 Good afternoon. My name is Jason Embry. I'm the Chair of the Future Forum Board this year, and I want to thank you very much for coming to this event today, our conversation on the 2020 Census and Implications for Texas. As a bit of background, the Future Forum is an organization that brings together individuals with different backgrounds, experiences, and points of view to discuss local, statewide, and national topics that affect us today. Our goal is to create civil, informed, and bipartisan discussions. The Future Forum's events are made possible by our great members and sponsors, including the Downtown Austin Alliance, the Jeff Eller Group, Austin Wine Merchant, and Joe Cook's catering. Thank you very much to our sponsors. If you're not a member, I strongly encourage you to sign up before you leave today, and we'll talk a little bit more about that at the end of the program. Members enjoy the best of what the Future Forum has to offer, including first access to events and happy hours, networking opportunities, and benefits at the LBJ Presidential Library, where we are here today. Our next event is on February 24th, and it will be a discussion of the Texas primary, which will be just a couple of weeks later, and also what's going on in the national election at that point, and our panel will include Jonathan Martin of the New York Times, Dr. Vicky Soto of the LBJ School, and Jim Henson of the Texas Politics Project. This will be moderated by Cassie Pollock of the Texas Tribune, and this is a joint event that we're having with the Tribune, and it'll be over in their event space on February 24th. Other spring events will include events on climate change and women in leadership. So with that, we'll turn it over to our panel, and our moderator will introduce the panel. Please keep in mind there will be time for questions at the end, and now I will turn it over to Alexa Ora, Demographics Reporter and Associate Editor of the Texas Tribune, to introduce our guests and moderate our discussion. We've got about 40 to 45 minutes that will do up here, then we'll go to questions, so hold on to those. I'm going to start introducing our panelists from the far end here. We have Justin Yancey. He is the President of the Texas Business Leadership Council. Before joining the council in 2001, he served in the administrations of Governor, Governors George W. Bush and Rick Perry. Next to him is John Lawler, who is the Census Program Manager for Travis County. He worked in local campaign organizing before that in City Council. Next to him is Genesis Sanchez. She's a Regional Census Manager for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, otherwise known as Naleo. Before that, she worked in community organizing with Vote Run Lead and Jolt. And last but not least, we have Lila Valencia. She is a senior demographer at the Texas Demographic Center, which has been incredibly active in various spaces working toward an accurate count. She has more than 10 years of experience doing data work and research in both the public and private sector. Thanks for being here. So we are sitting here with the 2020 Census officially kicking off this week in Alaska of all places, where the Iced Overbearing Sea allowed for Census Bureau workers to start the count in some remote fishing village. Luckily, we don't need Iced Overseas to reach people here. The work here won't start until mid-March when we'll have questionnaires go out to millions and millions of Texans determining everything from our political representation to the money the state gets for early childhood programs and all of that. But it's pretty likely that the count is actually going to miss quite a few people in our state. And so I wanted to start by asking each of you about what your elevator pitch has become in the lead-up to the Census count. What are the stakes that you're emphasizing to the different groups or communities that you're each focusing on? Who wants to start? I guess I can start whenever I'm giving presentations that really I try to cater the information to the different groups that we're presenting to if it's business groups or transportation groups. And really the decennial census touches all of those groups. And so I really start with just the billions of dollars that are at stake for all states and in particular for the state of Texas. We really have, I mean, we received over like 61 billion dollars in the last fiscal year on funds that are coming from the federal government from Census-derived data. And so I let them know it's about real specific things that touch our everyday lives like schools, healthcare, parks, transportation. So that's sort of in my elevator pitch lately. Yeah. Genesis, you're training a lot of folks. How are you, what is the sort of elevator pitch you're making to them about why this matters and why they should get involved? Yeah, I think it's pretty similar to Lila in that you have to make the pitch kind of specific to the group. One of the things that I have emphasized though is as a Latino organization our marching orders are to get Latinos counted. But one of the things that we've seen because of like the lack of resources and funding and infrastructure in the state is that I have to involve all sorts of groups and so I have to make the pitch pretty large, right? I have to remind everybody that like Lila said, it involves all of us and impacts all of us. And I do think that they're, I'm sure Lila can relate but making the pitch to different political leanings as well because we're nonpartisan but and the census has become a really contentious issue because of things like the citizenship question. I think like going back to the actual reality like here are real funds. These are real things that you touch every day. And my strategy from the beginning was to work with moms and kids because they're really like leaders in the community and then it's branched out from there. Well, so like Genesis and Lila have already mentioned it really depends upon who you're talking to. I usually divided either between you know folks who already know why the census is important or they don't. If folks aren't aware of how you know many different facets of life that data impacts, I try to kind of walk them through that. I use a similar example of from the moment you wake up and you step out your door, you know the car that you're jumping in those roads you're driving on, census data is you know information that Text.uses to fund improvements around the state. When you're passing by either a grocery store or not that's demographic data based on the census that HEB uses on whether or not they'll put a new grocery store there. And that job that you eventually go to is either there because you know of the strong data on the ground that you know had that job pop up or wasn't there. So throughout the whole day someone can figure out the census impacts it. Now if someone already knows why it's important usually the pitch is more about how we're going to do something about it. Because a lot of times you know there's already been some folks have already been laying some great ground game around our different institutional camps here in Central Texas at least. Folks are now really eager and hungry to know what are we going to do about it. I echo everything that's been said here. I think the only thing that I might add that we that I include in my message is that on top of all of that which is the most important. It's the first time ever we're primarily doing this online. So