2020 Census seeks local workers, data

With the 2020 Census set to begin in March of next year, Steve Hale, who serves as a Partnership Specialist for the Census in the southern part of Kansas, addressed Allen County Commissioners on Tuesday morning about the importance of accurate data.

Hale stressed that trusted voices within the communities of Allen County need to step up to the plate and get the word out about the importance of the Census. The count determines government funding for programs and the number of congressional seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“What I have found out during my travels through Kansas is that there is a general distrust for the government. People don’t want to participate,” Hale said. “Garden City, for example, with a heavy migrant population, with a lot of Hispanics and Latinos, there is a lot of concern about them getting an accurate count. Garden City is still upset about its counts from 2010. They were undercounted and they appealed their counts twice, to no avail. They saw it as lazy counting by the Census workers.”