Census Bureau Refuses to Adjust ’90 Count

The Census Bureau said Tuesday that it will not readjust its annual population estimates to account for approximately 5.3 million people--largely members of minority groups and the homeless--who were left out of the 1990 census.

The bureau did, however, agree to release unofficial adjusted figures that it said federal agencies could use in calculating unemployment rates, economic activity, health status, educational achievements and other data on Americans.

But the most significant effect of the decision is to leave unchanged the statistical basis under which $60 billion in federal funds are distributed each year for projects ranging from feeding the poor to running mass transit systems. Generally, the larger the population in a given area, the more money it receives.

In addition, the census is the basis for reapportioning the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, in state legislatures and even city council districts.

The announcement in the Federal Register by Census Bureau Director Barbara Everitt Bryant was not a surprise, coming 17 months after then-Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher rejected the recommendation of a panel of experts and ruled that there would be no census adjustment.

Nonetheless, Tuesday’s news was disappointing to such cities as Inglewood, which experienced an undercount of 10.9% in the 1990 census, higher than any other city in the country. That dismal showing came despite a massive effort by local officials to reach the city’s largely black and Latino population.

In Los Angeles, where the count missed about 200,000 people, City Atty. James K. Hahn called the decision “another cynical slap at cities and minorities” and warned that it could cost financially strapped Los Angeles millions of dollars in federal funds.

Inglewood and Los Angeles have joined other cities, including New York, in a lawsuit to force the government to make the adjustments. The suit is still being fought in the courts, and a federal judge in New York is expected to rule in the case next year.

Civil rights groups, which have been pressuring the Commerce Department to adjust the numbers, said the announcement reflects a lack of concern for minority groups.

“When you know for a fact that you missed large numbers of people, you need to correct that,” said Denise Hulett, a staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in San Francisco. “The Census Bureau is stubbornly clinging to the idea that their mistakes are uncorrectable.”

Hulett said she hopes the Administration of President-elect Bill Clinton will overturn the ruling when it takes over next month.

“It’s the most blatant kind of discrimination and racism,” she said. “The federal government is saying: ‘We missed you. We didn’t count you. We know you’re there, but we don’t care.’ ”

Bryant said Tuesday that her decision had been a “difficult” one because senior Census Bureau statisticians and demographers all agree that such an adjustment would improve the accuracy of the 1990 census at the national level and depict more precisely state-by-state population breakdowns.

But because the 1990 “undercount” was relatively small--1.6%--”it is impossible to accurately adjust” for each of the 44,055 geographic areas for which population estimates are produced, Bryant said.

Federal law requires the Census Bureau to issue official totals for use in any federal programs that allocate funding based upon population estimates. The bureau provides official population estimates for states and counties in every year between the decennial censuses and for political entities below the county level every other year.

In all, the 1990 census missed between 9.7 million and 15.5 million people, estimating the number of Americans at 248.7 million. Census officials acknowledged that residents of urban areas, particularly the homeless, blacks and Latinos, were the groups most likely to have been overlooked.