I am passing on a question from one of our strategic planners. "Where
can I find data on Mode of transportation for work trips by county,
travel time to work by county, number of commuters by community/city,
and carpool commuter activity by community/city?" If anyone knows where
to find this information (state of Utah), please let me know.
Thank you!
Julianne Sabula
Utah Transit Authority
Engineering and Construction Planner II
669 West 200 South
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
w. (801) 237-1973
c. (801) 867-5203
jsabula(a)rideuta.com
The Census Bureau provides shape files for TAZs which do not seem to cover
small counties without metro areas. What I need is a shape file for
townships, ranges, and sections for the entire state of Illinois including
rural counties like Iroquois County. My project deals with land use data.
The maps produced by Landview are excellent for my purpose but they produce
only image files not shape files. Can someone help?
Thank you,
Marie Bousfield
I got this from the APDU news on 11-6-09.
-----------------------
Senate Passes Census and BEA Appropriations, Blocks Vitter Amendment
By a vote of 71-28, the Senate passed the Commerce-Justice-Science
Committee appropriations bill on Thursday. The $64.9 billion bill
provides $7.3 billion for the Census Bureau and $96.8 million for the
Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The greater part of Census Bureau funds would support the 2010 Census;
the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program would shift from
pilot to permanent status and receive increased funding. BEA would get
funding for improvements in service industry, regional, and state
foreign direct investment data.
The House version of the CJS appropriations bill was approved on June
18. Both versions now go to a conference committee to reconcile the
differences.
Of particular note, earlier Thursday the Senate voted 60-39 to block
consideration of the amendment proposed by Senator David Vitter (R-LA)
requiring 2010 Census questions on citizenship and immigration status.
The APDU Data Update is delivered to you as a membership service.
http://www.apdu.org/
--
Ed Christopher
708-283-3534 (V)
708-574-8131 (cell)
FHWA RC-TST-PLN
4749 Lincoln Mall Drive, Suite 600
Matteson, IL 60443
I will be out of the office starting 10/29/2009 and will not return until
11/23/2009.
I am currently on vacation and will be back in the office on November 23,
2009. Please contact Dan Goldfarb (dgoldfarb(a)camsys.com) with any project
related questions.
Job Posting: Transportation Planner 1, Iowa Department of Transportation
The Iowa Department of Transportation, Office of Systems Planning is seeking a Transportation Planner that will serve on the Traffic Forecasting, Modeling and Highway Planning Team. Responsibilities of this position will focus on providing critical urban transportation planning technical support to Iowa's nine metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), 18 regional planning affiliations (RPA), smaller cities, and counties; as well as performing a variety of long-range transportation planning activities for the Department of Transportation.
This position will play a critical role in strengthening and improving the department's urban traffic modeling efforts and analytical capabilities using geographic information system software. Additional responsibilities include performing long-range planning activities for highways including capacity analyses, asset management system integration, sufficiency analyses, Census data analysis, etc. Other responsibilities include representing the department and making presentations to MPO and RPA technical committees and policy boards. This position will require good writing, and excellent oral communications skills. Graduation from an accredited four-year college with a Planning or closely related degree is a plus. Excellent written and verbal communication skills are essential. Shift: Days, Monday thru Friday, 8:00 am - 4:30 pm with flextime available. Travel: Overnight travel not regularly required.
In addition to applying to DAS-HRE, all candidates must submit a resume to:
Iowa Department of Transportation
Office of Systems Planning
Attention: Phil Mescher
800 Lincoln Way
Ames, IA 50010
Minimum Qualifications
Graduation from an accredited college or university course work with a major in civil/transportation engineering, community development planning, economics, environmental engineering, mathematics, regional planning, transportation planning or urban planning.
