2010 Census: Higher Cost, Lower Tech

Dreams of a high-tech census in 2010 are fading, adding billions to the public costs and exposing a not-so-loving triangle composed of the Bush Administration, Democrats in Congress and a Republican-leaning communications firm in Florida.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told a House Appropriations Committee panel Thursday that the Census Bureau will have to dramatically scale back its ambitious plans to use hand- held computers to collect information from millions of Americans who don’t return census forms that come in the mail.

The Census still expects to use the computer devices and global positioning software to verify residential street addresses and make the mailings more efficient, but the follow-up interviews will be done the old-fashioned paper way with hundreds of thousands of temporary workers.

These changes—and other problems with the Census—will add $2.2 billion to $3 billion to prior cost projections and bring the total to between $13.7 billion and $14.5 billion, Gutierrez said.

The first down payment will be an estimated $232 million for the current fiscal year, and the White House wants to cover these costs by taking money from chiefly Democratic-backed initiatives within the Commerce budget.

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In essence, Democrats are being asked to give up their priorities to help pay for cost overruns on a contract which the administration admits it made substantial errors in managing.

The cuts would have the most impact on the Economic Development Administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and a loan program benefiting the domestic steel industry.

“It seems more logical that the president should be proposing cuts to programs that he finds important to cover his administration’s blunders,” said Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W. Va.), who chairs the appropriations panel. “It is incomprehensible . . . that this administration is willing to fund as an emergency the war in Iraq costing $370 million a day. But for less than a day in Iraq the administration insists on an offset for the 2010 census.”

Adding salt to the wound is the fact that the cost overruns and technical problems swirl around an outside government contractor, the Florida-based Harris Corp., with strong Republican political ties. Campaign data collected by opensecrets.org indicates that the corporation’s political action committee has had a heavy partisan tilt in the past, giving $734,000 to federal candidates in the 2000 to 2006 elections, almost all to Republicans.

Harris issued a statement saying it still looks forward to playing a large role in the 2010 count and it remains encouraged that “automation and the adoption of new technology is moving forward, even if in a more narrowly focused fashion."

But Gutierrez acknowledged that the company’s “cost-plus” contract will be effectively doubled to about $1.3 billion even as its initial responsibilities are scaled back. And in questioning by committee members, the secretary conceded that the government had accepted early cost estimates from Harris that proved to be wildly wrong.

For example, the initial estimate was that a “help desk” to assist census workers in the field with the computer devices would cost only $36 million. The revised number, after trials in the field, will be about $217 million.

"It was a bad estimate. I can't think of a better way to say it," Gutierrez said. "Harris gave us the number. We accepted it. It was totally underestimated.”

Mollohan wasn’t alone in being upset with the government’s performance. New Jersey Rep. Rodney P. Frelinghuysen, the ranking Republican on the panel, told Steven Murdock, the relatively new director at the Census Bureau: "You've inherited one hell of a mss."

Murdock sat quietly by as Gutierrez fielded most of the early questions.