COLUMBUS – A coalition of advocacy groups wants Ohio’s senators to get behind efforts to extend the 2020 census deadline by four months.
October 31st was set as the counting deadline, but the Census Bureau recently announced that the date was moved ahead to Sept. 30. The Trump Administration said change is needed in order to deliver final numbers to Congress by Dec. 31, when Congress wants the data to draw new congressional district boundaries.
The Ohio Census Advocacy Coalition is urging the Senate to extend the statutory reporting deadlines for the count by four months in the next COVID relief package deadline because members need more time to ensure full participation.
“At a time during COVID when Ohio already is at risk of having a $2.4 billion shortfall in state funding, we should really be doing everything we can to make secure our fair share of the federal resources, ” says Katherine Ungar, of the Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio, which is part of the coalition.
Ohio received roughly 56 billion dollars in 2017 in federal funds tied to census data and Ungar says the financial impact of an undercount could be catastrophic to transportation funding, community development and programs that protect children such as Medicaid and Head Start. She says, for every person in Ohio who is not counted, up to $1,700 in federal funding would be left on the table.
A recently leaked internal Census Bureau document revealed concerns that the shortened count timeline would increase the risk of serious errors.
A federal court hearing will be held on Friday in California challenging the deadline change.
Ohio’s total response rate is currently about 94 percent, slightly higher than the national rate.