On April 29, the left-wing 2010 Census advocacy group The Census Project published a piece by Terri Ann Lowenthal (who served on President Obama’s transition team) that discussed the ethnic media’s perception that 2010 Census advertising efforts had gone seriously awry. Lownthal writes, “A panel of stakeholders advising the Census Bureau on the 2010 census paid advertising campaign issued a vote of “no confidence” in Draftfcb, the prime contractor responsible for the Communications program, which includes advertising and outreach to promote participation in the census.  The Joint Advertising Advisory Review Panel (JAARP), comprised of representatives of the Census Bureau’s official advisory committees, met last week to review proposed ads Draftfcb developed for the national census promotion campaign. The Census Bureau’s five Race and Ethnic Advisory Committees (REACs), representing communities of color that are at higher risk of undercounting in the census and other Census Bureau surveys, concurred with JAARP’s ‘no confidence’ statement with respect to Draftfcb’s creative materials for the 2010 census general campaign, at their biannual meetings held later in the week.”

Then, today, I came across an article from Frost Illustrated, an African-American publication, that described how the black community feels  they have been failed by the 2010 Census advertising efforts:

Census ad dollars ‘not enough’ black publishers say

By Pharoh Martin
NNPA National Correspondent

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (NNPA)—Rick Wade, deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to the U. S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, was met with a bit of displeasure from black publishers June 26 as they expressed that the government’s Census advertising plan for black newspapers was insufficient.

Wade announced to members of the National Newspaper Publishers Association that out of an estimated budget of more than $24 million dollars for black media advertising only $1.6 million will be spent with black newspapers.

The funds are to be used to assure an accurate count in difficult to count communities, such as among African Americans and Latinos.

“That’s not enough,” one publisher said quickly in response to Wade’s announcement. Another publisher did the math and equated that the estimated numbers will do nothing if split among hundreds of newspapers nationally. At the most it will only buy one ad, she said.

As others chimed in during a question and answer period, Wade assured the audience representing more than 200 black-owned newspapers that the proposed budget is not yet final.

“These are just estimates,” he said. “We believe we have sufficient funds to ensure an accurate count.”

Dorothy Leavell, publisher of the Chicago and Gary Crusader Newspapers, and chair of the NNPA Foundation, then addressed another concern.

“Ten years ago, we ran your ads and didn’t get paid,” she said. “We are a significant part and we want to be counted.”

Wade assured, “These are paid advertisements so you will be paid.”

The intense, but courteous discussion underscored a long-standing contention by black newspaper publishers that they are often undercut by advertisers—including the federal government.

Wade told the group that he understands that black newspapers are not only press but they are also businesses and that it is in the interest of the Department of Commerce to advance businesses.

According to the temporary budget, the $24.7 million being allocated for black population media advertising during the census count will be split three ways. Black population media includes Black- American, Carribean-American and Black-African media outlets, according to Wade. The budget is comparable to the Latino media allocation of $27 million dollars.

The advertising campaign will begin in the fall and will end August 2010. The Census Bureau will adjust and reallocate unused money until it runs out.

The Department of Commerce will be pushing their message about participating in the 2010 census through a large advertising campaign in order to reach the “hardto- count” populations.

Wade spent most of his speech before America’s premier black publishers organization explaining the specifics of the 2010 Census and promoting the importance of $5 billion slated to broadband employment for the black community. But the information surrounding the Census’ advertising campaign is what caught the ears of the dozens of black newspaper publishers in attendance.

Following the breakfast the Census Bureau hosted a seminar called Advertising and Ethnic Media, in which, the Bureau gave more specifics about the process of securing an advertisement buy during the 2010 Census advertising campaign.

Contract management chief Kendall Johnson said as long as the media entity is solvent and has been in business at least a year it would qualify for ad money.

“We’re not looking for metrics. We’re just looking that you can reach the people you say you can reach,” she said.

The advertisements will be placed through multi-cultural advertising firm Globalhue and a pairing of smaller advertising firms. The smaller firms are being used because law states that 40 percent of the $326 million dollar contract’s budget must be spent on small businesses.

And even though 51 percent ad budget will be allocated to ethnicowned media some publishers fear that the money will not make its way down to community papers because many black newspapers have not had positive business experiences with Globalhue.

“We’re not being represented by that agency,” said a publisher who spoke but did not identify himself. “We have our own ad agencies that haven’t excluded us and put us behind the eight-ball. So it’s not [that] we don’t trust [the Census Bureau]. We don’t trust the guys you are doing business with.”

Many thanks to Ed O’Keefe at The Washington Post for breaking the following story:

Census Vets Tapped for New Advisory Board

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has tapped three Census Bureau veterans to serve as part-time advisers on operational, management and contracting issues while President Obama’s nominee to serve as Census director awaits a full Senate confirmation vote.

