Census offices in Fresno defended - Deadline pressure behind complaints, top officials say.
Michael Doyle Bee Washington Bureau
The Fresno Bee
August 11, 2010
Top Census Bureau officials Tuesday defended their Fresno-area operations against allegations of mismanagement and falsification of census data, saying they haven't uncovered any unusual problems so far.
Census Bureau Director Robert M. Groves acknowledged that errors might have occurred in the San Joaquin Valley when workers felt deadline pressure. He characterized this as typical during the feverish, final stages of any survey.
Groves added that census-takers will revisit San Joaquin Valley households if investigators do discover evidence calling survey results into question.
"If we find an accusation is valid, we will identify the set of affected cases and completely redo the work," Groves said during a regularly scheduled news conference to discuss the national census. "We will repair every case that we see was handled improperly."
The decennial census is required by the Constitution, and the results determine how many congressional seats each state receives, where individual House districts are located and how $400 billion in federal funds are distributed annually.
The 2010 effort has come in $1.6 billion below budget, officials noted Tuesday.
The work isn't done yet, though. Roughly one in 700 U.S. households will now be contacted for more follow-up questions.
Prompted by complaints filed by former Fresno-area census workers, several distinct investigations are under way.
The Commerce Department's Office of Inspector General has undertaken two inquiries, the office of Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, has confirmed.
One concerns multiple allegations of race, age and sex discrimination in the Fresno office.
The other inspector general case concerns allegations that Fresno-area workers may have cut corners or falsified data while under management pressure to finish quickly.
The Los Angeles regional office oversaw the Fresno and Salinas offices.
Separately, Census Bureau officials said Tuesday they are conducting their own inquiries into the problems alleged in several whistleblower complaints.
"The hurry up at the end of every operation ... highly encouraged the falsification of data," said Craig Baltz, who formerly worked as an assistant manager in the north Fresno census office.
"Have an unbiased source outside the census bureau interview 10 random enumerators, and I guarantee you will hear many stories of falsification."
In interviews, several other former census workers from the Fresno and Salinas offices echoed the concerns raised by Baltz.
Some have scheduled a news conference for 10:30 a.m. today in Fresno's Einstein Park.
They also have met with attorneys to discuss a potential lawsuit.
Census Bureau officials, though, sought Tuesday to cast the complaining ex-workers as a small minority of the overall workforce.
"We've got people on the ground looking into this," said Steve Jost, the Census Bureau's associate communications director, "and we just don't see anything out of line."
Jost, who formerly worked for several Valley Democratic lawmakers, noted that the Fresno, north Fresno and Salinas census offices together employed 4,009 workers at the height of the crucial population count.
Eighteen workers are known to have brought their complaints to Nunes' office.
Nationwide, the Census Bureau employed 565,000 workers to count the nation's 310 million residents.
Groves said serious problems have been found only in the work of about 1,000 census workers nationwide, with the errors commonly found "when interviewers get under stress and things have to be finished."