it's just can't stress enough how many how many times you need to tell people and tell organizations and tell businesses and tell churches and you know all the groups that that are working on on make sure on outreach that this is a little different than they may remember from the past and that certainly there are opportunities to fill out a form on paper but the online aspect is going to be big and I hope it's going to we all hope it's going to go very well. So those working toward an accurate count in Texas are in many ways starting from behind just because we are home to millions of people who fall into these categories of people that are considered hard to count. You know a common refrain I hear among folks working on this very locally is that the people who most depend on the funding that this that is based on the census are at the highest risk of being missed. But Leila I'm curious like who exactly are we talking about when we talk about these hard to count communities because how do you sort of normalize that in a state like ours that's so diverse in both people in geography. Sure well in Texas we have nearly 25 million people or about I'm sorry nearly 25% or 7 million people in this state of Texas that are living in neighborhoods that are considered hard to count. And now these definitions of what is hard to count is it goes back to census data census research that has been looked looking at past censuses and past surveys and really looking to see who's not responding who's not turning in their mail forms and those things of that nature. And what we find is that you know a lot of the communities are communities that represent the face of Texas. So they are immigrants they are people of color they are people who live below the poverty line they are people who live in homes of mixed statuses and their children. There's a lot of you know this is one of the groups that's really interesting in particular young children children under five have been increasing in their undercount. So in 2000 they were undercounted and then in 2010 the percentage by which they were undercounted increased and so we're really concerned that in 2020 that could go up even further. So that really something that Genesis mentioned really struck a chord because talking about children and families is really important specifically for the young children undercount because young families tend to have these young children these young children and young families tend to be families of color and they also tend to have lower poverty or increased poverty and lower incomes and so when we talked about the child undercount it's really important because it covers many of these hard to count populations. Yeah John how do you go about prioritizing this where do you even start your ground game you know obviously Aston is less diverse than some of our other big urban centers but you've still got sort of a range of populations you're working with. Sure absolutely and that's still taking ideas on how to do that exactly grab me afterwards but no so something really cool that we've been able to do here in Travis County is you know looking at these national tools like the census bureau put together which is definitely from a national lens trying to get to the local level we're looking at all the research that Lila and her team has done at the statewide level which is from a statewide lens we've tried to kind of create our own local lens and we've we've pooled from each of those different tools that were already available and you know because when you look at it from a national lens or even a statewide lens Travis County is not that not that hard to count nowhere near comparable I'm sure other parts of the state you're in like the valley parts of Houston where they're experiencing natural disasters or Dallas you know everyone's experiencing gentrification and displacement to some degree and so Travis County if you put them up you know and compare them to other parts of the state not as bad but thankfully I get to be selfish and only focus on Travis County in Austin and so through that lens if you start looking at some of our local variables that make folks hard to count which because of the great impact of displacement and places you know communities of color you know whether or not someone is a recent you know transplant into another part of the county is a big variable whether or not there can be hard to count traditionally the census bureau has relied on relied upon a lot of institutional strategies to get out the count but again unfortunately because of things like displacement and other things occurring right now in our urban communities and urban counties we can't rely as much upon those because that church that used to be right down the road that a multi-generational family you know used to attend they may now be in Flugerville right or for example you might have someone moving in right we've got folks from all over Williamson County and Hayes County moving into Travis County in the central Texas region so given that we've been really trying hard to kind of come out of data perspective you know Dr. Valencia has been huge helping us out with that and we've kind of come up with our own set our own index to say okay based on all these things happening in our locality what then are the neighborhoods that are hard to count and it's very similar to what the census bureau and the state has provided but it just kind of gives us a better understanding of what's going on in that neighborhood is it because they're foreign born is because they have a limited English proficiency and what has resulted in is a cool little tool we're going to be using and some methodology so that when we start to try to get out our ground game we're aware of what's going on yeah Dennis you're training up local officials and organizers often in communities that don't have as many resources as Travis County might or don't even have a census program manager yeah what does the prioritizing look like in those communities where you just you're starting from a very different place yeah so I think it's been that has been the challenge right like trying to mobilize people in such a quick amount of time because when we look back in the past year I'm sure that John you jumped on board after I did right and so we jumped on board right yeah you're the veteran which is not that long I've been I've been in the census world since June and so that's like at the height of the citizenship question when we saw that Texas really was not going to invest any money then we had to kind of go back and and figure out okay how do we localize this how and for me that has been bringing a national campaign so we have our Naleo has a national campaign that's called agasic on that which in Spanish is make yourself count and so we had to figure out ways to localize it like what does it look like what materials do people need what kind of support do they need and so we have tried to emphasize like we our strategy is kind of helping coach people and organizations partners really like leveraging the like masses and saying like here's a simple way of conducting a campaign here are all the resources you need take it and localize it making your own but also emphasizing that as if you think of it as a campaign I was I used to work in the voter registration arena and so you think about like what do you need to get someone to take an action you need a lot of touches what do those touches look like and so just sharing basic I