Census Group Urges Adequate Funding and Clause Removal

In the US, stakeholder coalition The Census Project has written to the Senate Appropriations Committee prior to the passage of the final Fiscal Year 2026 funding bill, requesting that it provides the Census Bureau with 'no less than $1.6765 billion', and asking that Section 605 be removed from the bill.

The letter says FY 2026 is 'a crucial year' in building up efforts towards the 2030 Census, with preparations - and therefore costs - beginning to 'exponentially increase.' Operations during the year will include conducting the 'critically important' 2026 Census Test in six geographically and demographically diverse sites nationwide. The signatories note that 'As we learned in the run up to the 2020 Census, shortchanging funding for testing at this point in the planning process introduces greater risk to a successful outcome. Adequate support for decennial census preparations now will reduce the risk of requiring unplanned, additional funding in the peak years at the end of the decade and improve the agency's ability to conduct an inclusive, accurate count in 2030.'

Section 605, as already reported on this site, states that 'None of the funds in this Act may be used to enforce involuntary compliance, or to inquire more than twice for voluntary compliance with any survey conducted by the Bureau of the Census.' The coalition says this clause if adopted 'would prohibit enforcement of the mandatory response requirement on the decennial headcount and the American Community Survey (ACS), while also restricting the Bureau's ability to conduct non-response follow-up operations across all of its surveys,' with 'a devastating impact' on the decennial census. Specifically, it states: 'According to analysis done by the Census Quality Reinforcement task force, after two contacts the 2020 Census had only counted 28 percent of all U.S. households.'

Howard Fienberg, Senior VP Advocacy for the Insights Association and a Co-Director of the Census Project, told DRNO: 'The 2020 Census demonstrated that shortchanging funding for research and planning in the middle of the decade is a fool's errand, leading to the elimination of important tests and rehearsals that might have improved the accuracy of final data from rural areas, American Indian reservations, and small populations. Repeating those mistakes in the 2030 Census cycle would be the height of stupidity.'

Web site: www.thecensusproject.org .