Less than a month left of the 2020 Census

The deadline for responses to the 2020 Census is Sept. 30, and the Hi-Line area is lagging behind the rest of the state when it comes to response rate.

Bear Paw Development Corp. Executive Director Paul Tuss said according to the numbers he’s seen, every county in his organization’s development district has a lower response rate than Montana as a whole with Hill County at 54 percent compared to the state’s 58.

He said Liberty County is at 42 percent and Phillips County is at 32 percent.

Tuss said a number of factors contribute to why northern Montana, especially the more rural areas, is seeing lower response rates, but one big one is a lack of bandwidth that would allow people to respond easily online, something the 2020 Census has a big emphasis on.

“We don’t necessarily have the same broadband capacity that some of our urban counterparts do,” he said.

He said rural areas, frontier communities and reservations are more difficult to reach in general and the lack of bandwidth has not helped.

Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney, who’s helping organize the “It’s Time We Count Campaign,” which seeks to raise awareness about the importance of the census in Montana, said a quarter of Montana addresses are considered non-traditional addresses which the census doesn’t automatically mail to, and these types of addresses are much more common in rural communities and on reservations.

Cooney is campaigning for governor and faces U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont ,. Libertarian candidate Lyman Bishop and Robert Barb, who is running as a Green Party candidate, in the election in November.

Tuss and Cooney both emphasized the important role the census plays in Hill County’s ability to get funding for projects, particularly infrastructure projects.

“The difficulty of not having an accurate, full count is that we rely very heavily on federal funds throughout northern Montana for things like infrastructure and education and health care,” Tuss said. “It’s estimated that for every person that is undercounted in the census equates to $20,000 for the community that they live in over the decade that the census is good for. It doesn’t take very long for those numbers to add up. … Every person not counted is a hit against our communities.”

He said any significant undercount will doubtless have a serious detrimental impact on the quality of life in Montana and the Hi-Line.

Cooney and Tuss both also emphasized the importance the census had in determining how Montana is represented in Congress, with Cooney saying an inaccurate count runs the risk of causing political boundaries to be misaligned.

“(An accurate count) means Montana will be operating as it should,” Cooney said.

They said this year’s census is particularly important for Montana because the state is on the cusp of gaining another seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Tuss said Montana, currently represented by Gianforte, represents the most populous congressional district in the U.S.

Cooney also said the data from the census is used for countless other studies and because the census only happens every 10 years the response rate needs to be as high as humanly possible.

“If we don’t get it right, we have to live with those wrong numbers over a 10-year period, and that is something we can’t afford to do especially in a state like Montana.”

Tuss and Cooney said the COVID-19 pandemic is having a significant negative effect on the collection of data for the census and has proven particularly detrimental to efforts in rural areas, which would have already had troubles.

“I think we’ve kind of hit this perfect storm in rural Montana,” Tuss said.

He said if people don’t self-report, a census worker will attempt to visit to get the data from them, but the pandemic has made people less comfortable opening their doors, and census workers are more cautious about working as well.

“I think they’re far less inclined to open their doors to a stranger, given the pandemic,” he said. “And I think the census workers, although trained to do so, are a little concerned as well.”

Tuss said he hopes census data will not be affected by the pandemic now that it can be responded to online, but it’s still a concern of his.

“Reality tells me there are simply those places where you’re going to have to knock on people’s doors to get the responses,” he said. “So, I guess we are going to have to wait and see if COVID has a negative impact on the census response rate.”

Tuss said this problem appears to be especially acute for reservations around the state, which are generally considered more vulnerable populations to COVID-19, many of which have seen lockdowns like Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation.

“Anecdotally, I think it has a very serious impact,” he said. “When you throw a global pandemic on top of areas that are already hard to get to, electronically and otherwise it just makes it very hard to make sure that you’re getting an accurate count.”

Cooney said he has no quarrel whatsoever with the measures put in place by the reservations to protect the health of their populations and commended them for coordinating with the state during these unusual times, but he said it’s just another example of why some communities have a harder time with their response rates than others.

“As with nearly every aspect of daily life, the COVID-19 pandemic has created incredible challenges for getting an accurate census count,” he said.

Cooney also said COVID-19 has necessitated that a lot of awareness events around the state, which has had a negative impact as well.

Tuss and Cooney also both criticized the recent decision by the federal government to move the deadline for the 2020 Census up from Oct. 31, to Sept. 30, which they said is unnecessary and will inevitably lead to a lower response rate.

Tuss said he has no doubt that retaining the original deadline will lead to a more accurate count for Montana and said this decision will hurt rural communities in particular.

“What we really need to encourage our congressional delegation to do is to push the federal government as hard as possible to adhere to the original deadline of Oct. 31,” Tuss said. “I mean cutting off the counting a month before you really need to is silly… We’re going to miss a lot of people if we don’t have that extra month which is not even an extra month, it was the original deadline.”

Cooney said he and Gov. Steve Bullock have written to the U.S. Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham urging him to reinstate the original deadline, but as far as he knows he hasn’t received a response.

Bullock, a Democrat, cannot run for re-election due to term limits and is running for the U.S. Senate, facing incumbent Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Wendie Fredrickson, who is running as a Green Party candidate although the Green Party told the Havre Daily News they have no affiliation with her or the PAC supporting her.

Tuss said he spoke with Daines in a meeting recently and Daines said the census should take as long as it needs to in order to get an accurate count, even if it take more than the original Oct. 31 deadline and Tuss said he whole heartedly agrees.

He said people can respond to the census by phone at 1-844-330-2020, online at http://www.my2020cencus.gov, or by mail.

“It’s the simplest thing in the world, it takes 10 minutes, your information is kept private, and we can’t over-emphasize the importance of the census,” Tuss said.