Not Just a Head Count

What kind of place will Orange County be in a new century? After the recent New Year’s celebration, with all its reflections on the millennium, another benchmark has arrived quickly on the radar screen of January. The decennial census is getting due attention locally, with the opening two weeks ago of four Orange County offices by the Census Bureau.

The Constitution requires the bureau to attempt to count all residents, and for Orange County, the possibility of an undercount raises the same concerns that other urbanized communities have about what it costs to miss people. The importance of getting an accurate count is clear.

U.S. Census officials calculate that more than 50,000 Orange County residents, or about 2%, were missed in the last count. This shortfall was more acute in Santa Ana, where the undercount is estimated at nearly 4% of the local population. In the county as a whole, almost 30,000 of the more than 50,000 residents left out in the 1990 count were said to be Latino.

Census workers have resolved this time to get a better count, and appear to be getting off to a constructive start. They already have met with community leaders to emphasize the importance of outreach programs. For example, at a kickoff event earlier this month, 100 community activists and civic leaders met in Garden Grove to discuss how the count could be improved.

The jockeying for position on the census on the national stage serves as a backdrop for the grass-roots effort to get it right. But with the failure of an effort in Washington to use statistical sampling, it became even more important that the actual head count be done correctly. Efforts to enlist business owners and civic leaders in local communities, and to hire community workers to get the job done, have been initiated.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) has stressed the significance of an undercount as a reason for losing out on resources. Anaheim alone lost an estimated $100 million in federal money. The outreach programs initiated by local governmental and nonprofit groups can be translated into dollars that could go to health care, education and other programs. The count also figures in the calculation of district boundaries for the Legislature and the House of Representatives.

Locally, the Census Bureau has hired nearly 4,000 workers to staff offices in Santa Ana, Fullerton, Irvine and Huntington Beach to spread the word. The bureau’s partnership program and the Orange County Community Builders Program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development have agreed to distribute information to all HUD program beneficiaries.

Orange County’s Head Start Program is going to allow the Census Bureau to use its sites to count people who do not mail their forms by the deadline. In December, federal officials met with county Latino leaders to enlist their help.

Initiatives like these can go a long way toward achieving a more accurate count, and making people feel that they are part of the process, and indeed, part of the nation. Encouraging people to come forward--to learn about the census and not to be afraid of it--is important.

The latter part of the 1990s saw a new political activism in the county, and this has created some excitement and sense of opportunity for some of the county’s newest citizens.

The political parties in recent weeks have been reckoning with the internal dynamics of responding to these changes, as candidates jockeyed for position on the central committees. And a year ago, the political stirrings of freedom were evident in the protests that began when a Westminster video store owner put up the flag of Vietnam.

The census is about numbers, but it is also about the evolution of a community. At stake ultimately is what kind of place we have. Orange County continues to stand for the promise of individual freedom, economic opportunity and a better life. The optimism reflected in recent polling of the newest citizens demonstrates that they contribute to the reaffirmation of American principles, and the reinvigoration of our national life.

The county benefits in the long run by an accurate count of who is here pursuing its goals and dreams. Each census is an opportunity to reflect on the values and aims of the community, and to look at who we are and what we are all about.