think organizing principles has been really helpful and kind of making it more relatable to those communities so what does it mean does it mean like like for example in the valley one of the great examples that I heard was that people the counties were involving like paleteros like ice cream men because every kid goes to a paletero right you see them so if they have a census message on their like little ice cream truck or van then it's really easy you know the kid sees it over and over and over again leading up to the census they're going to ask their parent about it and then their parent will take action and so you just kind of have to find those like little avenues creative not very costly avenues because that's the other I think challenge that we've all faced in the work yeah just and on the business level beyond the paleteros that are walking up and down the streets is your priority giving the business owner sort of the messaging to encourage their employees to participate is it putting iPads and computers in every break room so that people fill out the questionnaire while they're in there having their lunch what is what is the priority on the business side yeah thanks I mean it can be all of the above but if I can't sort of put that in a setting when when Texas Counts was created by the Center for Public Policy Priorities and the Community Foundation of Texas they created different subcommittees and I was asked to co-chair a business subcommittee and so from from our perspective there are multiple things that can be done I mean our messaging is certainly I would just say easier than some of some of the other counterparts that have as we're just you know hard to reach areas hard to count areas but our employers we're sending messages that they will send to employees asking that they explaining how important this is asking that they please not do not ignore the the letter you receive mid-march and then the second letter the reminder postcard and all that kind of kind of thing that's going out please don't ignore those you need to you need to do this but certainly there can be you know break room you can set up things to do it depending on the size of the company we've got more resources than others but we've seen we've heard hearing plans of even having you know a company next door a coffee company come in and so they can create a census day kickoff you know that would be really helpful that's not going to happen every company but if there can be a kiosk or a booth set up in companies just try to and also ask employers to ask their employees to spread the word to their family explain that it is if you have a an infinite home that the infant needs to be counted as well and that we can just you know go far and wide and so within that that's one one sector you're seeing the same things done and work with at least a couple of you up around on the texas counts so just quickly before I forget texascounts.org is the website and there's lots of resources on there not just for business for for multiple organizations so let's talk about what's not happening for all that's at stake with the census texas lawmakers last year ended the last legislative session before the count without putting any money directly toward this effort meanwhile california for example was putting 187 million toward getting an accurate count what was the actual impact of that lack of state funding on the work they are doing well I'll tell you a little bit about the so historically the governor appoints the secretary of state as sort of the census administrator coordinator for the state of texas and so this year there was sort of some kind of turnover in that office right and so that itself kind of put us a little bit behind in getting started but since her appointment secretary hues has convened state agencies to come together to sort of have a discussion around you know what can we do the the complete count for texas is important so what is it that we can do given that there is no funding and state agencies are open to a lot of those ideas but absolutely you know one of the questions was you know so let's say that we have to print out you know about 500 coloring books or more than you know thousands you know thousands of coloring books for the schools around the state you know who's who's paying for that printing who's you know doing the design for a lot of this and you know at the end of the day we don't have you know the answer to that question and so state agencies are being asked to do as much as they can and sort of shuffle things around so that they can help where they where they can help but there are a lot of things that they can do so for instance we know that the the texas department of motor vehicles has been talking about perhaps you know in you know they're they're programming prints out your vehicle registration renewal form and you get that in the mail perhaps in that coding they can add a message about the sent the decennial census and how important it is to take that and so there's lots of different little touch points that state agencies have that they may be able to use that have minimal cost but for sure were there some funding from the state you know some of these efforts might already be underway yeah how are you all seeing this play out in what you're working on I mean I'll just say it was it was an abandonment of a responsibility by the state government to have stepped in they really should have been here at the table right funding direct outreach efforts but unfortunately they did not for whatever reason I know there's folks here in this room actually who advocated at the state capital last year so that there could have been funding from the state to local you know local campaigns not just like our own but in those other parts of the state that are even more hard to count you know for example on our case right I'm a local campaign so Travis County City of Austin 5050 split you know with this increasing environment or this environment where it's increasingly becoming the responsibility for local governments to step up in certain places you know there's limited dollars for a city of Austin and the county of Travis but they were thankfully due to the leadership of our county judge Sarah Eckhardt and our mayor here in Austin and a lot of the other leaders within the county of the different municipalities and school districts they said this is worthwhile so they invested $200,000 each they invested for this role I have the privilege of serving in but when I look at states like California Michigan New York when I get on these conference calls with folks around the country who are talking about the resources that they have at their disposal that they were getting started you know years in advance in some cases I just go man what a missed opportunity we had to really kind of finally put down you know put down in the record what exactly Texas looks like you know what it could have done for us here in Travis County and city in the city of Austin when it comes to trying to figure out exactly where we are as a city and a community in terms of this historic population growth and movement of our historic neighborhoods you know fortunately you can and you can see the results of this kind of work even in Texas where communities like Houston and Harris County they started out even earlier they've got an amazing group called Houston in action that started doing really on the ground hard community organizing work through a partnership with the Houston