The Alaska Federation of Natives is raising the alarm about the Census Bureau’s plan to end its once-a-decade count of everyone living in the United States a month earlier than expected.
Federal programs rely on census data in determining where billions of dollars get spent. And in rural Alaska, home to many predominantly Native communities, getting an accurate count is notoriously difficult.
Related: Alaska lags far behind rest of country on Census response
AFN Vice President and General Counsel Nicole Borromeo says the federal government has a legal obligation to get it right. Borromeo says every person who does not fill out the census amounts to roughly 3,500 fewer federal dollars a year flowing into the state, or about $35,000 per person during the decade-long wait until the next census.
Casey Grove is host of Alaska News Nightly, a general assignment reporter and an editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach him at cgrove@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Casey here.
