New York Region Director Jeffrey Behler spoke with The Public’s Radio reporter Alex Nunes about how challenges with the 2020 U.S. Census are playing out in Rhode Island.
NUNES: How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting the Census Bureau’s ability to conduct the 2020 Census?
BEHLER: It really threw a kink in things. So, we started many of our field operations on March 15 of this year, including dropping off paper questionnaires to more remote areas or rural areas that only had P.O. mailbox delivery. We had our partnership program, which is out there working directly with community-based organizations and church leaders and business owners and elected officials, bringing people together to provide them opportunities. Maybe if they didn’t have the resources to go online, maybe a local library. So all those things were put on pause on March 17. And we basically closed down our offices; we sent all our field personnel home; we stopped all our delivery operations in those areas, those more remote areas.
NUNES: What’s been the impact on response rate?
BEHLER: I think it certainly has affected Rhode Island. When you look at the whole Northeast region, which the area the New York Region encompasses, it’s really been the epicenter of COVID-19. And probably the biggest component of increasing a self response rate, especially in those challenging areas—the more urban areas where there’s maybe new immigrants, languages other than English spoken, a lot of renters—how we really improve self response in those areas are bringing people together, going to the local library and having an event where people learn about how important the Census is to them and to their families, to their community. And then [say], “Oh, please sit down at this computer terminal and fill out your Census” right then in there. And as restrictions are being lifted, we’re starting to see our partners be able to do some of those things. That’s a big piece of increasing self response rates. And in Rhode Island, they’re just slightly behind the national average. Rhode Island’s at 58.9 and the national, it’s 60.7.
NUNES: What challenges does Rhode Island face that are maybe unique to Rhode Island?
BEHLER: There’s certainly concern in Rhode Island that currently [there are] two congressional seats, and there’s concern that they may lose one of those congressional seats. So that’s a concern from the purposes of getting a complete and accurate count. So when we look at Rhode Island itself, we have those densely populated areas, the urban areas with the new immigrant communities, which are always a challenge. You have a large student population, a lot of colleges and universities in the Providence area and throughout Rhode Island. We need to ensure those college students who are living off campus get counted at the right place, which is at that off campus home or apartment they were renting. And then you also have rural components.
NUNES: I did see that South County was behind the statewide average. Why is that?
BEHLER: In those areas where we had a lot of P.O. box only mail delivery, we had to hand deliver the invitation packages directly to those households. We started on March 15. We had to stop two days later. We resumed that operation in mid-May.
NUNES: Is the Census Bureau expecting any impact from the protests going on nationwide right now?
BEHLER: Yeah, certainly we were concerned about the safety of our employees. We have offices throughout the nation, so that’s of utmost importance. If there’s a protest in the area, we’re going to shut down the office. But it’s also a great opportunity. We have a lot of partners out there who are using this as an opportunity to talk to people about important things for their community. So we’ve seen signs—we’ve seen different people advertising how important it is, when you’re bringing a group together like this, that they understand some of the ways to ensure their communities get their fair share of what they deserve is to fill out their 2020 Census. Because this is the only time this decade they’re going to have to ensure their community is counted, that their community is represented as it should, and that their community gets its fair share of federal funding for important critical services that the community uses every day.
NUNES: How will the need for social distance affect the in-person, door-to-door portion of the Census?
BEHLER: We know as a result of COVID-19 we have to change the way we train people. We have to change the way we conduct our operations. So as far as the training, we’ve incorporated virtual training now where we no longer need people to sit in the classroom of 20 to 25 people to learn about how to do their job. And then part of our training is going to include training on COVID-19 to make sure people understand how to wear their mask and gloves, and the sanitizer, the importance of washing their hands, the importance of when they knock on that door to back up six feet.
NUNES: So all these unique circumstances that you’re operating under—is it going to delay the time when the Census will actually be completed and ready?
BEHLER: We have to provide those counts to the president of the United States by December 31 of 2020. We’re seeking a 120-day delay, basically pushing that to April 30 of 2021.
NUNES: And can you reiterate why it is so important for people to fill out the Census?
BEHLER: It boils down to two things. It boils down to representation and funding. Representation at every level of the government: from the number of seats that Rhode Island has in the U.S. House of Representatives; states will use this data for their regional purposes for drawing their voting precincts, their school districts; businesses will use this to determine where they want to expand. They want to go to places where they’re going to have a customer base, or where they’re going to have the ability to hire employees to work in that facility. And then when we talk about the funding—the hundreds of billions of dollars of federal funding that are disseminated every year based upon formulas that use Census data. This is money for programs like Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] and WIC [Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children]. This is for education, whether it’s Head Start, Pell grants for college students, national school lunch and breakfast programs. We look at infrastructure, whether that’s for your roads, improvement in your roads, your bridges or tunnels; ensuring, if you have a transit system, that it’s safe or expanded as needed. And then, when we talk about COVID-19, and the strain that that has brought to so many health care systems across this nation, I can’t think of an easier way to support your health care system than filling out the 2020 Census. There will be so many important decisions, such as vaccines, or expansion, or “Do we need to increase the number of hospital beds?” that will need to be made over the coming years as a result of this pandemic. Let’s make sure that people who are making those decisions have the best possible data.
NUNES: Jeffrey Behler, director of the New York Region for the U.S. Census Bureau, thanks very much for speaking with me.
BEHLER: Thank you so much.
Alex Nunes can be reached at anunes@thepublicsradio.org.
