Fill it out

If you haven’t already gotten your 2020 Census form from the government you will, and very soon. Thursday was the target date for Milam County.

Most people file the census task—brief as it is—as “one more of those things I gotta do.” Leaving aside the fact we “gotta do it” only for a few minutes every 10 years, it’s quite a bit more important than that.

Many don’t realize the census is actually part of the U.S. Constitution. It isn’t something our nation can do, or ignore, whenever we feel like.

Why is it in the Constitution at all? It’s in Article I, Section II and that’s the part which deals with the U. S. House of Representatives.

Part of the genius of our form of government is in the way Congress is set up, one chamber which gives considerable power to the “little states”—the Senate, North Dakota has as many senators as California—and one which gives considerable power to the “big states,” with the number of persons to which each is entitled based on population.

And what determines what a big state is? Obviously, the number of people living in them. How do you find that out? Bingo.

The first U.S. Census was in 1790 and there’s been one in every year ending in zero ever since. Virginia was the largest state in the first two censuses, New York from 1810 through 1960 and California ever since.

Our country’s population has never gone down in a census. Interestingly, the two most cataclysmic events in the history of the U.S.—the Civil War and World War II—occurred in between censuses.

As our form of government evolved, accurate census counts became crucial to smaller and smaller governmental entities, as population came to determine how much financial support each would receive from entities further up the chain of government.

It’s easier than ever this time around. In the mail you receive a notification with your private ID number. All you do is take that number, go online—directions will be provided—fill out the form and click a button.

What happens if you don’t? You will get another form and if you ignore that, a person will come to your house.

Something else happens if you ignore all that. The place where we live and work will get a little less money. It’s been estimated even a one percent underreporting for Travis County could cost as much as $25 million in federal tax dollars.

We’re not Travis County, you say. No we’re not, but we are something. Travis County’s population is about 1.25 million. Milam’s is about 25,000.

Using some very rough math, you could forecast a one percent underreporting in Milam County could cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next decade.

Do we think Milam County could find something on which to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make life better for its citizens, no matter how many of us there are, perhaps even taxing us a little less?

Fill it out. Please. —M.B.