New Audit Reports Census Dept. Wasted Millions

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.) (The previous sentence in parentheses was modified by the 14th Amendment, section 2.) The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative....

With those words our founding fathers created the US Census. The numbers developed from the census creates congressional districts, doles out state entitlement programs, and other federal programs. This years Census will cost tax payers millions of dollars more than it should. According to an audit of the investigator general of the Department of Commerce, the Census Bureau wasted millions of dollars in preparation for its 2010 population count, including thousands of temporary employees who picked up $300 checks without performing work and others who overbilled for travel costs.

The report warns that it will get worse, those excessive charges could multiply once the census taking starts for real in March.

The White House has been bragging that hiring of federal workers for the Census will jump- start the sagging employment rate, but investigators found it also had waste.

The audit, scheduled to be released next week, examined the Census Bureau's address-canvassing operation last fall, in which 140,000 temporary workers walked block by block to update the government's mailing lists and maps.

While the project finished ahead of schedule, Census director Robert Groves in October acknowledged the costs had ballooned $88 million higher than the original estimate of $356 million, an overrun of 25 percent. He cited faulty assumptions in the bureau's cost estimates.

But it was also due to faulty bureaucrats. Among the waste found by investigators:

• More than 10,000 census employees were paid over $300 apiece to attend training for the massive address-canvassing effort, but they quit or were otherwise let go before they could perform any work. Cost: $3 million.

• Another 5,000 employees collected $300 for the same training, and then worked a single day or less. Cost $1.5 million.

• Twenty-three temporary census employees were paid for car mileage costs at 55 cents a mile, even though the number of miles they reported driving per hour exceeded the total number of hours they actually worked.

• Another 581 employees who spent the majority of their time driving instead of conducting field work also received full mileage reimbursements, which investigators called questionable.

• Census regional offices that had mileage costs exceeding their planned budgets included Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Dallas; Denver; Detroit; Kansas City and Seattle.

Most of the nation will receive census forms in mid-March, and the Census Bureau is asking residents to return them by April. For those who fail to respond, the government will dispatch some 700,000 temporary workers to visit homes in May.

In response to cost overruns, Groves has said he would work to prevent expenses from ballooning further and reevaluate budget estimates for the entire census operation. He has made clear his goal of returning tens of millions of dollars to government coffers by motivating more U.S. residents to mail in their form, which avoids costly follow-up visits by census takers.

Gee, President Obama really has that stopping government waste thing down pat, doesn't he?