Census backers fan out across Georgia

Kim hanh Dang lives and breathes the 2010 census.

She talks about it on radio stations targeting Asian communities, promotes it at supermarkets in Gwinnett County and is a fixture at many meetings where officials or citizens are organizing to encourage people to fill out the decennial questionnaire.

“I try to reach out to every single group in the community,” said Dang, chairwoman of the Vietnamese Complete Count Committee.

Beginning Monday, residents throughout the country should start getting the 10-question survey in the mail. The census, which happens every 10 years, is a constitutionally mandated count of every man, woman and child in the United States.

The population numbers are used to determine the size of each state’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representative and a state’s annual share of more than $400 billion in federal funding, and to guide the drawing of district lines for a state.

In 2000, the Oak Grove community in DeKalb County had the highest return rate for census forms in metro Atlanta and the state at 90.2 percent. The lowest: the census tract around Carver High School in southeast Atlanta, at 23.8 percent.

Nationally, the response rate in 2000 was 67 percent. Georgia’s response was 65 percent.

The 2010 census will have its challenges, U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said last week in a meeting with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

High foreclosure rates will make multiple visits to houses necessary to ensure no one is missed. And awareness of the count is just 10 percent, according to one recent study.

“The awareness of this thing is really low,” he said. “This isn’t good.”

An anti-census movement, albeit small, by some Hispanic preachers to boycott the tally without meaningful immigration reform is likely to hinder participation.

And some people like Ike Hall will only partially fill out the form because they say the questionnaire reaches beyond what is allowed by the Constitution.

“It [the Constitution] authorized the Congress to pass a law to have enumeration of the people of the U.S.,” said Hall, interim state coordinator for the national Campaign for Liberty. “All they need to know is who lives in the domicile.”

He said he would reiterate that message if visited by an enumerator seeking answers to other questions on the form.

Failure to fill out the form completely is against federal law, but most experts agree that such a charge would be used sparingly, if at all, in the nation’s highly politicized environment.

Georgia census officials hope to avoid a repeat of the state’s performance in 2000. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, about 123,000 Georgians weren’t counted, resulting in nearly $210 million in lost federal money over a 10-year period.

In fiscal 2008, Washington dispersed $447 billion to state and local governments, nonprofits, businesses and individuals in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Brookings Institution.

Georgia, which received $12.6 billion, ranked 11th. On a per-capita basis, though, Georgia ranked 31st at $1,305 per person, the think tank reported last week.

While most state residents won’t get their questionnaires until this week, the U.S. Census Bureau began delivering census forms last week to homes across rural Georgia that don’t have postal route service.

The state cobbled together 176 voluntary local census committees to get the word out. Churches, businesses and government officials statewide also have been preaching the census gospel in their communities.

“We will do better this time,” vowed Saralyn Stafford, a Georgia Department of Community Affairs official coordinating census outreach. “There are a lot more local groups working this time. We’re better prepared.”

So is Herman Baker, the mayor of Wadley (population 2,088, according to the last census) in eastern Georgia, a rural community with the state’s lowest mail-in rate — 14 percent — in 2000. Baker and other community leaders jumped on the census bandwagon last year.

Baker tells residents to call City Hall with any census queries. He even preaches the census gospel to the Sunday school class he teaches at First Baptist Church of Wadley.

“I tell them that this means dollars, especially for our elderly people and their senior programs,” Baker said. “We’re going to make sure we count everybody.”

Much of the focus on census awareness has been directed at minority communities that historically have participated in lower numbers than their white counterparts.

John Grant, executive director of 100 Black Men of Atlanta, said minorities are wary of the census because they don’t know what the information will be used for. The solution is to demonstrate that not being counted is the equivalent of nonexistence, and that means no money for schools, infrastructure or jobs.

With a larger and more settled immigrant community in Georgia, Latino and Asian leaders have ratcheted up outreach efforts for this census. But false rumors that the information will be shared with other federal agencies, immigration in particular, are expected to dampen return rates.

Nonetheless, Jerry Gonzalez, who heads the Georgia Latino Complete Count Committee, expects the 2010 response rate “to be much better” than the 2000 rate.

“Our message to the community has been well-received, that the census is just one part of a movement to make sure Latino voices are heard in the electoral process as well as in policy matters,” he said. “People are revved up about that.”

Gonzalez’ committee tallies 110 civic, nonprofit and church groups statewide encouraging Hispanics to participate in the census. Spanish language radio, TV and newspapers in Atlanta, Gainesville and Savannah have carried the pro-census banner.

Georgia’s Asian community also will continue to be targeted by nonprofit and religious leaders. Starting Sunday, for example, church and temple-goers across metro Atlanta will receive bulletins in Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and English encouraging census participation and offering assistance filling out the forms.

“There’s a much greater and more unified outreach effort in 2010 versus 2000,” said Helen Kim, who chairs the Asian Complete Count Committee of Georgia.