IG says US Census undercounts, hurts Mass.
The US Census Bureau is underestimating the state's population by failing to count 30,000 college students living here, and denying Massachusetts millions of dollars in federal aid as a result, state Inspector General Gregory W. Sullivan said yesterday.
Sullivan accused Governor Mitt Romney of failing to take steps to force the Census Bureau to correct the count, saying he warned the governor of the problem in May 2003.
''I think it's very disappointing that a matter of this financial magnitude could slip through the cracks," said Sullivan, who sent a letter to Romney yesterday insisting that the problem, which he attributed to a data-gathering flaw, be remedied.
The Census Bureau announced last month that Massachusetts was the only state in the nation that lost population between 2003 and 2004, going from 6,420,357 to 6,416,505, a drop of almost 4,000. The state is losing about $24 million in federal funds for Medicaid and community development block grants because of the undercount, Sullivan said.
The Census Bureau, in addition to the comprehensive head count it conducts every 10 years, estimates states' population shifts annually by analyzing address changes on federal income tax returns, along with birth and death records.
Because Massachusetts is home to tens of thousands of resident college students, recent foreign immigrants, and low-wage earners -- groups that often do not file tax returns -- Sullivan contends the federal agency is shortchanging the state. The count is used as the basis for several federal agencies that allot aid on population-based formulas.
In May 2003, Sullivan urged Romney to lobby the Census Bureau to revise its counting methods to make sure college students and others are included in the Massachusetts estimate. The governor in June 2003 sent a letter to the Census Bureau ''to remedy the disparity," but the matter turned out to be more complicated than anticipated. The state was required to prove that the bureau had undercounted the population, and the office that typically would do so -- the Massachusetts Institute for Social and Economic Research -- no longer had the funds to complete the work.
In 2002, amid a budget crisis, the Legislature eliminated state funding for population analysis at the institute, which is located at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The center continued doing such work for another year, hoping to raise the funds necessary to carry on, but was unable to get the money. The institute's director, economics professor Stephen Coelen, left UMass-Amherst in January 2004, and the task of filing an appeal of the census estimate was never completed.
Coelen, reached yesterday by telephone, said the state successfully appealed the Census Bureau's estimate in 1994, adding 30,000 people to the state's official population total. The bureau was found to have underestimated the student population in Massachusetts after the 1980 Census, too, Coelen said.
''We know that Massachusetts is the largest net importer of college students, so this issue is critical for us," said Coelen, now a consultant at Holyoke Community College.
Sullivan said it's already too late for the state to appeal the Census Bureau's population estimates for Massachusetts for 2003 and 2004. But he insists that it is not too late to prod the bureau to use more inclusive data for the years from 2005 through 2009. Sullivan has suggested that cross-referencing information from the US Department of Education, for example, would allow demographers to include students attending universities here.
Robert Bernstein, a spokesman for the US Census Bureau, said he could not comment on the agency's estimating method because the relevant specialists were not in yesterday.
Shawn Feddeman, a Romney spokeswoman, said the governor is keenly interested in the situation, but could not comment on the specifics of Sullivan's assertions because he had yet to receive the letter Sullivan sent him yesterday.
''We haven't formally received the letter from the inspector general, but he looks forward to continuing to work with the inspector general to ensure that the US Census Bureau accurately counts the Massachusetts population," she said.
Coelen said it's undeniable that Massachusetts is growing at a far slower rate than the rest of New England and the nation, but if the student population were accurately accounted for, the state would register as having grown slightly.
''We clearly grew more slowly than the rest of the region over the past decade," Coelen said. ''But as I saw these new numbers coming in showing Massachusetts negative, it occurred to me that the biggest problem is the underestimation issue, that it is coming up again."
Coelen said the state would need to pay about $100,000 to complete an appeal of the Census Bureau's estimating methodology, but he thinks a better strategy would be for the state to take over the responsibility for creating annual population estimates for the census bureau, as some other states have done.