endowment and you may be more familiar with their work than I am through your statewide lens but they're already seeing the benefits of that now they would probably say they needed more money and more time as well but that would have been a really amazing opportunity had the state stepped up and provided additional funding for our region yeah I mean I I would echo both of those statements too and I it's a missed opportunity it feels really disappointing because working on the state on a statewide basis like right now we so March 12th is when the mail the mailings go out for most of us for about 90 percent of the population in the United States and so you know when you're thinking about planning you want people kind of mobilizing like at that period we should be going into rapid response we should be building like things that are happening more locally but as it as it stands right now like I'm still training people on what the census is so part of it is that people are really behind a lot of people were waiting on funding to come through we relied very heavily on private foundations to do that legwork and so people just didn't have the staff the capacity the time really to to invest into census and if you're not seeing it from the top down then you you might not think it's that serious that somebody else will step in right and so just that lack of coordination locally on the state level has I think been a big impediment like it's it's tough it's like a really tough field right now to be in doing census work I would say well and let me just give credit where credit's due but for the work of like Texas counts the statewide group who are also forming in a vacuum really fast but for Nalaya who when I first like that's why I joke around that Genesis is the veteran even though she started just a few months before me I was calling her saying what am I doing well how does this work what are the strategies and Lila coming in early on you know she called me I think week one saying let me catch you up John boy you know a lot going on so thank we've we've been really you know lucky to have had these kind of groups step up in the absence of the state yeah I want to ask you know you mentioned the citizenship question earlier you know in some ways the upcoming count was sort of derailed before it even started with this sort of drawn out court battle as the Trump administration pushed to include a question about the citizen about citizenship on the questionnaire you know we heard from previous census directors who warned against this about how they could depress responses particularly among Hispanics and immigrants I remember talking to one local official just as this was sort of being rolled out who was saying you know the damage has already been done no matter how this plays out because this is out there now you know obviously that sort of came at the same time that the state was asking people on the voter rolls to prove their citizenship so that they could stay on there it ended up overlapping you know I'm curious about how much of that fallout are y'all dealing with now was the damage actually done even by the debate and are we underestimating how it might actually affect responses from people so the bureau itself like did testing on this right they they saw that if they put it if they put a citizenship question on the form that about approximately 6.5 million people would not respond that's pretty significant we know anecdotally right if you talk to community members and you ask them about citizenship they're not going to answer and one of the biggest questions that I would get when I was doing when I was in the field was is is there any question about citizenship do I have to be a citizen in order to participate so yeah I think the damage is done because the other thing that as you mentioned it derailed planning people kept holding the line they kept saying like well let's let's wait and see how it pans out but what we should have been doing is like going full full steam ahead in terms of our planning with or without the question because we have to complete the census right we have to get an accurate count so we needed to come up with the plan and I think people just held the line a little too long in addition I think that so yeah I'll say that yeah the damage is done but I think it's it feels very pointed right it feels very pointed at the Latino community and immigrant communities too and so I think the maybe the positive side of this is that I stepped into this role right at the height of this legal battle and one of the things that we saw was that we had advocates on all immigration fronts so we had the Asian Americans Advancing Justice we had the Arab American Institute Baji the Black Alliance for Just Immigration all of these advocates came to the table as well and said this is not just a Latino issue this is everybody's issue and this is how we need to advocate against it and so I think that has made census outreach a little easier in that sense because we know it's not just like we're not just focusing on one community we're actually trying to be in this together so I would say that that's kind of a positive that came out of it yeah yeah enough are you running into it as you're knocking on doors and or designing outreach events well and to be clear our canvassing operation has not begun yet but absolutely I mean I mean 110 percent one example that came to mind was actually earlier this week I had a meeting with leadership from our Asian American Complete Count Committee so Complete Count Committee CCC's it's I joke it's an acronym I never want to see those three letters around each other again you know because that's the census bureau's organizing model they ship out to communities and they say oh you want to do the census start a CCC and so one thing we did here in Travis County is we were lucky enough to have an Asian American community that stepped up and said well we're going to get organized ourselves they created their own Asian American CCC since then we've built off of that and we have several other ones going but specifically to this question you know some of the folks who were in the leadership of that Asian American CCC were involved 10 years ago during the last census effort here in Travis County and they said there was never an issue with that you know nowhere near that level of trust you know there's you know one of the folks who's talking about he has been trying to communicate with folks at supermarkets and folks from foreign countries will just go absolutely not you can't convince me I'm not doing it no way they're getting my information and they just keep on walking and he said that is a phenomenon unique and this is anecdotal but unique to this this census and so that's that's so unfortunate um I do agree there is a positive spin on here right I mean you know my I know that my role and maybe in part your role and also campaign was in response to a lot of this stuff being drummed up but I wish my role didn't have to exist right you know I wish there wasn't this this this kind of unique moment right now happening where we have to have this campaign we're investing in and pushing and just to get folks to trust the government that their information is safe yeah I I agree I mean we don't we're already in a situation where people don't let alone not trust the government but not trust cyber not trust online uh you're putting your information online just in general if you're applying for credit card or buying