County comment warns that the proposal would cut federal funds for schools and services and strip away the data used to enforce civil rights and voting rights laws
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich and Council President Natali Fani-González, on behalf of the County Council, today submitted the County’s formal public comment urging the U.S. Census Bureau to withdraw a proposed rule that would change who is counted in the 2030 Census and what it asks. The comment reflects the County Council’s resolution opposing the rule.
The proposed rule would:
- Leave out every resident who is not a U.S. citizen or green-card holder, including students and workers on visas, DACA recipients, TPS holders, and asylees.
- Remove race and ethnicity questions, asked in every census since 1790, and bar questions on sexual orientation.
- Count people where they “lawfully” spent the most days from Jan. 3 to April 1, checked against tax records, instead of where they live.
- Drop specific rules for counting people in nursing homes, shelters, foster care, and college housing.
- Use immigration and tax records to decide who is counted.
- Write these changes into federal regulation without the years of testing major census changes require.
Taken together, these changes would cost Montgomery County federal funding for a full decade without reducing the number of residents it serves and would strip away the data the County uses to enforce civil rights and voting rights laws.
“Frankly, it’s outrageous that we even have to fight this,” said Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich. “The Constitution says count every person. It doesn’t say count only the people the administration wants to count. These are our neighbors, classmates, coworkers, and families. They are part of this community. Leaving them out of the census doesn’t change who lives here. It just means less money to serve the same people for ten years, and every family in Montgomery County, immigrant families included, pays the price.”…