The trio includes Dr. Kenneth Prewitt, who served as bureau director from 1998 to 2001 and was widely believed to be the leading candidate for the position until suddenly withdrawing earlier this year with little explanation.

Former Census Bureau director Kenneth Prewitt will return in a temporary advisory role.

Obama instead nominated Dr. Robert Groves for the job in April, but his nomination has been held up ever since he cleared the Senate’s government affairs panel in late May.

As Groves awaits a final vote, Locke will consult with Prewitt, National Opinion Research Center president John Thompson and former Census chief financial officer Nancy Potok. The trio will draft a list of suggestions for Locke, who will pass them off to Groves if he’s confirmed.

The move, first mentioned in late April and not formally announced until today, has raised the ire of congressional Republicans who fear the White House is “back dooring” Prewitt into the director’s job without formal congressional confirmation.

“By bringing in these outsiders with strong personalities, the Bureau runs the risk of having too many cooks in the kitchen challenging the actions of career civil servants who have worked for 18 months to ensure a successful 2010 Census,” Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), said in a statement. Issa leads a House GOP Census Task Force established earlier this year to monitor the Obama administration’s execution of next year’s headcount.

“We are within ten months of Census Day, the last thing we need is a structural change that could jeopardize the success of the Decennial,” Bardella added.

Commerce officials stress that the three are merely serving as advisers and that Groves “will run the agency with the independence and professionalism that the American people expect and the Constitution demands,” according to a department statement set for release today. The consultants “will use their decades of experience to tell us just what steps require immediate attention to make the 2010 Census a success.”

Groves will have to wait until at least July 6 for a Senate confirmation vote. The Senate approved a dozen other Obama nominees last Friday, but at least 30 other nominees are in limbo. Administration officials believe Republicans have blocked them out of anger with the Senate Judiciary Committee’s timetable for Sonia Sotomayor‘s Supreme Court nomination.

Prewitt currently serves as a Columbia University professor and ran NORC before serving as Census director. Thompson is a 27-year Census veteran who had responsibility for the management, operations, and methodology of the 2000 national headcount.

Potok, a 29-year Census veteran, served as principal associate director and CFO during the 2000 census and currently serves as chief operating officer of management consulting firm McManis & Monsalve Associates.

By HOPE YEN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on Wednesday urged Congress to immediately end a GOP block on President Barack Obama’s nominee to lead the 2010 census, saying continued delays are putting the high-stakes head count at risk.

Initially put on hold by an anonymous GOP senator, Groves is now among roughly 30 Obama nominees in limbo after Republicans protested the quick timetable for hearings on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation. Under Senate rules, a senator can hold up a nomination without going public or providing an explanation.

Robert Groves, a veteran survey researcher with the University of Michigan, was easily approved by a Senate committee last month. But Republicans have stalled Groves’ full confirmation vote. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Republicans aren’t yet in agreement on Groves; his office says it has no information as to why.

“The Census Bureau cannot wait for strong leadership any longer,” Locke said in a statement. “The longer this nomination is held up, the greater the risk to the accuracy and success of the 2010 census. Robert Groves stands ready to run the agency with the independence and professionalism that the American people expect and the Constitution demands.”

Groves, 60, has drawn skepticism from House Republicans. As a former census associate director, Groves pushed for the use of statistical sampling in the 1990s to make up for an undercount of millions of minorities who tend to vote for Democrats, but was later overruled by the Republican commerce secretary.

In his confirmation hearing last month, Groves sought to allay GOP concerns by ruling out the use of broad sampling in the 2010 census, which is used to apportion House seats and redraw congressional districts. Groves has also pledged to resign if he encounters undue partisan interference in tallying census figures.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security committee which considered Groves’ nomination, said she believed it was necessary for Groves to be confirmed soon.

“The Census Bureau has acknowledged that it is experiencing critical problems with its management and testing of key information technology systems,” she said. “I do not know who has placed a hold on Mr. Groves’ nomination, nor do I understand the rationale for holding him up. I am very eager to get this qualified candidate on the job.”

The delay on Groves comes as the Census Bureau heads into its final critical months of preparation for the 2010 head count, including an aggressive outreach campaign aimed at hard-to-find groups such as immigrants, non-English speaking residents and displaced homeowners.

The agency has already acknowledged that tens of millions of residents in dense urban areas — about 14 percent of the U.S. population — are at high risk of being missed. Groves has said that if he is confirmed, one of his first steps would be to conduct a thorough risk assessment study to pinpoint ways to improve the count.