something on you know online so you have that uh it just goes back to that it is so important for businesses but it's also we we we get as a Texas as as Texas this the census is created to count who is living here period so the question it was just unfortunate that that but we need to we need to we're moving forward now we need to count who is who is living here and and and go forward because as you've already alluded to we businesses use this information for where to where to where to grow where where they're going to have employees where where they may want to move what schools just all the different for the next 10 years and we have this one shot but under counts are going to really affect you know low income areas because the amount of money that's not going to be coming back from the federal government that should be because those individuals are there and need it so it's disproportionate as always it's not telling you something you don't know but it will be a disproportionate negative for low income families if if we have an undercount so that's why just we don't just think of it as in terms of of is important for business it is critically important but it's just important for for the state of texas and that we have the amount of money that that if we have and we were owed a another member of congress based on the population that we have that that member of congress i think we're thinking there may be two or three new members of congress coming out of this if we only have two versus three and in what areas those individuals living in that area are not are going to be underrepresented so then again it's it's it's just it goes to disproportionate but it's also just a something that we as a state i don't care who you are there's no target demographic i was having conversations there's no target demographic for this it's if you're if you're breathing you're part of the part of the census and so we have one of the things i i just wanted to add is that i i know that the census bureau is also really aware of this damage that has been done and they're working really hard to make sure that their media campaigns are really touching on that for the different groups that are really feeling some fear around this issue of their data confidentiality and the citizenship question and so i know that they're working really hard on that but also they've released sort of the the sample of what that what the census form is going to look like and then like online guides of how the online form will look like and so i think those are really helpful tools that can really show something very tangible to community members who are experiencing that fear that you know that question is absolutely not on the census form and really they also have a lot of materials that really highlight the confidentiality and security of of those data and of course you know the the fear is out there but one of the things that i really like to you know emphasize is that the data really you know stick with us for the next 10 years and so as you mentioned earlier in the conversation a lot of the communities that are harder to count and that may be experiencing some of this fear are also the ones that are really going to benefit the most from a lot of these programs and so it's really important we know that it's a it's a calculation that they have to make right and it's a it's a it's a scary one but we really hope that they are able to consider and connect how the decennial census will impact their quality of life while they are here yeah you know i think we can sort of all agree that this feels like the most politicized census in quite some time you know i remember hearing from census bureau officials saying we would so benefit from having the governor go on tv and say please participate endorsing this at that level and then you know every level beneath that um but you know john and jenesis you all probably don't spend that much time working with republicans um but i am curious you know just and if you see sort of a mediator role for the business community to play here in getting people who might not normally work with these folks to play a role in this and i just want to be really clear uh one of our county commissioners gerald dory is a republican and he has been part of the unanimous support we've received on the county commissioners court uh and several republican leaders here locally have been supportive of our efforts so i just wanted to make that real clear bastard county judge was just on the radio this morning talking about their you'd be surprised who's stepping up i think it a lot of people recognize that it's not about party affiliation and so you're bringing resources if you're bringing knowledge like people are willing to engage with you at the table yeah we live in a very hyper political time and i understand that but this is not i mean the council i work for is a non bipartisan nonpartisan organization um and this is just not one of those political issues i but i get that it has it has become uh at the federal level um but that's why we're that's why we're working against there's multiple reasons uh why we're what we're trying to do and uh all we can do is just yeah be the voice that says this is important and it's not it's not about uh you know what uh political party you're with it's not uh you know what region or what side of town or any of that it's it's i hope to be i hope we're providing a voice for that we're we're certainly trying to get um a large company ceo's down to small uh owners of companies to to put the word out that this is important and uh and you know maybe there is some trust issues with government and there are i mean there always has been to some degree and and cyber certainly online for sure but maybe people will trust well but my boss or my maybe maybe not but you know my manager this is important and so the more voice is certainly with the faith based part of texas counts you know with with pastors talking about it and with uh you know charitable organizations and goodwill united way talking about it uh you can you can get that but it's not it's it's not just a uh this is not a um a trump administration effort this is the census it's been going on for you know hundreds of years it'll be going on for hundreds of years you know and it's it's not a but it the challenges are there yep we talk a lot about the funding that could be lost in an undercount you know the director of a head start program who whose funding is based on the census but ends up with more families and children you know knocking at their doors looking for support uh lila what's the impact on how we continue to assess our growth the pressure on safety nets and services that come with that growth growth for the next 10 years you know is the reality that we just have to live with an undercount baked into all of that data for 10 years yeah that is the reality and so for instance um all of our data our population projections our population estimates that we produce for the states eligible eligibility criteria that are determined right after the census uh count all of those use that decennial count and um you know if they are undercounted in particular for um for programs that use that decennial as the base there there is no movement around it and sometimes even when when they go when geographies go through the appeal process because they can't appeal if they really feel that there there was an undercount and they can even go through litigation um they can move