The 2020 Census is near. Lexington officials ramp up preparation, call for more local workers
Local representatives for the U.S. Census Bureau ramped up preparation for this year’s census by officially opening Lexington’s census office on Friday and issuing a call for more local census workers.
Accurate census data is necessary for the state and local governments to receive the proper amount of federal funding for road maintenance, school funding and a laundry-list of other federal programs that local government depends on, Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton said. It’s also used to determine the size and number of congressional districts and city council districts.
Local and national census officials, joined by Gorton, said at a press conference that the Lexington office, which is slated to count the population of Lexington and 77 northern, eastern and central Kentucky counties, will be crucial to securing accurate census numbers for the region.
“It’s critically important to Lexington,” Gorton said. “If you’re interested in where schools are built, the condition of our roads or where you go for health services then you need to make sure to fill out the census and encourage everyone you know to do so.”
Eric Friedlander, the deputy secretary for the state’s Cabinet of Health and Family Services, estimated that for every Kentuckian not counted—the state misses about $2,000 per year of federal funding.
“When you think about that over 10 years, per person, that adds up very quickly,” Friedlander said. “That’s an opportunity lost for this state, that’s an opportunity lost for this city.”
Around mid-March, local households will receive an invitation to respond to the census. On April 1, the census will be able to be taken by mail, phone and—for the first time—will be able to be taken online, said Philip Lutz, the regional deputy director for the U.S. Census Bureau. He estimated that the census will take about four minutes to complete online, and will be available in multiple languages.
A George Washington University study estimated, that in the 2016 fiscal year, Kentucky received almost $16 billion through 55 different federal spending programs, which allocated money based 2010 census data. Over half of those funds came through Medicaid, the study showed, and $1.2 billion came through federal student loans.
“Hundreds of billions are distributed to state and local government’s service programs based on census numbers,” Gorton said. She also said it’s used to determine where bus stops are located, helps with school redistricting and determines where funding for road paving is allocated.
A call for more Lexington enumerators
Thousands of local census takers, also known as enumerators, will be sent out to find and encourage historically hard-to-count populations to take the census. In Lexington, Gorton said the city’s WeCountLex committee—which includes dozens of city and community leaders—is charged with developing plans to get more local residents to participate.
“We’ll be combing non-traditional areas, such as marinas and camp grounds, carnivals, shelters and even the non-sheltered areas where displaced persons congregate such as covered bridges and in city parks,” said John Shotwell, the manager of the Lexington-area census office.
John Myers, the Lexington census office’s recruiting manager, said that Lexington and the state still has a shortage of enumerators. The census bureau is 8,000 short of its goal of 21,000 enumerators to cover the state—about 4,000 of those would be in Lexington. Enumerators will be paid $19 per hour in Fayette County.
“History tells us there’s likely to be a substantial number of residents in our region who don’t apply, and that’s where we will send thousands of census takers to make sure every man, woman and child is counted in the eastern half of Kentucky,” Shotwell said.
Dani Rodgers, a partnership specialist for the census bureau, makes sure that state and local governments develop strategies to make sure everyone gets counted. Rodgers said the marginalized, hard-to-count groups include people who are “LGBTQ, seniors, children under the age of 5, college students, communities of color, non-English speakers, the list goes on.”
In a college town like Lexington, college students can be hard to count, Lutz said, because they believe they need to be counted at their official address, which for out-of-state students can be far from Kentucky. But people should be counted for the census where they live for the majority of the year.
“College kids, you’re counted here,” Lutz said. “Where you live and sleep most of the time.”
Data provided to the census is confidential, Lutz said. No law enforcement agencies can access the data.
“Each of us has taken an oath for life to keep your information confidential and secure and we take that responsibility very seriously,” Lutz said.