Rant: Feds must fix their own 2020 census mess

The 2020 Census mess:

For years state and local government officials have complained about “unfunded mandates” coming down from the federal government. What they mean is that the feds establish a program or practice, but do not supply the money to implement it.

The Union County Board of Supervisors dodged a doozy of an unfunded mandate at its Monday, July 15, meeting. This one was special.

A woman from the U.S. Census Bureau showed up at the board meeting. Essentially, she asked the county board to take on substantial responsibility for conducting the 2020 Census in Union County, Mississippi.

What she asked for included that the county “provide a vehicle for coordinating and nurturing cooperative efforts” to take the census. “Nurturing?” Not a term we normally associate with a crisply run government program.

The fact remains that conducting a population census every ten years is the clear responsibility of the federal government. That seems pretty plain in Article One, Section Two of the U.S. Constitution.

And the 2020 census is already a mess. Underfunded. Understaffed. Undermanaged. But it’s a mess that belongs to the feds, not to the local government of Union County.

The Union County Board wisely declined to lie down in that burning bed.

What happened at the July 15 meeting? http://newalbanyunionco.com/board-turns-down-census-bureau/