House Government Reform Census Subcommittee Chairman Dan Miller, R-Fla., called Tuesday on the Census Bureau to review the quality of decennial census data from 15 local census offices, after a subcommittee analysis suggested that a "rushed census" may have compromised the accuracy of the bureau's field work.
"The concern was that in one way or another, employees had been forced to put quality aside in order to meet the Census Bureau's constantly changing deadlines and get out of the field," Miller said during a news conference.
Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt, who had not digested the subcommittee's report, responded that the panel based its findings on complicated bureau data the bureau itself has analyzed and not found worrisome.
Prewitt acknowledged the bureau has had to re-count some 71,000 households in its Hialeah, Fla., office after reports of shortcuts and possible fraud but said emphatically there were "zero" similar situations.
"We are absolutely certain there's not systematic fraud within the census. There are, of course, isolated incidents," Prewitt said.
Miller cited news reports and anecdotal employee reports of local census offices rushing to finish their field counts at the expense of accuracy.
In addition to Hialeah, Miller said a subcommittee review of nearly all of the bureau's 520 local census offices turned up "red flags" in 15 offices, including Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and offices in Alabama, California, Indiana, New Jersey and South Dakota.
Miller said he sent a letter to 22 House members who could be affected and is calling on the bureau and the inspector generalto review the local offices.
"From the top down, there is the pressure to get out of the field early," Miller said.
Miller declined to speculate as to a single motivation for an early finish and did not cite the bureau's controversial sampling methods as a possibility.
Prewitt said the bureau is able to finish sooner because there is less to do, noting that 66 percent of U.S. households mailed back census forms instead of the anticipated 61 percent.
In addition to Hialeah households, Prewitt said enumerators will re-count about 80,000 households, out of 40 million, because bureau quality control procedures raised accuracy concerns in largely isolated incidents.
Subcommittee ranking member Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., issued a statement calling on the bureau to investigate problems where needed but referred to the GOP report as "statistical McCarthyism-allegations without proof."
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