Court order on census won’t affect Nevada

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Thursday, Jan. 24, 2002 | 10 a.m.

The Commerce Department must release figures that could compensate for either an under-count or over-count in the 2000 Census, a federal court ruled this week.

Nevada demographers said the decision will have little or no effect on Nevada, which had 1,998,257 residents, according to Census 2000.

The decision by the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles came after 16 members of the House Committee on Government Reform evoked a 70-year-old law requiring the federal government to release information if requested by at least seven committee members.

The numbers take into account minorities who tend not to participate in the census and people who were counted twice.

At stake is the allocation of more than $185 billion in population-based federal grants, the number of representatives each state gets in Congress and the boundaries of congressional districts.

"This is the point," said Nevada state demographer Jeff Hardcastle.

"First of all, redistricting is done and gone in Nevada. And second, given the growth of Hispanics in Southern Nevada and the state in general, I think we made a concerted effort to count this group in the 2000 Census.

"Even early estimates made by partisan groups alleging an under-count on Hispanics across the nation gave figures that differed only 2 percent from what the census totals wound up being," he added.

Nevada had 393,370 Hispanics, according to Census 2000.

Two Nevada cities alleged under-counts in the 2000 census -- Henderson and Mesquite.

But Henderson changed its take on the numbers after realizing that its early estimates were too high.

"We didn't take into account two demographic shifts that had occurred in recent years, where more senior citizens were moving in and more people were treating Henderson as a second home. So this distorted our early estimates based on persons per household figures that weren't accurate," said Scott Woodbury, Henderson's demographer.

And Mesquite's claim is based on a failure to count all households in the community -- a figure not covered in the adjusted figures, said Hardcastle.

In any case, it is unlikely the figures will be released soon.

According to Benjamin Chevat, chief of staff for Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-New York, the Bush administration will most likely appeal the federal court's decision.