NYC’s former census director pitches permanent city census office
City Council Member Julie Menin is planning for the next census.
A new bill is being introduced in the New York City Council to make sure the city is prepared for the 2030 Census. One guess who’s sponsoring it.
City Council Member Julie Menin, who formerly served as New York City’s 2020 census director, will introduce a bill on Wednesday that would create a permanent office of the census. The office would be activated no later than two years before each decennial count, with the mayor’s appointment of a census director.
Menin was tapped for her post as census director in 2019, giving her a short time to get record outreach and planning underway ahead of 2020. With efforts complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Menin nonetheless led the city to a record self-response rate in the census. Her takeaway? With congressional seats and federal funding on the line, it’s best not to leave planning to the last minute.
“Running a pre-existing agency is challenging enough, but actually trying to create a new entity in city government, particularly under that kind of time pressure, it's Herculean at best,” Menin said. “This will allow the city of New York to have the proper preparation time.”
That’s more important under the Trump administration, Menin said, noting she’s alarmed by the continued push among conservatives to add a citizenship question to the census – which could hurt response rates – and discussion of using mail carriers to conduct census outreach.
Her bill doesn’t have a cost estimate attached or prescribe a certain number of people to staff the proposed office. But it specifies that the work of the office should include identifying and working with leaders in hard-to-count areas, and carrying out multilingual-awareness campaigns.