Census won't count deployed military as locals

Military personnel who are based in the Pikes Peak region but deployed on missions around the world won’t be counted as local residents when the federal government conducts its once-a-decade head count of the country next year, U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said this morning.

The soldiers, airmen and others will be counted as residents of their home states, while any family members who live locally will be counted as residents of Colorado, Groves said.

The policies for how people are counted are important because the outcome of the 2010 Census affects a wide range of government activities, from hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money sent to local areas to the number of congressional representatives allowed in each state. The Census Bureau won’t count military personnel individually, but it will rely on a report from the Department of Defense showing the number of deployed military personnel assigned to each state. About 5,000 military personnel based in the Pikes Peak region are now deployed overseas.

Groves said the families of military personnel should keep the policy in mind as they fill out census questionnaires, which the Postal Service will deliver to homes in March.

“If daddy is in Iraq, we’ll count daddy, and they shouldn’t count daddy,” he said.

The census forms ask 10 questions about how many people live in a house, each person’s race and ethnicity, the relationships between people in a household and other subjects.

Groves visited Colorado Springs as part of a tour of regional Census Bureau offices across the country. He met with members of the Pikes Peak Area Complete Count Committee, a group that’s trying to ensure the census counts everyone in El Paso and Teller counties.

Colorado Springs Mayor Lionel Rivera told the group he’s confident the next census will show El Paso County has the largest population in the state. El Paso has traded places with Denver as the most populous county over the last several years. The latest estimate, for 2008, says 596,053 people live in El Paso County, up 15.3 percent from 2000. Denver has an estimated 598,707 residents.

Rivera acknowledged the county’s ranking is mostly about friendly rivalry. Money is the real issue, he said.

“If we miscount and we don’t get everyone in our community, it could cost us tens of millions of dollars over the next decade,” he said.

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