some of those but sometimes that base stays the same and so the effect is there and it's there for the rest of the decade and so right now it's another one of the statistics that we've been sharing a lot is that if Texas experience is just a 1% undercount um we would be losing 300 million dollars per year for the next 10 years now that's a lot of funding and right now the projections aren't that Texas would be undercounted by 1% but it's closer to about one and a half percent and so the stakes are high yeah how are y'all preparing for this john i'm curious at the community level you know how do you prepare to run a county for the next 10 years when you know that the count the a lot of the funding that you're writing your budget off of is going to be off well thankfully i won't be a part of running the county 10 years so that's i'll leave that to folks who get to have that fun job um but no i mean from from the from the county perspective from the city perspective what what i've heard our leadership say over and over again uh is that fun that that question of funding the fact that they would not be getting the dollars they desperately need you know i'd probably assume that most of the folks in this room are residents of austin or travis county you know we all know that there's a great deal of infrastructure needs here locally and you know folks have been going to the ballot boxes and supporting those but my goodness you know if we're looking at tens of millions of dollars a year that our region would be missing out on that's a bond election we don't have to go after right um that's a tax raise we don't have to go after right because at the end of the day these things still have to get paid for right i mean that's like that's one of those great questions of our time just because you know the funding is not there may not mean the needs not there um and so that will be some harsh realities i imagine but but going back real quick to this question of how we even determine how much funding is at risk one of the first things you know we were trying to do when i got on the job and remember asking dr valencia about this and others was how much is really at stake so when i go talk to city council member x or mayor of small town y and what you know western travis you know how much are they going to lose that they want to hear that and as we tried to figure that out i remember you know kassie davis over here we were getting on the phone with c triple p we were trying to figure out how you know how do we calculate this there was a professor out on the east coast to think of george washington university and i called them i left him a voice and i said man you did a really great research from a national lens on how much this stuff costs can you tell me how much from a travis county residents perspective it's going to matter to them and he called me back and he said would you texas people please stop calling me you know he said got us on this big email list he said i'm hearing from people in dalis houston el paso dud you know like you're all trying to figure out this question and that one again is another example of the state not being there providing that leadership and like you know guiding on those questions but then two that that's really one of our best pitches to the business community and others is that financial that financial lens and what he ultimately said to us it is way too complicated there are just far too many funding sources right that depend upon census data there's just too many ways you can calculate how census day impacts folks and then even when you're looking at these averages we use of fifteen hundred dollars you know as our county tax assessor bruce elphond always likes to say it's fifteen hundred dollars a year per person we don't get undercounted it's the best estimate we got but when you talk about folks in title one schools right that number goes up when you talk about seniors with an you know assistance at home that number goes up so it's a huge fluctuation across the board and that i think also again just speaks to how important the census is we've had the largest increase in numbers in the as a state of any of the 50 states over the last decade uh and then austin and north texas are both in other areas that certainly in the valley too my gallery have been growing just you know much faster than average uh and so you already you've been and you've been seeing the challenges of funding both at you know at the state level and the county level and city level it's been going on and so just another another point to make of that uh the more the more we know the money can be sent back a lot of it's that we send up it can be sent back uh the better for across the board for any any at any level oh it's just gonna add to speak to john's point i think uh making that number relatable is also really hard like people have a lot of curiosity about like well how does that impact me because i participated in the last decennial and the road outside is still not fixed and so you have to think about how do i talk to a person and say well like how many people here have student loans raise a hand okay how many people have kids okay how many people drive on highways how many maybe know someone or have been on medicaid yeah exactly so like those are real programs that people touch every day that you can share with people like maybe you can't relate on that 300 million dollar amount but you can relate to having student loans and wanting Pell grants and not having to fight for parking at ut like you there are things that you you can tangibly share with people that maybe you know i think that's another challenge that we face but we've had to come up with creative solutions to say or like to have talking points for the community and at the end of the day you know even though there's that dollar attached to it really you know the fact that a more a better educated a healthier texas is what we need in order to keep this booming economy that the state of texas has been experiencing going and so one of the things that i i'd like to also talk about especially when i'm talking to people that i know that have children or invested in children's welfare is that if a child who's about four years old is under counted in the decennial census really it impacts their future education pretty much through you know the whole up to high school because all of their elementary years their middle school years and some of high school are going to be impacted by this decennial count and so it's really really important that especially young children get counted this time around yeah so uh us acknowledging that outreach and we're about to open the q and a i'm sorry i'm going over a tiny bit but this will be the last question acknowledging that outreach in say the mostly brown and black neighborhood i live in in south austin will be fairly different to the one in terry town um what are the things that people who are sitting here all of whom are going to fill up their questionnaire nod your head so they feel better um what are things that they can actively do at their level to help with this because i think a lot of the times people hear the doom and gloom and it's so easy to shed it out but what can people actually do at this point so i'm happy to jump in here um and that's been you know like i mentioned at the very beginning of this there's once folks realize how or why why the census is so important they didn't ask they didn't ask how can i help um and one