KC's Census count campaign now in race against time

Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2019 to protest against the Trump administration's efforts to add the now-blocked citizenship question to the 2020 census. Photo from NPR by J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Campaigners seeking a complete count for Kansas City in the 2020 Census were already facing an uphill climb.

Now to reach that goal they will have to quicken their pace.

This week, the Trump Administration determined the extended time to complete the count would be slashed by a month — cutting off at the end of September rather than the end of October.

Fill out the Census at 2020Census.gov

This came two weeks after the White House issued a memorandum declaring that the Census totals would exclude unauthorized immigrants in the calculations in reapportioning Congressional districts, a move that has been challenged in federal court.

Kansas City’s Complete Count Committee, meeting virtually Aug. 5, reflected the strain that is being felt throughout the nation where teams are racing in the midst of a pandemic to achieve higher participation especially from historically under-counted communities — those high in poverty, communities of color, and those high in immigrant populations.

Billions of federal dollars are at stake — for education, highways and bridges, hospitals, social services and other services that are paid out according to population numbers gathered in the Census every 10 years.

Orange areas in Census response map for the Kansas City area as of Aug. 3 show large parts of the city still at below 50%.

The Census’s updated map of hard-to-count areas, captured on LINC’s Census page, shows that Kansas City’s East Side and its Northeast Neighborhood severely lag the rest of the area in reaching a complete count, with many Census tracts still far below 50% in completed responses.

The often-under-counted communities that would benefit most from these resources remain at greatest risk of being left behind.

Census Director Steven Dillingham in announcing the shortened timeline for completing the Census said the bureau would be hiring more employees and dedicating more funds, saying the bureau still “intends to meet a similar level of household responses as collected in prior censuses, including outreach to hard-to-count communities.”

But many observers say it can’t be done, especially during a pandemic.

The New York Times reported that four former directors of the Census Bureau issued a statement warning that an earlier deadline would “result in seriously incomplete enumerations in many areas across our country,” and urged the administration to restore the lost weeks.

The final processed numbers of the Census are traditionally returned by Dec. 31 of the year of the Census. Because of the pandemic, the Census Bureau had extended the deadline to April 2021 — a change that has now been rescinded.

While legislative struggles and court battles cloak what is becoming a contentious Census year, the Kansas City complete count effort has to set a blazing pace.

The different attempts by the Trump Administration to hinder the count of undocumented immigrants make the work harder in communities with high numbers of immigrants where trust in the process is hard to earn.

“That’s the challenge,” complete count team member and former City Councilman Scott Wagner said. “We keep going back and going back to explain why we’re doing this.”

The difficult climate, said Assistant City Manager Rick Usher, “only serves to push people farther away.”

So they are redoubling their efforts, said Jenny Garmon, who leads the Census team at the Kansas City Public Library, seeking opportunities to take their tablets and laptops direct to people to fill out the online Census form.

The message goes on. Filling out the Census is quick. Everyone in every household should be counted, including newborn children. It is safe. By law each person’s information can be used only in the overall demographic measurements of the country — and not by any other agency.

But time is running short.

Fill out the Census at 2020Census.gov.

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer