SACRAMENTO – Members of the Assembly Select Committee on the Census and the Senate Select Committee on the 2020 United States Census gathered today for the first time to discuss the challenging task of ensuring that every California resident is counted in the 2020 Census. Achieving a complete count is critically important to ensuring that California does not lose out on billions of dollars in federal funding for education, healthcare, transportation, and other critical services, as well as the possibility of losing more than one seat in the House of Representatives.
“We need to be sure every Californian is counted because for every person undercounted, California loses $2,000 per year,” said Senator Dr. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), Chair of the Senate Select Committee on the 2020 United States Census. “There will be many challenges in taking on the mammoth task of counting all people living in California, and the groups and organizations represented at this hearing will be instrumental to an accurate census.”
California has historically been difficult to count due to its size and diversity. More than 20 percent of California’s populated areas are considered “hard-to-count” – regions where the self-response rate to the census questionnaire has been low. Federal inaction, a new untested method of response to the census questionnaire, and the addition of a widely-criticized citizenship question will further exacerbate difficulties reaching California’s immigrant and low-income communities.
“There is no one time expenditure that is going to have a higher return on investment than the census,” said Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Palo Alto), Chair of the Assembly Select Committee on the Census. “If we work together, I am very confident that we are going to make sure that every Californian is counted.”
Both select committees are working closely with the Brown Administration and the California Complete Count Committee to bring together essential local and regional partners and to coordinate census outreach efforts.
Watch the hearing online.
Contact: Kaitlin Curry (916) 319-2024 (Berman), Shannan Velayas (916) 271-2867 (Pan)