We hope that the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) and Commerce Department’s Inspector General are paying close attention to this investigation. MyTwoCensus thanks our readers who alerted us to the following story. If you have received FedEx packages from the Census Bureau, we urge you to contact us immediately and share your stories as well.

The initial tip that led to this investigation came from a former Census Bureau employee who wrote to us, “On Tuesday, May 26, I received a FED EX package from the temporary East Los Angeles office of the Census marked “PRIORITY OVERNIGHT DELIVERY” containing one thing: a regular-size white envelope, with my address written on it, containing two pieces of official paperwork: (a) 1-page personnel office document stating I was hired March 30, and (b) 1-page personnel office document stating I was let go April 20 because of lack of work. I have no idea why they sent this PRIORITY OVERNIGHT DELIVERY, but at $20 or so a pop, times 140,000 workers nationwide, that’s a lot of money. ($2.8 million in fact).”

Below, please find an airbill sent last week from another local 2010 Census office in a different region. The problem, in this and thousands of other instances, is that the message inside this $20 FedEx package could have just as easily been sent using standard first class mail via the U.S. Postal Service (for a mere ¢44) to reach its non-urgent nearby location within 24 hours. MyTwoCensus is currently trying to determine just how widespread this problem has become. We certainly hope that $3 million or more has not already been wasted.

MyTwoCensus hopes that this wasteful spending will be stopped immediately, hopefully before the 1.4 million people who will be  hired for the 2010 headcount are also sent non-urgent messages via FedEx. As the U.S. Postal Service goes further and further into debt, one wonders why government agencies are failing to use their own counterparts.

MyTwoCensus will be filing a Freedom of Information Act request by the close of business today to ensure that these numbers become public. On Friday we asked the Public Information Office at the U.S. Census Bureau to provide us answers to our questions about the use of Fedex, and after following up throughout the day today, we still have not receieved any official comment.

If any of our readers know a journalist/photographer in or near Providence, Rhode Island who can cover the 2010 Census-related portion of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, it would be greatly appreciated if you could have that person contact us. We will reimburse the attending journalist for food/travel costs. See the press release below for details of the event that we would like covered:

Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke sat down with The Chicago Tribune for an interview…unfortunately the interview revealed nothing that we haven’t already heard 200,000 times:

WASHINGTON — The third time was the charm for Gary Locke, a former governor of Washington state who was tapped as commerce secretary after President Barack Obama’s first two choices pulled out. In an interview, he discussed the 2010 census.

Q Tell us what models you’re developing to ensure that all ethnic groups and minorities are accurately counted in next year’s census.

A Well, for the first time, we will be sending our forms in different languages and specifically in Spanish. So populations, communities with a large Hispanic population, will actually receive a census questionnaire. We’re going to be very specific. From past information, we know, for instance, in which parts of Houston there’s a large Vietnamese population. We know where in Los Angeles … in the Southwest, we have large populations, blocks of Hispanic families, and so we’re going to be very strategic and very targeted.

Q Will you, in part, rely on (popu- lation) sampling, even though the Republicans are dead-set against it?

A The United States Supreme Court has actually ruled that we are not allowed to use sampling apportionment. Nor do we have any plans to use sampling for any other purpose connected with the 2010 census.

Q Every White House has tried to play a role in the census. What will be this White House’s role in the census?

A The census director reports to me, and, of course, I serve at the pleasure of the president. … It will not be politicized, and the White House assured me that it has no interest in politicizing it.

Earlier this week, we reported that the media was locked out of 2010 Census-related meetings with Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke. Now, The Denver Post reports that the public was locked out of the same meetings. For an organization trying to build its public visibility (and spending hundreds of millions of your tax dollars to do so), this makes little sense. Here’s the scoop from The Denver Post’s staff editorial:

We couldn’t help but notice the irony surrounding actions of new Commerce Secretary Gary Locke when he was in Denver last week for a meeting.

The secretary, speaking to a group that is working to raise public awareness about the importance of the 2010 census, actually closed the meeting to the public.

Sounds pretty counterproductive, if you ask us.

All but the opening 10 minutes of the gathering was off-limits to outsiders, ostensibly so committee members, appointed by Mayor John Hickenlooper, would feel comfortable in speaking their minds.

Surely, there was a better way to solicit candid remarks than by shutting off access during a publicized visit by the commerce secretary.

Frankly, Locke’s visit was the perfect opportunity to draw attention to the very important but, sorry to say, unsexy issue of the 2010 census.

Opportunity lost.

Among the goals of Denver’s 2010 Census Complete County Committee: Achieve a 75 percent return rate of mailed surveys. Make every city resident aware of the census. And ensure every Denverite knows that information they provide the census will be kept confidential.

They are laudable goals. And there are some other good things going on where the 2010 census is concerned.

