BY FANNI FRANKL
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney joined Lower East Side District Leader Daisy Paez and the U.S. Census Bureau at Grand Street Guild this week to help residents fill out their Census forms.
New York State continues to trail behind in the national Census self-response rate, a pattern that could cause hundreds of thousands of dollars of missed funding. As of this week, only 54.9% of New York City responded to the Census and 59.3% of New York State. If there is just a 1% undercount in the 2020 Census, NY-12 residents could lose $430,000 in federal funding for schools that have a high proportion of low-income students. Additionally, New Yorkers could sacrifice $320,000 in federal funding for job training centers and career counseling.
Because of the critical nature of the Census and its effect on New York City funding, Rep. Maloney urged New Yorkers to fill out the form, especially during the pandemic.
“In the midst of a public health crisis, a global economic downturn, and attacks from the Trump Administration – a full and accurate Census count is in jeopardy,” said Rep. Maloney. “The Census determines the federal funding New York City will receive for the next decade. Our city has record low Census response rates, and it is essential that every New Yorker fills out their form as we re-build in the wake of COVID-19.”
More than $1.5 trillion in federal funding is distributed based on Census data in 316 different community programs. In the 2010 Census, 16 million people were not counted. As a result, Rep. Maloney, Chair of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, responded to the Trump administration memorandum seeking to remove undocumented immigrants from the 2020 Census apportionment count. Rep. Maloney has since been against this memorandum, seeing it as unconstitutional as more people will then be left out of the Census in the United States.
Rep. Maloney requested transcribed interviews with eight senior Census Bureau officials regarding the memorandum, but was declined.
The Trump administration holds onto their belief that the memorandum upholds the constitution by “excluding illegal aliens from the apportionment base” stating that “persons of the state” as written in the Constitution, only refers to individuals with “lawful immigration status” in the United States.
Even so, Rep. Maloney continues to fight against this memorandum as well as emphasizes the importance of filling out the census through mail, calling 844-330-2020 or going online at https://my2020census.gov/.
