Costly, yet widely supported, census gets rolling

By Dan Chapman and Leon Stafford

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

After much hoopla and expense, the U.S. Census Bureau is ready to try and count every U.S. resident.

On Monday, 120 million households began receiving letters alerting residents to next week’s official census 2010 kickoff, a move intended to rally Americans to fill out the forms, return them by mail and avoid costly follow-up interviews.

Congress has budgeted $7.2 billion this fiscal year to accurately count every resident. Tens of millions of dollars, though, could be saved if the mail-in response rate is high, said Robert Groves, director of the U.S. Census Bureau.

“You don’t have to think about it very long: Salary costs drive this,” Groves told The Atlanta Journal Constitution reporters and editorial writers Monday morning. “If you don’t fill out the form and mail it back, we’re going to spend that much more money.”

The Census Bureau has crisscrossed the country the last few months rallying Americans to the benefits that come from filling out the 10-question form.

Groves joined Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed on Monday at Jean Childs Young Middle School for the launch of the Census in Schools program. A day earlier, at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the Census-sponsored No. 16 car, driven by Greg Biffle, finished eighth.

The Bureau will spend $1.2 million sponsoring Biffle’s car for three races. It spent $2.5 million on Super Bowl ads last month, drawing some criticism for wasteful spending. Over the last decade, Congress has allocated $14.7 billion tallying Americans and readying for this decennial count.

Criticism over spending largely has been muted. Most members of Congress, including U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.), understand that the Census is constitutionally mandated and crucial in divvying up political representation and $400 billion annually in federal spending.

“It’s a very big country with more than 300 million people and it costs a lot of money to do a head count,” said Brian Robinson,  a spokesman for Westmoreland, who chairs the House Republican Census Task Force. “It can also save money going forward by encouraging people to respond to the forms.”

Groves said taxpayers save $85 million in door-to-door labor costs for every 1 percent of households that respond by mail. Mail-in forms cost the federal government $1 per person. To track down a household that didn’t return a form costs $25, Groves said.

Nationally in 2000, 67 percent responded by mail. In Atlanta, the response rate was 59 percent.

From May to mid-July, enumerators will try to find residents who have failed to mail in the forms. Nationwide, roughly 700,000 people are being hired as temporary census-takers with hourly salaries averaging $18.75. In Georgia alone, nearly 21,000 will be hired.

Groves said the enumerators will help temporarily reduce the nation’s unemployment rate, currently 9.7 percent, by two-tenths of a percent, a not insignificant amount as the recession lingers.