City and county officials are encouraging all local residents to participate in the upcoming U.S. Census, which will be used to determine local allocations of billions of dollars of federal funding for projects and programs over the next decade.
In mid-March, homes across Bartholomew County, as well as the rest of the country, will begin receiving invitations to participate in the 2020 U.S. Census over the phone, via physical mail or — for the first time — online in March and April, said Tim Swarens, media specialist at the U.S. Census Bureau.
The U.S. Census is taken every 10 years to determine representation in Congress and how some $675 billion in federal money is allocated for highway projects, Medicaid, food stamps, federal student loans, school lunches, low-income housing, among many other items, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Questions on the census questionnaire including a range of demographics questions such as the number of people living in a given household, their gender and sex, race, ethnicity, age, among other questions, according to a sample copy of the 2020 Census questionnaire.
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Those who don’t respond to the census before May will receive an in-person visit by a census worker over the summer, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s website.
Indiana receives around $18 billion in federal funding each year based on population data from the U.S. Census Bureau — roughly $2,710 per person.
That funding, however, could change depending on how many people respond to the census, said Robin Hilber, assistant director of community development for the city of Columbus and chair of the Columbus 2020 Census Complete County Committee.
In other words, the fewer people counted, the less money allocated to Indiana’s 6.7 million residents.
“We’re trying to get the word out that everyone counts,” Hilber said. “The census is very important to us. Essentially, there are $675 billion in federal grants that support states and counties and cities, and that is all based on Census figures.”
The Columbus 2020 Census Complete Committee is one of dozens of similar committees that have been tasked with promoting the Census in their local jurisdictions.
As committee chair, Hilber has ordered Census materials in English and Spanish and has been engaging with dozens of organizations and groups across the city to raise awareness about the Census and its importance — including the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, United Way, Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp., Love Chapel, Brighter Days, veteran’s organizations, mobile home parks, landlords, Foundation for Youth, IUPUC, among several other entities in the community.
Additionally, Bartholomew County officials have been working with the U.S. Census Bureau to correct and update addresses throughout the county in the run up to this year’s census.
Jeff Lucas, head of the GIS mapping division at the Bartholomew County Surveyor’s Office, worked on and off for six to eight weeks in 2018 to ensure each address listed in U.S. Census Bureau’s residential address list was correct and to update new addresses created since the previous Census.
Lucas said the work was done via the 2020 Census Local Update of Census Addresses Operation, or LUCA, which is the only opportunity offered to local governments to review and comment on the U.S. Census Bureau’s residential address list before the Census, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s website.
“I submitted 3,944 address records and they accepted all but 113,” Lucas said. “… A lot of them were new addresses, a lot of them were corrected. A correction would be that they had it in the wrong Census block or they may have had ‘drive’ instead of ‘road.’ Any of those kinds of things I corrected.”
The U.S. Census Bureau doesn’t give reasons why proposed corrections to addresses are rejected, Lucas said.
Besides Lucas’ work, Bartholomew County officials have not made a special push to encourage participation in the Census, but recognize the importance of the Census given that “federal funding is a lot of times based on it,” said Bartholomew County Commissioner Carl Lienhoop.
In 2010, representatives from the U.S. Census Bureau met with Bartholomew County officials to discuss the importance of the Census, Lienhoop said. This time around, however, no such meeting has been held.
“In the end, it’s an important thing,” he said.
Swarens said all personally identifying information provided to U.S. census workers is confidential, and every census worker takes an oath of office to not divulge any such information collected from participants.
“If they were to breach that (oath), they could face significant prison time and/or a fine,” he said, adding that “there will not be a citizenship question on the 2020 census.”
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To respond to the 2020 U.S. Census, visit respond.census.gov/acs/#respond.
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