Return Forms, Census Chief Pleads : Head count: It’s not junk mail, the official stresses. A low postal response means a costlier door-to-door canvass.

Fearing that many of the nation’s households may have mistaken their census forms for junk mail, the U.S. Census Bureau Thursday implored everyone to return the forms immediately to help avoid an expensive door-to-door count.

“We understand that over the last 10 years the American people have been bombarded by junk mail,” said Barbara Bryant, director of the census. “This is one piece of mail that counts.”

Among other things, the population count is used in dividing up federal funds among states and local governments and in determining how many U.S. representatives will be elected from each state.

An unexpectedly low census form return rate is the most recent setback for the Census Bureau, which has suffered lawsuits, protests and misplaced mailings.

Earlier this week, a group of cities and states, including Los Angeles and California, returned to court to press their argument that census officials are not doing all they can to count minority members in large urban areas.

The bureau acknowledged recently that census forms were not delivered to some neighborhoods--and, in a few extreme cases, entire towns were missed.

Last month, homeless advocates refused to cooperate in the bureau’s two-day attempt to count the nation’s homeless population, the first such survey undertaken by the government.

Efforts to ensure a high rate of compliance with the census included an earlier-than-usual starting date for mailing forms to about 100 million U.S. households and a nationwide advertising campaign aimed at hard-to-reach groups in urban areas.

Yet, despite the effort, bureau officials said they have gotten back only 57% of the forms, well below the expected 70%.

In Los Angeles, only 51.5% of the mail-in forms had been returned, slightly below the state’s return rate of 52.9%.

By Wednesday, when neighborhood canvassers are expected to begin door-to-door interviews at households unaccounted for in the mail survey, census officials estimate they will have received about 62% of the mail forms. Unless an avalanche of forms arrives by mid-week, the bureau will be required to spend at least $80 million more than had been expected to hire and train census counters to make in-person interviews. The entire census is budgeted at $1.6 billion.

“Do it now!” Bryant pleaded during a hastily called news conference that assumed the atmosphere of a pep rally. “If this slow response rate continues, it will cost the American taxpayer. For each 1% of the mail return that falls below our projected 70% rate, we will need an additional $10 million to hire, train and pay enumerators to complete the job on the doorsteps of America.”

The plea prompted Democratic Party Chairman Ron Brown to call on President Bush to “spend five minutes on prime-time television urging everyone to fill out their 1990 census forms.”

“I can’t really speculate about whether the President would make a public speech on it,” responded Alixe Glen, deputy White House press secretary.

Rep. Thomas C. Sawyer (D-Ohio), chairman of the House census and population subcommittee, scheduled a hearing for next week, saying he was “deeply concerned” by the low rates of return of census forms.

But Bryant and other bureau officials stressed that an accurate count of the nation’s population was not threatened. Rather, they said, the issue is cost.

“What we’re talking about is not a loss of the census count but the cost difference of going out to chase down an extra 8% to 10%” of the population, Bryant said.

According to figures released by the bureau, Wisconsin led the nation with a census form return rate of 72.4%. Columbus, Ohio, at 63%, had the highest rate of any large municipality. At the other end, Alaska (44.2%) and Nashville, Tenn., (35.6%) trailed the nation.

Bryant said that the bureau had no definitive reasons for the public’s failure to send in the census forms. She suggested that “sociological trends such as dual career couples, working women, less time spent in the home” were among the causes of the low participation rate.

She noted also that the time for returning census forms may have become confused with the deadline for another government mailing--the federal income tax form, due on April 16.

“April 1 was our goal for filling out and mailing back forms,” she said. “It was not, I repeat, not a deadline. This is a census form, not a tax return.”