Selling the census, one Pa. community at a time

Civic groups, nonprofits organize to reach the hard-to-count

• Russ Walker
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Russ Walker joined PA Post in 2019 as executive editor. He previously worked at KING 5 News, the NBC-affiliated TV station serving Seattle and Western Washington. At KING, Russ oversaw the award-winning investigative unit and managed the newsroom’s daily operations. His background includes stints as an editor for POLITICO, washingtonpost.com, FreedomChannel.com, American Health Line and U.N. Wire. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University. Russ and his wife, journalist and cookbook author Kim O’Donnel, live in Lancaster.

 Courtesy @GiseleFetterman

Pennsylvania Second Lady Gisele Fetterman stands next to a cartoon likeness as part of a census promotion trip last week to Erie. (Photo courtesy @GiseleFetterman)

Courtesy @GiseleFetterman

Pennsylvania Second Lady Gisele Fetterman stands next to a cartoon likeness as part of a census promotion trip last week to Erie. (Photo courtesy @GiseleFetterman)

A month-and-a-half into 2020, and we’re starting to see the decennial census effort ramp up across Pennsylvania. Gisele Fetterman, wife of the state’s lt. governor, is touring the state to urge everyone to do their duty and complete the census questionnaires that are already arriving in mailboxes (My wife and I got ours in Lancaster two weeks ago).

Fetterman was in Erie last week to spread the word about the census. Pa.’s second lady was born in Brazil and grew as an undocumented person in the U.S. Growing up, she was told to avoid any sort of contact with the government for fear that the family would be discovered and deported. Now, though, Fetterman is urging everyone, regardless of citizenship status, to get counted. GoErie.com quoted Fetterman:  “My message has always been to not write anything off. Not write people off, not write places off, and not write situations off. Now I understand the impact that the census can have on our communities.”

Fetterman is referring there to the rule the census plays in determining how much money flows to the state’s communities from the federal government, not to mention the number of seats Pa. has in the U.S. House of Representatives. That number is currently 18, but is expected to drop to 17 as population growth in other parts of the country over the past decade outpaced Pennsylvania’s. It’s been a long slide in terms of representation, as Pa. boasted 36 House members as recently as the early 1930s.

As for Fetterman’s tour, she’ll be traveling to State College, Philadelphia, York, Johnstown, McKeesport and Hazleton in the coming weeks.

The big challenge is getting accurate counts from communities of color, especially among Latinos. In the Lehigh Valley, these hard-to-count groups are the target of a major outreach campaign, as officials there want to avoid a repeat of the undercount they said happened in 2010.

As The Morning Call reports: “Blame a supercharged political atmosphere, an increasingly diverse population, counties scraping for federal funding, and the need to counteract fears the undocumented have about legal recourse. More specifically, blame the predicted ‘low response score’ of more than 30% in 13 Lehigh Valley census tracts, the percentage expected not to respond to the census themselves, according to the Census Bureau. Each unresponsive resident translates into $2,093 in funding lost over the course of a decade.”

The state government is putting $4 million toward the census, mostly in the form of grants to local organizations that want to target specific groups or geographies. Norman Bristol Colon was tapped by Gov. Tom Wolf to run the statewide Complete Count Commission: “We are making sure that we are counting everyone from rural, suburban, and urban areas in Pennsylvania. We also recognize that our state is more diverse than ever before, so we have to concentrate our efforts on the hard-to-count populations” (Spotlight PA).

Countering misinformation is a big deal, and not just for immigrants who may be concerned about their status. “We want to make sure that people are really educated. ‘If I take the census, does that mean my landlord will find out the number of people living in my home, or the school system will find out my child does not attend the right school?’ People don’t necessarily understand that’s not the goal of the census,” said Jessica Mooney, an Allegheny County official.

Misinformation is top of mind given the circulation of official-looking documents, including this one sent to households in Berks and Montgomery counties by the Republican National Committee. The Census.gov site tries to dispel some of the common rumors about how the process works.

