witness list, although the Census Bureau is expected to
testify. The hearing will start at 10:00 a.m. in room 2247.
Proposed decision-making rule published in Federal Register: On June 20,
the Commerce Department published in the Federal Register a proposed
rule delegating to the Census Bureau director the authority to decide
whether to report statistically corrected census figures to the states
next spring for use in the redistricting process. Director Prewitt
announced the proposed action at a press briefing on June 14. The
official 45-day comment period ends on August 6. Interested parties may
send comments to: John H. Thompson, Associate Director for Decennial
Census, Bureau of the Census, Suitland and Silver Hill Roads, Building
2, Room 3586, Suitland, MD 20233. The proposed rule and related
materials, including a Bureau report on the feasibility of producing
statistically corrected data by the April 1, 2001 legal deadline, are
available on the agency's web site at
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/presskit.html>.
Questions about the information contained in this News Alert may be
directed to Terri Ann Lowenthal at 202/484-2270 or, by e-mail at
terriann2k(a)aol.com. For copies of previous News Alerts and other
information, use our web site www.census2000.org
<http://www.census2000.org>. Please direct all requests to receive News
Alerts, and all changes in address/phone/fax/e-mail, to the Census 2000
Initiative at Census2000(a)ccmc.org or 202/326-8700. Please feel free to
circulate this information to colleagues and other interested
individuals.
The Census Bureau, Geography Division has informed me that
July 14, 2000 is the absolute cut-off date for all TAZ-Verification
participants. This is because the Census Bureau will start work on its final
TIGER 2000 operations on Saturday, July 15, 2000.
Please make sure you complete your verification by Friday, July 14. If you
have completed your verification, please ensure we have the right information
by visiting our website at: http://www.mcs.com/~berwyned/census/tazinfo.html
The website is current as of June 23, 2000.
We will update this website on July 9, 2000 and again on July 17, 2000.
If you have any questions, please call me at 202-366-5021. (E:mail:
ctpp(a)fhwa.dot.gov)
Thank you!
Nanda Srinivasan