To Apply:
Submit a completed Iowa Department of Administrative Services - Human Resources Enterprise (DAS-HRE) application form by the closing date (11/15/2009). To complete an electronic application form, click on "Apply for Job Vacancy(s)" button. You may also mail an application form to: Iowa Department of Administrative Services - Human Resources Enterprise, Hoover State Office Building, 1305 East Walnut, Des Moines, IA 50319-0150 or fax your application to (515) 281-7970. http://das.hre.iowa.gov/state_jobs.html
Phillip J. Mescher, AICP
Office of Systems Planning
Iowa Department of Transportation
515-239-1629
Phil.Mescher(a)dot.iowa.gov
Phillip J. Mescher, AICP
Office of Systems Planning
Iowa Department of Transportation
515-239-1629
Phil.Mescher(a)dot.iowa.gov
Editor's note: This week's Census News Brief will be issued in two
parts. The first will summarize recent activities related to the FY2010
Commerce appropriations bill and the pending Vitter-Bennett amendment.
The second will focus on operational updates, congressional oversight,
and stakeholder activities.
SENATE STALLED ON FY2010 COMMERCE SPENDING BILL:
* CENSUS STAKEHOLDERS RAMP UP OPPOSITION TO VITTER AMENDMENT
* VITTER SAYS HE'LL MODIFY PROPOSAL TO FOCUS ON CITIZENSHIP, AS NEW
ANALYSIS SHOWS EXCLUDING ONLY UNDOCUMENTED WOULD NOT SAVE STATE'S 7th SEAT
* CONSERVATIVE GROUPS BACK NEW QUESTION ON IMMIGRATION STATUS
* PROPOSAL SPLITS LOUISIANA'S CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION
* CONGRESS EXTENDS STOP-GAP SPENDING BILL THROUGH DEC. 18
Census stakeholder organizations stepped up their opposition to a
proposal by Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and Robert Bennett (R-UT) to
add new questions to the 2010 census on citizenship and immigration
status, as Senate action on the Fiscal Year 2010 Commerce, Justice, and
Science Appropriations bill (H.R. 2847) stalled for another week.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's first attempt to end debate on the
bill (called a 'cloture vote,' which requires 60 ayes) failed by three
votes, with three Democratic senators absent. If a second attempt at
cloture is successful, the Senate Parliamentarian would rule the
Vitter-Bennett amendment out of order ("non-germane"), according to
Republican staff quoted in several news articles. If the cloture vote
fails, Sen. Vitter said he will modify the initial proposal to require a
new question only on citizenship. Sen. Reid told Latino journalists
during an October 29 news tele-conference that he was stalling further
action on the Vitter amendment, comparing the proposed new census
questions to vote suppression efforts aimed at African Americans,
according to a report on the press conference posted on Nuestra Voice
(http://nuestravoice.com/?p=4907).
A coalition of civil rights and progressive advocacy groups held a press
conference on October 20 to discuss their opposition to the
Vitter-Bennett amendment. Wade Henderson, President of the Leadership
Conference on Civil Rights, described an accurate and inclusive census
as "a civil rights imperative." Pointing to the original apportionment
clause's treatment of slaves, Mr. Henderson said the Vitter amendment
"echoes a shameful period when the census counted most African Americans
as three-fifths of a person." Simon Rosenberg, President of NDN, a
"progressive think tank and advocacy organization," questioned the
amendment's motives and consequences, saying, "If enacted the Amendment
would almost certainly disrupt an orderly census count next year,
eventually found to be unconstitutional, all the while starting a highly
divisive conversation about race, the Civil War and the 14th Amendment
in the very first year of America's very first African-American
President." Terry A, representing the Asian American Justice Center, a
member of the Census Bureau's 2010 Census Advisory Committee, said
asking about legal status is "unnecessarily intrusive" and would
heighten already existing skepticism about the confidentiality and
privacy of census responses.
Other groups participating in the press event included NALEO, Hispanic
National Bar Association, MALDEF, People for the American Way, LULAC,
NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Demos, and Center for American
Progress.
Two days later, members of the Congressional Tri-Caucus led a group of
lawmakers discussing "the damaging ramifications of the Vitter-Bennett
amendment to the successful implementation of the 2010 census."
Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) Chairwoman Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)
noted that "presidents from both parties have repeatedly upheld the
importance of counting each and every person residing in the United
States," while CHC 1st Vice-Chair Charles Gonzalez (D-TX) said the
census should not be used as "a political football." Congressional
Black Caucus Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) highlighted the use of census
data to allocate federal program funds and said, "Scare tactics will
only serve to skew the Census data, driving people to not participate."
Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA), chairman of the Congressional Asian Pacific
American Caucus and a member of the House appropriations subcommittee
that funds the Census Bureau, called the Vitter amendment "irresponsible
and counterproductive." Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), who also spoke at the
press conference, said, "The census doesn't exist to score political
points - it exists to give us an accurate picture of our country."
"Immigrants who fear being deported, along with their families and
friends, are much more likely to avoid the census" if the form included
a citizenship question, the House Majority Leader concluded.
Conservative groups urge support for Vitter proposal: Countering
opposition to the Vitter-Bennett amendment, the Eagle Forum called for
support of the amendment "to crack down on the Obama Administration's
handling of the 2010 census" and urged its members to "make sure your
Senators feel the pressure!" "[T]he census is the only way to get an
accurate count of how many illegal aliens are residing in the United
States," the self-described leader of "the pro-family movement" said in
an October 21 action alert. "By counting citizens and non-citizens
alike for congressional reapportionment purposes, the federal government
is doing a massive disservice to those states with lower illegal
immigrant populations."
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) also issued an
action alert in support of the amendment, suggesting that adding new
questions to the census form would "lay the groundwork for reforming how
Congressional seats are apportioned by disregarding illegal aliens and
other non-citizens so that they are no longer able to affect the outcome
of U.S. elections." FAIR, which describes itself as "a member
organization of concerned citizens" that seeks, in part, to "stop
illegal immigration and promote immigration levels consistent with the
national interest," was a member of the Commerce Department's Decennial
Census Advisory Committee in the early 1990s. The group filed an
unsuccessful lawsuit before the 1980 census, FAIR v. Klutznick (486
F.Supp. 564, D.D.C. 1980), to exclude undocumented residents from the
census apportionment counts; the case was dismissed for lack of
standing. FAIR joined dozens of members of Congress in a similarly
unsuccessful legal challenge in 1988 (Ridge v. Verity, 715 F.Supp. 1308,
W.D. Penn. 1989).
Vitter says he will modify amendment to focus on citizenship: Sen.
Vitter told his colleagues and reiterated in press statements over the
past two weeks that he intends to modify his original proposal, which
requires the Census Bureau to ask respondents about their citizenship
and immigration status, to include a new question on citizenship only.
(The original Vitter-Bennett amendment is still pending before the
Senate and cannot be modified until the chamber begins consideration of
the proposal.) Sen. Bennett, the amendment's other sponsor, has not
said publicly if he supports his colleague's effort to change their
initial proposal, and his position is not clear from earlier statements
describing the amendment. The Utah senator sponsored legislation (S.
1688) to require questions on citizenship and legal status in the
decennial census, but he has said he believes political representation
should be based on the "number of legal residents of the United States"
(http://bennett.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id…).
A new analysis for The New York Times by Dr. Andrew Beveridge, a
sociology professor at City of University of New York's Queens College,
examined the potential effects of excluding all non-citizens and only
undocumented residents from the state population totals used for
congressional apportionment. The study projects that Louisiana would
retain its current seven congressional seats only if all non-citizens
were excluded from the apportionment base. (The New York Times reported
on the analysis in an October 28 print-edition article; the Times is a
sponsor of Social Explorer, a web-based application that features census
data for demographic comparisons and analyses. Dr. Beveridge leads the
Social Explorer team and is a consultant to the Times.)
The decennial census has always counted all people, regardless of their
immigration status, living in the United States on Census Day, for
purposes of apportionment. The Constitution calls for an enumeration of
"the whole number of persons in each State." The original Article I
political compromise between northern and southern states, to count
slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of allocating seats
in the House of Representatives, was eliminated by the Fourteenth
Amendment in 1868. (Both constitutional apportionment provisions
exclude "Indians not taxed" from the political base.)
Louisiana delegation splits on support for Vitter: Six of Louisiana's
seven House members joined Sen. Vitter in writing to the state's senior
senator, Mary Landrieu (D), and Sen. Reid, urging them to allow a vote
on Sen. Vitter's proposal. "This is both a crucial national issue and
one that very directly impacts Louisiana," the lawmakers wrote on
October 27. They cited an analysis by Elliott Stonecipher, who they
described as a "demographer," and Louisiana State University law
professor John Baker, projecting that the state would not lose a
congressional district following the 2010 census if the state population
totals used for apportionment included only citizens. Rep. Ahn "Joseph"
Cao (R), whose district includes New Orleans, did not sign the letter.