thing we're going to be rolling out the first week of february here locally as we've got a new website that's going to be launching with our neighborhood organizing map is what we're calling it and that will have on there both locations that folks can go take the census once it's you know like libraries foundation communities is saying their tax free you know their free tax centers will be available but we're going to list those different locations but then what we're also going to try to do is say hey do you want to organize in your neighborhood do you want to go blockwalking you know are you part of a neighborhood association that would like someone to come out and talk about the census well type in your email address sign up in here so that's one immediate way that i would say that up is coming down the pipeline for folks here who live in austin travis county but then another way is one thing we tried to do after i went down to houston and talked to some of the folks running their census team that had so much more time and money uh was how they were kind of organizing internally something really cool they done is done around table of members of these hard to count communities um you know god bless us here in travis county in austin texas but you know when you took a snapshot of our institutional leadership or a lot of the folks there at the table who already hit the ground running we didn't have a lot of folks from those hard to count communities in the room and so one thing we've been doing is going out trying to create cccs in our hardest to count communities like the black african-american population ispanic latino uh asian american group had already formed and then the austin coalition of pta's who jenice and i have spoken to they're doing their own trains getting their own their own efforts underway so if you are a member of that community or you'd like to assist them grab me afterwards because they have their own they have their own facebook pages they have their own meetings they're running they're developing their own messaging materials so that's something you'd like to contribute to that's something you can do right now because the materials they develop are the ones that we will use to walk your neighborhood right and it will look vastly different from the ones we use at north lamar and runberg because those are two totally different communities right um and so that's somewhere that's a way someone could help right now yeah i think the simplest thing you can do is fill out your form early completely and online if you can um that helps to bureau a lot i think one of the pieces i always like to share is that the bureau is also underfunded uh which means that they're running up against a lot of challenges with hiring uh just with infrastructure and so one of the ways you can best support them is by actually just doing it online so they don't have to print you a form uh you can talk to people tell your neighbors tell your co-workers your friends put it on social media share a lot of the collateral that we have um you can visit our website agasecontad.org and you can also share our bilingual uh census hotline which is 1877 el cenzo um which i think is pretty clever that we got that number and uh yeah just like talk to people and promote the census job so the i i don't know what they're paying in travis right 23 dollars an hour yeah but in houston it keeps going up because they can't find people and so tell that like high schooler senior who's just turned 18 to go and apply college students what have you um it is kind of one of the best ways that we can help facilitate this process because what you want in the community is if you have to send out an enumerator is that you want them to look like the community talk like the community you don't want someone parachuting into that to that neighborhood and so that would be very helpful as well but fill out early don't forget your kids don't forget your non-family members talk about it and apply for the jobs and if you have any issues talking about it if you're just like well i'm not quite sure what to say reach out to us for resources there are so many great resources as uh justin mentioned on texascount.org there's so many resources naleo has resources austin travis county ccc reach out to us and we'll be happy to get you materials um and the census bureau has lots of materials as well and then apply for a census job it's a great experience i know a lot of people that join the the census bureau and then stay on to do other work because they just love it so much it's very quickly and i don't i just wouldn't only i wanted to add to that i don't think anyone would have gotten the wrong but the the texascounts.org the texas counts committee is and i mentioned this already it's not just the business outreach in fact we're one smaller group there's the education we have people focusing on government state agencies county governments health care a variety so yeah the resources there are you will find a resource for you there's info graphics you can download things you can do and just to share all right well i ate up some of our question and answer time but we've got a mic going around we've got nine minutes so please make sure your questions end with a question mark so we can get through as many people as possible we'll start back there hi my name is ginger gossman and i met one of the state agencies that was at the meeting with the secretary of state um first i want to say i'm really excited because my 21 year old nephew just that got the call to be part of the census this year so i'm pretty excited about that um and the second thing i was wondering so we're texas is one of 24 states that didn't put any money on the table to collect census data are we talking to those other 23 or 25 states to find out and that's why i figured we are that which the trading lessons on how to make this work even though there's no money on the table from us um okay yeah so basically we actually get on a on a state sharing call every month um actually it's every two months and i think they're moving it up to every month now since the census is right around the corner 68 days away folks 68 days away but really you'll be receiving um your form sooner closer to uh mid-march but um so we get on these calls in our region and we hear from the other states and we hear what they're doing and so that's been really helpful especially when we go to the state agency roundtable we're able to share ideas about what other states are doing we're able to share ideas about what other states who have a complete count committee but don't have funding because there's a lot there's kind of a spectrum and so we get to hear what they're doing as well and we absolutely you know share that information with our partners with the state agency so that everybody kind of has ideas and inspirations around what can be done and the only thing i would add to that is there's a national conference of mayors i think is the group that's called and our mayor's a part of it and there's a uh there's a group of folks that are going around talking to each other and that was where i learned for example the lesson that even once we got folks around the table five months ago we were still trying to figure out what exactly we were going to try and do and so that was really helpful to at least be validated hearing from other cities in similar situations that they were going yeah we don't know either you know and do you have any ideas here's