Effort to shore up Census count stalls in House

The House on Tuesday night rejected Senate-passed legislation aimed at ensuring a more accurate population count partly by letting Americans respond to the 2020 Census questionnaire online.

Earlier in the day, federal auditors released three reports reiterating the need for managerial changes to fix problems that occurred during the 2010 count. The $13 billion effort, the most expensive decennial census ever, ran nearly $2 billion over initial budget projections after a failed attempt to equip census takers with handheld devices.

The House defeated the 2010 Census Oversight Efficiency and Management Reform Act (S. 3167), which required a two-thirds majority to pass, by 201-167. All but one Republican present voted against it. The Senate had approved the measure by unanimous consent last week.

Aides for the legislation's House sponsor, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said she will reintroduce the measure in 2011.

"This was a bipartisan bill, which wouldn't increase costs to the taxpayer, and it deserved a better fate," Maloney said. "The bill would have ensured consistent professional management of this major scientific agency. . . It's clear that the incoming majority on the House Oversight Committee wants to be the party of 'no.' "

Incoming House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., strongly opposed the legislation, which had been pending in the panel under Democratic leadership since March. Committee Republicans on Tuesday argued the measure did not contain the checks on spending necessary to avoid a repeat of the excessive bills racked up during the 2010 census.

The bill would have made the Census director a five-year appointment and limited the official's term to 10 years, in what House aides said Tuesday evening was an effort to depoliticize the position. The decennial population count determines the apportionment of House seats among the 50 states.

To reduce errors and avoid cost overruns, the proposal called for the Census director to give Congress an annual report on the bureau's performance against goals for each major decennial activity; assessments of the associated risks; projected schedules; updated cost estimates for the life cycle of the decennial census; and detailed descriptions of all related contracts worth more than $50 million.

The legislation also would have required the director to offer people the option of responding to the 2020 Census and the American Community Survey via the Internet. Within six months, the bureau would have had to provide lawmakers with a plan on how officials would test and execute the Web-based surveys, including information on the timing, retention and security of data collections.

GOP Oversight and Government Reform Committee members called the Internet provision unnecessary because the agency already intends to provide Web questionnaires during the 2020 census.

Separately, the Government Accountability Office on Tuesday issued several reports critical of the 2010 census, one of which found that vital information technology systems suffered performance problems that prevented the agency from guaranteeing an accurate count.

"Although the IT systems ultimately functioned well enough for the bureau to carry out the census, workarounds developed to address performance problems with the [Paper-Based Operations Control System] -- a workflow-management system crucial for the bureau's field operations -- adversely affected the bureau's ability to implement key quality-assurance procedures as planned," the auditors wrote.