Only in the minds of government bureaucrats is spending more considered "cost -saving"

Inspector General’s Memo: Census Says It Hired More Workers Than It Needed As a ‘Cost-Saving Measure’

The U.S. Census purposefully hired more workers than it needed, telling the Office of the Inspector General of the Commerce Department that it did so as a “cost-saving measure,” according to a memorandum that Todd J. Zinser of the inspector general’s office sent to Census Bureau Director Robert Groves last week.

“According to Census,” said Zinser’s May 26 memo to Groves, “‘frontloading’ its workforce (i.e. hiring and training more enumerators than necessary to offset turnover) is a cost-saving measure.” The inspector general’s memo, however, suggested that in at least one Census Bureau operation excessive staff had increased the “cost of operations” and that in another operation deployment of an unnecessarily large number of workers "increased the operation’s direct labor and travel costs."

In the first quarter of this year (January-March), personnel from the inspector general’s office observed Census Bureau operations in four programs. These included “update/leave” (U/L), in which Census workers deliver questionnaires to homes that would not be reached by ordinary mail service; “update/enumerate” (U/E), which counts people in communities where the homes lack ordinary mailing addresses or street names; "enumeration at transitory locations" (ETL), which counts people at places where their residences are potentially mobile, such as recreational vehicle parks, campgrounds, marinas and carnivals; and “service-based enumeration” (SBE), which counts homeless people at places such as homeless shelters, mobile food vans and so-called “targeted non-sheltered outdoor locations” (TNSOL).

The inspector general’s memo said that the Census Bureau had “overestimated” the staff needed for the program to enumerate people at transitory locations. “During the ETL operation,” said the memo, “crew leaders overestimated the number of Census staff needed to enumerate transitory locations, thus increasing the cost of operations.”

The memo also said that there were so many people hired for the “service-based enumeration” that there turned out to be one Census enumerator for every seven homeless people counted, and that the inspector general’s office “observed significant periods of enumerator inactivity at certain locations.”

"In another operation [which the inspector general’s office confirmed to CNSNews.com was the SBE program],” said the memo, “we found many enumerator teams to be unnecessarily large—an average ratio of one enumerator for just seven homeless respondents. We observed significant periods of enumerator inactivity at certain locations, which increased the operation’s direct labor and travel costs.”

As a result of these problems, the inspector general suggested that the Census bureau should “reevaluate” frontloading—that is, the practice of hiring more enumerators than necessary to cover anticipated turnover. “Census should reevaluate its practice of frontloading and develop a better process to estimate workload and cost assumptions,” said the memo. “A more streamlined enumeration process could reduce training and travel costs and be more responsive to changing economic conditions.”

The inspector general’s quarterly report to Congress on the Census, published on May 5, also noted that there had been one Census enumerator for every seven homeless people counted at locations other than “targeted non-sheltered outdoor locations” in the SBE program. “We also found many enumerator teams to be unnecessarily large--an average ratio of one enumerator for just seven homeless respondents for non-TNSOL operations,” said the report. “As a result, we observed significant periods of inactivity at these locations, which unnecessarily increased the cost of the SBE operation.”

CNSNews.com asked the inspector general’s office if it had determined that the Census Bureau’s practice of hiring more workers than needed, the so-called “frontloading,” had indeed been a “cost-saving measure” as the bureau had contended and whether the program referred to as “another operation” in the quotation above was in fact the SBE program. The inspector general’s office confirmed via email that the program in question was indeed the SBE program, but said it had not done the analysis to determine whether or not the Census Bureau’s “frontloading” in hiring had saved money.

“Our office has not done the analysis to conclude that Census’s practice of ‘frontloading’ its workforce is or is not a cost-saving measure,” said the email from the inspector general’s office. “Our recommendations are based on our observations of the operations mentioned in the second paragraph of the memo—update/leave (U/L), update/enumerate (U/E), enumeration at transitory locations (ETL), and SBE.”

CNSNews.com asked the Census Bureau two questions about the inspector general's memo: Did the bureau contest the inspector general's conclusion that there was an average of one enumerator for each seven homeless people counted in the SBE program? Does the bureau still contend that "frontloading" its workforce by "hiring and training more enumerators than necessary in order to offset turnover" is in fact a cost-saving measure?

Michael C. Cook, public information officer for the 2010 Census, responded by email. "Experiences in 1990 and 2000 have demonstrated cost and time efficiencies associated with the early training of sufficient employees to replace those lost through attrition," he said.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that employment in the United States grew by 433,000 jobs in May, but that those jobs included 411,000 temporary workers hired by the Census Bureau.

CNS


Census

Stossel: One-Size-Fits-All Government

A Nevada woman named Michelle Lyn Taylor "kissed a friend’s [13 year-old] child, forced him to touch her breast and asked him to have sex with her."

That's bad, but should the punishment be... life in prison? That was the sentence that she got.

In the sentencing, which is on youtube, the defense attorney argues:

"The sentence here shocks the conscience… The minimum penalty for first degree murder is 50 years. She could get 25 years for 2nd deg murder... She is getting a greater penalty for letting a boy touch her breast than for murder.”

The prosecutor didn't argue that a life sentence was reasonable -- rather, he just informed the judge that there was no choice:

"This is the sentence that the legislature of Nevada has created for this type of crime… now really there’s nothing left to be done except for the imposition of a life sentence."

after delivering the life sentence, The judge offered a confused-sounding explanation:

Ms. Taylor, you were charged with a crime with this sentence and apparently you weren't offered any plea deal... I've done a lot of these cases and I can't figure it out. To tell you the truth I don't know why they charge what they charge... and why they give plea bargans to some and others not, but I know that you had a jury trial, and you were charged, and this is the sentence. Good luck.

Good luck!? Julie Stewart of the group "Families Against Mandatory Minimums" tells us:

We are following this to its bitter end -- fighting to get it overturned in the State Supreme Court -- to try to make sure that this is overturned not just for her case, but that they overturn the law.

Once again, one-size-fits-all government policy imposes its nasty results.

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