Local organizations are heavily involved in the census, despite the fact that the federal government runs the overall count. Every county and many cities organize census committees charged with getting as many people counted as possible. The excellent BeCounted2020.org site created for Pittsburgh and Allegheny County efforts is a great example. Here’s where you can look up your local census committee. Plenty of civic groups are involved, like the League of Women Voters and the dozens of groups collaborating with the Keystone Counts coalition.

Enough census workers have been recruited in many Pa. counties. But there’s a big deficit in 7 counties where less than 40% of the needed workers have been signed up. Those counties are Centre, Clarion, Forest, Indiana, Sullivan, Susquehanna and Wyoming (according to data available as of Feb. 10). See how your county is doing here.

If you haven’t received a census form yet, don’t worry. The federal government says forms will begin arriving in mailboxes in mid-March. Better yet, respond to the census by phone at 800-354-7271 or online at www.2020census.gov.

Best of the rest

Corey Perrine / AP Photo

Archbishop-elect Nelson Perez speaks during a news conference, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2020, at the Archdiocesan Pastoral Center in Philadelphia. Perez, the bishop of Cleveland, was introduced as the new leader of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, making him the first Hispanic archbishop to lead the region’s 1.3 million-member flock. (AP Photo/Corey Perrine)

• Tomorrow, Nelson J. Perez will be officially installed as the Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia. Inquirer reporter Jeremy Roebuck profiled Perez, speaking with people who know him. They describe Perez “as a cleric as quick to break out his guitar during dinner at a parishioner’s home as he is to deliver a stirring homily, seemingly off the cuff. He pops into baseball games, talks avidly of his love of Star Trek and scuba diving and who made a splash in the papal receiving line on a recent visit to Rome. While other bishops greeted Pope Francis with respectfully deferential gestures, Pérez, according to one priest, went in for a hug.”

• This year’s census will result in the drawing of new legislative districts. And given the legislature’s monopoly role in drawing its members’ districts, the battle for control of the state House and Senate this year will be epic. Sam Janessh of The Caucus took a deep dive into that battle for a story last week. A taste: “The battle for control of the Legislature will come down to only about three dozen districts where there are narrow voter registration margins; no incumbent running; changing voting trends; and strong candidates, party resources and outside help, according to the Caucus analysis and interviews with party officials, elected officials, activists and analysts. Fewer of those are considered top-tier battlegrounds. Only three Republican-held Senate seats — in southeastern, central and northwestern Pennsylvania — are seriously in play for Democrats. About a dozen House seats fall in that category.”

• Reformers want to take the redistricting process out of the hands of the legislature by creating an independent commission to do the work. Paul Muschick of The Morning Call says don’t hold your breath. Lots of talk about reform in Harrisburg, but he notes that the clock is running out while plenty of lawmakers privately hope the commission idea dies a quiet death.

• The Green New Deal got a lot of attention in the 2018 election cycle. The in-depth plan to convert the U.S. economy to entirely renewable and clean energy sources by 2050 is often derided as a job-killing pipedream by critics. Some Democrats, including Pa.’s Mike Doyle, are trying to create a compromise version of the Green New Deal, something they call the Clean Future Act. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette DC bureau chief Daniel Moore takes a look at the legislation in this piece.

• More than 1,000 former U.S. Justice Department attorneys signed a letter urging Attorney General William Barr to resign, citing his intervention in the prosecution of President Trump’s longtime political adviser, Roger Stone. By this author’s count, 13 prosecutors who worked in Pennsylvania signed the letter: M. Taylor Aspinwall, James Becker, Barry Gross, David Hickton, Sonia Jaipaul, John Joseph, Katherine King, Robert Levine, Michael Levy, Robert Nolan, Peter Schuenck, Peter Smith, and James West; there are likely more, because not all signers listed an affiliation with a specific U.S. attorney’s office. Read the letter here (list of signatories is at bottom).