Sen. Landrieu responded in a letter to Sen. Vitter, saying the amendment
would "only do harm to our country by delaying the Census at [a] cost of
approximately $1 billion to our already beleaguered taxpayers and to our
state by stalling important projects," such as law enforcement grants
based on census data. She noted that the Constitution requires a count
of all "persons" for apportionment purposes and that it would take a
constitutional amendment to change that directive. Sen. Landrieu also
addressed the claim that excluding undocumented immigrants would save
the state from losing a congressional seat. "[A]ny demographer worth
his salt (which would not be Elliott Stonecipher) would tell you that
Louisiana's probable loss of a seat would occur even if there was not
one illegal immigrant in the United States," the senator wrote.
Louisiana was one of only two states to lose population over the past
decade. Before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005,
apportionment projections showed the state retaining its full House
delegation after the 2010 census. An August Wall Street Journal op-ed,
authored by Mr. Stonecipher and Mr. Baker, suggesting that it is
unconstitutional to include undocumented immigrants in the apportionment
calculation, identified Mr. Stonecipher as a Louisiana pollster and
demographic analyst, not a demographer. The authors alternated in their
editorial between citing analyses that exclude only "illegal residents"
and ones that exclude all non-citizens; they asserted at the start that
apportionment should be based on a count of citizens and legal,
permanent residents. (The op-ed is available at
http://online.wsj.com/articl/SB10001424052970204908604574332950796281832.ht….)
House member offers counter-proposal to Vitter: Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA)
introduced legislation (H.R. 3855) to prohibit the Census Bureau from
asking about citizenship or immigration status in the decennial census.
The "Every Person Counts Act" would require the tabulation of the
"total number of persons in each State" for apportionment purposes. The
bill, with 31 cosponsors, was referred to the Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform.
In a statement, Rep. Baca said the Vitter amendment "clearly violates
the spirit of the Constitution" and "would cost our nation millions of
dollars during this time of economic duress." The congressman said he
introduced his measure "in direct response" to Sen. Vitter's proposal.
Temporary 2010 funding bill extended through mid-December: With only
four of 12 regular appropriations bills signed into law for the fiscal
year that started October 1, 2009, Congress passed a second Continuing
Funding Resolution to keep federal agencies running through December 18.
The first stop-gap bill expired on October 31. While most programs
must continue operating at Fiscal Year 2009 funding levels, Congress
carved out an exception for the Census Bureau, which received $7.066
billion to continue final preparations for the 2010 census. The FY2009
funding for the 2010 census was less than half that amount; limiting the
agency to spending at the lower level, even for a couple of months,
would have crippled major operations this fall, including Local Census
Office openings, recruitment and hiring, and final paid media buys,
leading up to the late January enumeration start in remote Alaskan villages.
QUICK LINKS:
Visit the Census Project web site for previous Census News Briefs, fact
sheets, and a weekly blog in support of an accurate 2010 census:
The Census Project
NEW THIS WEEK! Updated analysis of federal program allocations, based
in whole or in part on census data, for Fiscal Year 2008. Prepared by
the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. Click on "Fact Sheets" for
state-by-state, program (national), and program function (national) tables.
Census News Briefs are prepared by Terri Ann Lowenthal, an independent
legislative and policy consultant specializing in the census and federal
statistics. All views expressed in the News Briefs are solely those of
the author. Please direct questions about the information in this News
Brief to Ms. Lowenthal at TerriAnn2K(a)aol.com. Please feel free to
circulate this document to other interested individuals and
organizations. Ms. Lowenthal is a consultant to the nonpartisan Census
Project, organized by the Communications Consortium Media Center in
Washington, DC. Previous Census News Briefs are posted at
www.thecensusproject.org.
--
Ed Christopher
708-283-3534 (V)
708-574-8131 (cell)
FHWA Resource Center Planning Team
4749 Lincoln Mall Drive, Suite 600
Matteson, IL 60443