In a Q&A with The Washington Post published last week, Locke defused a couple of inflammatory issues by ruling out the use of sampling or estimating, in coming up with counts.

He also offered assurances that the count, which is integral to apportioning congressional seats, would not be politicized.

Furthermore, Locke talked about how the census would target specific populations, such as Hispanics or Vietnamese, and send them surveys in their native tongue in an effort to boost participation.

These are all positive developments. Too bad the commerce secretary didn’t see fit to let the people of metro Denver in on them.

One major problem with the U.S. Census Bureau is its extremely unfriendly attitude toward the media, which has more likely done much more harm than good. Today, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke kicked off a public relations tour with closed-door meetings, including one in Denver:

Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke came to Denver on Wednesday to meet with the group charged with raising public awareness about the upcoming census and closed the session to the public and media.

Locke said he wanted to allow Denver’s 2010 Census Complete Count Committee to be frank about their problems and concerns.

“I just wanted to hear straight from them, as candidly as possible, their assessment of how things were going,” Locke told The Denver Post after the 45-minute meeting at the main Denver Public Library.

The committee was formed this year to develop a public-awareness campaign for the April 2010 census. It includes city government officials and community leaders.

“This is more of a briefing for the secretary to get a sense of where things are in Denver,” Kimball said. “So it’s not necessarily a big promotional event to draw attention to what’s going on.”

During his opening remarks, Locke talked about some of the national problems the census faces next year. He said independent reports have found hand-held computers malfunctioning and concerns that the bureau has not had time for dress rehearsals to uncover potential roadblocks.Locke blamed the previous Republican administration for the problems.

However, he told the group that Colorado appears to be in better shape than most states.

The media were allowed in the meeting for the first 10 minutes while Mayor John Hickenlooper introduced Locke to the committee and Locke made opening remarks.

After the remarks, the media were escorted out. Eric Brown, Hickenlooper’s spokesman, said the Commerce Department made the decision to close the meeting.

Locke was available for questions after the session.

Locke told The Post that committee members “were very complimentary of the collaboration between the regional office of the Census Bureau as well as local and state governments.”

Before the meeting began, The Post questioned why it was closed to the media.

Commerce Department spokesman Nick Kimball said the decision to keep it private did not conflict with the Census Bureau’s attempts to publicize the 2010 census.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of Census Director-to-be Robert M. Groves’ 41-page questionnaire that was required in preparation for his upcoming Senate confirmation hearing. MyTwoCensus has made requests to obtain this document so that we may analyze it in full. For now, here are the most interesting tidbits:

1. Groves defended his push for statistical sampling in the 1990 census to make up for an undercount of millions of mostly minorities, who tend to vote for Democrats — a move that was then decried by the Republican commerce secretary as political tampering.

2. While Groves said the use of sampling in 2010 was unlikely given the little time remaining, he would not say whether he would support other measures such as a government halt to immigration raids. “I will work with all agencies of government to assure the best census this country can achieve,” Groves wrote when asked if he would seek to scale back enforcement.

3. On matters of science, Groves was unequivocal. “The White House can have no role,” he said. “If the director is perceived to be a pawn of one or another political ideological perspective, the credibility of the statistical system is threatened.”

4. Groves said if he encounters undue partisan interference from the White House or elsewhere that he cannot resist, “I will resign and work outside the system to stop the abuse.”

5. In his questionnaire, Groves cast the Census Bureau as woefully outdated, saying it lacks scientific talent due to a recent and upcoming wave of retirements.

6. In his questionnaire, Groves acknowledged he lacked extensive management experience to run the bureau’s sprawling operations but said he was up to the task.

Lois Romano of The Washington Post recently interviewed Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke. One topic of discussion was the 2010 Census. Here’s the relevant info from the interview:

Romano: Tell us what models you’re developing to ensure that all ethnic groups and minorities are accurately counted in next year’s census.

Locke: Well, for the first time, we will be sending our forms in different languages and specifically in Spanish. So populations, communities with a large Hispanic population, will actually receive a census questionnaire.

We’re going to be very specific. From past information, we know, for instance, in which parts of Houston there’s a large Vietnamese population. We know where in Los Angeles . . . in the Southwest, we have large populations, blocks of Hispanic families, and so we’re going to be very strategic and very targeted.

Romano: Will you, in part, rely on [population] sampling, even though the Republicans are dead set against it?

Locke: The United States Supreme Court has actually ruled that we are not allowed to use sampling apportionment. Nor do we have any plans to use sampling for any other purpose connected with the 2010 census.

Romano: Every White House has tried to play a role in the census. What will be this White House’s role in the census?

Locke: The census director reports to me, and, of course, I serve at the pleasure of the president. . . . It will not be politicized, and the White House assured me that it has no interest in politicizing it.