Give it up for the government. I’m not talking applause. I’m talking information.
Sure, Kaiser Permanente was busted this month for storing patients’ confidential information in a couple’s home. But we can trust the government when it comes to securing personal information, right?
If not, we don’t have a choice. Failing to fill out U.S. Census Bureau forms carries a fine up to $5,000.
The U.S. Census Bureau wants to know everything from what time you go to work to how well you remember things.
Lynn Bonas has a very good memory. She remembers in the past few months that the bureau has sent her three letters, called her on two Sundays and at 8:45 p.m. on a Tuesday ordering her to turn in its very detailed American Community Survey.
But Bonas, a board member of the Grand Jurors Association of Orange County, refuses to comply. She has three words for the census:
“Bring it on.”
•••
When the bureau randomly selected Bonas for the American Community Survey, it had no idea who it was dealing with.
A native Texan who married a Marine.
A mother of four, Bonas’ fortitude is as tough as rawhide. Upon the death of her severely disabled daughter, Bonas allowed her daughter’s heart to be transplanted. Then she cowboyed up and got on with living.
In 2006, Bonas volunteered as a grand juror and was sworn in last month to the board. So don’t mistake Bonas’ opposition to filling out governmental forms for a lack of civic duty.
Perhaps it’s the opposite.
“I’m third generation in this country,” Bonas tells me after we meet at a grand jury luncheon (jurors pay). “When I was growing up in McAllen, we learned to love this country.
“Every time I travel and come home, I say, ‘I am so blessed to be an American.'”
As a former media advertising buyer, Bonas also points out, “I do appreciate the value of having information from consumers in terms of marketing research.”
But she says the American Community Survey, with its level of detail and fines, smacks of Nazism. She says going along “for the greater good” can lead to totalitarianism.
Is the U.S. Census Bureau going too far?
Consider the basic information required: name, phone number, sex, birth date, birth place, citizenship, education, race, wages, other income, occupation.
Yes, it’s mostly information the government already has. But the survey also wants to know your job duties, address a year ago, language spoken at home, relationship to others in your home.
No big deal? Wait, there are more questions.
A lot more.
•••
The American Community Survey is sent to 3.5 million homes every year. It has a total of 48 questions – excluding basic information.
That would be for “Person 1.”
The survey asks for individual information “for everyone living in household for more than two months.”
Regarding work, the census wants to know if you’ve been “temporarily absent from a job or business.” If you’re not working, it wants to know if you’re “actively looking for work.” And it asks if you could “have started a job if offered one” or if you “returned to work if recalled.”
“This is not what America is about,” Bonas says. “This is not American.”
Regarding your home, the bureau asks if your “regular monthly mortgage payment includes payments for fire, hazard, or flood insurance.” It asks how many rooms you have and how many are used as bedrooms. It also asks if you have a business on your property.
Additionally, the bureau wants to know if you receive any kind of public assistance, what types of health coverage you have and if you “have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions.”
It asks how many times you’ve been married. And it asks if you have grandchildren under 18 living with you.
Bonas, who lives in Orange, wonders just how secure the information really is. She asks, “Who are these workers collecting this information?”
•••
To sort out Bonas’ concerns, I call the U.S. Census Bureau. A very nice public affairs specialist named Jennifer Smits agrees to help.
Smits points out the American Community Survey “helps state and local leaders make decisions about programs and investments such as new highways, schools, hospitals, job training, community centers and emergency services.”
OK, but why a $5,000 fine – a fine our government increased from $100?
Smits states: “Census research and experience in other countries have demonstrated that a voluntary (survey) would make the survey more expensive, less accurate and significantly reduce the number of communities who would receive reliable annual estimates.
“The law helps communicate its importance to people.”
It also may communicate something else. Bonas says, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with (nonsense),” except Bonas, being from the Longhorn State, doesn’t say “nonsense.”
Strangely, the bureau wants us to believe the fine is a public-relations effort.
Smits says: “We encourage participation rather than emphasizing the fine. No one has been fined to date for not completing the American Community Survey.
“To date.”
•••
Smits points out the U.S. Census Bureau has a 97 percent response rate, a whopping success for a survey.
Of course, the bureau also states, “Fines are authorized upon prosecution of failure to participate or deliberate false reports.”
Bonas isn’t budging – even though she says she was informed the matter “will be handled by the Justice Department.”
Bonas says, “The whole thing is so personally invasive.”
Invasive?
I take a peek at my census tract – a tract typically covers 2,500-8,000 people – and review the filters. With several neighbors who happen to be white and who are new grandparents, I select fertility, non-Hispanic white women 15-50 years old who had a birth in the past 12 months.
Of the 1,193 white women in my tract, 10 had babies. All the mothers were married.
Our tax dollars at work.
David Whiting’s column appears four days a week. dwhiting@ocregister.com