what we figured out anyone else go down here to the middle oh hey i'm cassie um so i know you mentioned kids are under counted young kids specifically can you talk a little bit more about why young kids are under counted and how we get out the count with them i can take this one and listen so it's like a host of reasons and um thank you for asking that because this is like like there's so much overlap right between the young children and so many of the other hard to count populations but it can it's a host of reasons it but mostly it revolves around their living situations if they're if they're living in more complex sort of living situations for instance if they live in two separate homes because of divorce or if they live with someone other than a relative if they're foster children if they're in larger households where there's multiple families living within one household there's it just becomes much more complicated to to count and to remember to count that child as part of that household and what we just try to remind everybody is that you need to count everyone even if it's that little infant that was born you know April 1st that little infant should be counted as well and they're just it's really just so important and especially for the Latino community the Latino community is almost the young children who are Latino in Texas are almost twice as likely to be under counted compared to non-Hispanic white children and so it's one of the fastest growing populations in our in our state it's definitely adding the largest numbers because we just need to make sure to get that population counted that's definitely the definitive answer that's the best answer but there's still also a little bit of that you know oh I've heard it before factors today but for I remember this from past since it's like oh my my my child needs to be counted I think there may some people just interpretation of it as you know it's the two working adults or one working adult or you know my my grandparents live with us yes probably but not nothing you know it's just hopefully that's online and it'll be taken care of with the question but that's the main obviously the main reason was what yeah and I'll add to that people return the form but they forget their kids so parents do engage with the form they say they see oh okay I'm supposed to include everybody but maybe the newborn they're not just they're not thinking about them as a full-fledged person yet so they just forget imagine you're you're a young mom or you just had your baby like you're also a little scatterbrained you don't think about maybe including that baby but because so much of that funding relies on that age group it's really essential that you count that that that young child and when you look at that census form you may get a little bit frustrated because some of the questions seem duplicative and you're like I already answered this but they're doing it exactly for that reason they're like are you sure you've included everybody are there any young kids in your household and it's just to reiterate and to remind somebody who may have forgotten that their child is a member of that household to include that child on the form yeah all right we've got time for one more the lady back here had her hand up before you I'm sorry uh down here in the middle hi I'm to touch a little bit on the undercount for small children and you were talking about living in um some difficult situations so in a circumstance I'm wondering if y'all can give us some advice on how to address an issue such as this so in circumstances where there might be more people living in a house or wherever that a landlord is aware of and so people have trepidation and answering this questions honestly and although by law the census bureau is you know the information is confidential and will be shared how do you discourage those fears and when we're talking to people I mean I'll go ahead and answer this but for me one of the I think so I will share that I think sometimes fear is just misunderstanding right so if you just explain like no or even if you acknowledge like in a lot of my presentations I I actually point to this quite often because someone has that question but they don't they're embarrassed to and and ask it right they're embarrassed to say well I'm the person who has too many people in my home per my lease agreement how do I count my family so I think part of it is just telling them like hey don't worry we won't talk like the bureau cannot talk to your landlord they can't share your lease agreement just be sure to include everybody on that form and I think again the form itself will will share it does share like please don't forget to include everybody no matter what kind of living situation this is and it does the form itself also has the option of you explaining who that person is in relation to person one so you can explain that this is a non non-relative person living in your household this could be a nephew niece grandson grandchild this could be a same-sex partner all of these different identities can be allocated on the form and so people have an opportunity to try to explain a little bit about their living circumstances and one of the populations that always kind of surprises folks that's one of our hardest to count here in austin travis county is actually our higher education community so students and one of those reasons why is for example in the city of austin for some reason it's it's illegal for you to have more than three unrelated roommates in a unit well guilty as charged you know and I think a lot of folks who have affordability issues move in with a lot of different folks and if you know that's that's a fear or concern if they think it's going to come at them on their lease and but what we're we're fortunate about is our local apartment association has stepped forward and actually said hey would you be willing to come to give us a training to property managers and apartment association members on this exact fact that hey can you try to communicate to your tenants that no you all won't see the census right and that's kind of part of our pitch to them is it's important for you to not be worried about catching them right but instead just to get the census done so we're fortunate locally we have an association willing to take that on and can I just add the census bureau is really aware of sort of the the era of infer the type of information we're in right now and they are recognizing that if you know of any misinformation that's or disinformation that's going around about the decennial census that you can go to their website and you can say I keep hearing this or I keep seeing this can you verify this or can I think you should be aware of it and they're encouraging people and so that's another way that you can really help with the census with the decennial count is by just making the census bureau aware of any sort of issues that you're hearing about in your community that are coming up as questions all right well we are out of time but let's give our panelists a round of applause here for a great discussion thank you all for being here future forum membership if you want to get more involved with the future forum come to support more events like this come to some of our member only events we have information about signing up for the future forum in the back 75 a year it's tax deductible 25 a year for graduate students and we can do joint memberships 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