Arizona Adopts Defiant Census Measure

While Republicans and Democrats in Congress continue high-stakes maneuvering over the 2000 census, the state of Arizona has sent Washington a defiant message on what kind of numbers will--and won’t--be acceptable inside its borders.

A new Arizona law, whipped through the Republican-controlled Legislature on a largely party-line vote and signed Thursday by GOP Gov. Jane Dee Hull, would require the state to use only population figures from a straight head count as it remaps legislative and congressional districts.

The law is the first in the nation to spurn Clinton administration plans to correct chronic undercounts of poor and racial and ethnic minority populations through a technique known as statistical sampling.

Several other Republican-controlled statehouses could follow Arizona’s lead. But California’s state leadership, now solidly Democratic, backs the administration’s sampling plan.

The action in Arizona underscored a fundamental political reality of the census: Although the federal government counts the population, the states hold the crucial power of legislative map making. And the Arizona law gives potent evidence that even if the national debate over the census process subsides on Capitol Hill, the fight will persist elsewhere and probably wind up in the courts.

Redistricting relies on detailed census data that the federal government must deliver to the states by next April 1. The population numbers also are used to apportion the 435 seats in the House of Representatives among the 50 states.

For the House reapportionment, a recent Supreme Court decision requires the Census Bureau to report a traditional head-by-head population count to the president by Dec. 31.

What has made the 2000 census controversial--and stirred the wrath of Republicans in Arizona and several other states--is a separate plan by the administration to augment the traditional count with population estimates taken from a follow-up survey of 300,000 households across the country. The sample-adjusted numbers could be used when states set the boundaries for their congressional and legislative seats. They could also be used for other calculations, such as for doling out federal aid to states.

Census officials, supported by Democrats, say the use of sampling will enhance the accuracy of their count. But many Republicans charge that the sampling will yield numbers of dubious credibility.

Hull, the Arizona governor, “believes that the appropriate way to count people is to actually count them and that, if you are going to make districting decisions, you make it based on where people are--not on estimating where they are,” said her press secretary, Francie Noyes.

Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt noted this week that states are not constitutionally required to use federal data to draw legislative boundaries. In fact, census experts point out that, until the late 1980s, Massachusetts and Kansas conducted their own censuses for internal political use.

Prewitt said that in 2001, the bureau plans to make public two sets of detailed data: numbers with the population sample, endorsed by the bureau, and numbers without the sample.

On the Arizona rebellion, Prewitt said: “If that becomes law in Arizona, then so be it.”

Tim Storey, a census expert at the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures, said anti-sampling legislation is being considered in at least seven states besides Arizona: Kansas, Colorado, Minnesota, Indiana, Alaska, Oklahoma and New Jersey.

In New York, Democrats in the lower house of the Legislature have passed a pro-sampling bill, but it has stalled in the Republican-led upper chamber. California’s Senate is also on record in favor of sampling, on the grounds that it will increase the state’s take of federal funding.

Whatever action states take is expected to produce litigation. “If there is one line of agreement between all sides,” Storey said, “it is that all of these issues will wind up in court. The whole thing is a train headed to the courthouse.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, House GOP leaders have begun talks with Democrats that could allow the administration’s census plans to proceed without the threat of cutting off funding for the Commerce Department, which oversees the tally, or other agencies.