Amid political wrangling, Census reports success

Census chief Kenneth Prewitt was praised Friday for his agency's success so far with the 2000 census, but he had to deflect accusations that he was politicizing the decennial count.

Phase two of the Census began last week, with Census enumerators hitting the streets to track down people who didn't fill out mail-in response forms. The Census Bureau exceeded its goals for the first phase, garnering a 66 percent mail response rate and reversing what had been a 30-year trend of declining response rates, Prewitt reported to the House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Census.

"Our partners and the public have treated the census as the serious civic event intended by the founders when they wrote the census into the U.S. Constitution," said Prewitt.

But subcommittee Chairman Dan Miller, R-Fla., questioned whether Prewitt is keeping politics out of the census. "You made a commitment to be nonpartisan and I will hold you to it," he said.

Miller referred to the privacy debate that raged in April over the census long form, which was sent to one in six households. Some Republican lawmakers said the long form was too intrusive, and encouraged citizens not to fully complete the form if they felt certain questions invaded their privacy. When initial response rates showed a larger-than-anticipated gap between long and short form return rates, Prewitt publicly expressed concerns that the privacy debate was affecting the census count.

Miller accused Prewitt, a Clinton political appointee, of blaming Republicans for the rise in concern over the long form, and therefore politicizing the process.

"My comments have never addressed the role of the Republican leadership," Prewitt responded, saying that he has been careful to speak only of "public voices," and "national political leaders," not Republicans specifically.

In a non-binding April vote, the Senate passed a resolution urging that people who refuse to answer certain census questions not be prosecuted. Prewitt said his opposition to the privacy debate referred to this vote, which was bipartisan.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., however, made no bones about attacking the Republican leadership, saying GOP leaders "pandered to talk shows," and "didn't show leadership or explain that [census] information is protected."

"The timing of the Republican leadership [during the mail-back phase] to basically call the census optional was just plain wrong," she said.

Partisan mud-slinging aside, all parties agreed that the census has been a success so far. Prewitt said his fears of potential problems with the bureau's payroll system, about filling enumerator positions, low response rates, breakdowns in computers and more were unfounded. "None of those potential problems has occurred. In fact, census operations have been quite successful," he said.

Prewitt downplayed the severity of a Kansas City office mishap in which a worker accidentally dialed an incorrect fax number and sent information about census workers to a private household. The information that was inadvertently released was not covered by Title 13, the federal statute that guarantee the protection of census information.

"Look, I'm not trying to defend human error, but so far no Title 13 information has gone in to the public arena," Prewitt said.