tates, cities gear up for Census with billions of dollars at stake

With billions of dollars in federal money on the line, state and local governments are budgeting hundreds of millions of dollars to convince their residents to respond to next year’s Census. Many states are budgeting far more for community outreach than they have in previous Census cycles, a reflection, some legislators said, of concern that this decade’s count is at risk of missing thousands of residents.“We’re mobilizing earlier, getting coordinated earlier and providing more resources than we ever have in the past,” said Marc Berman, a California assemblyman who chairs a special Select Committee on the Census. “The challenge is greater than it’s ever been.”