The Haines Borough is challenging the U.S. government’s official count of its population, saying the Census Bureau undercounted the town’s population by about 20%. The money threatens millions of dollars of federal funding over the next decade.
The 2020 Census reported Haines’ population as 2080, down from 2,508 10 years earlier. That immediately raised red flags for borough officials.
“If we had lost almost 500 people, you would feel it in our town,” said Haines Borough clerk Alekka Fullerton. “You would see it in empty houses, in schools, and in voter rolls.”
Census counts happen every 10 years and help determine U.S. House district maps and how nearly $3 trillion of federal money is distributed around the country. There’s no exact formula for how much an undercount of Haines’ population might cost the borough, but the Alaska Department of Labor estimated in 2018 that each person not counted is worth $30,000 in federal money over 10 years. That could mean the borough would lose up to $15 million in potential funding.
Fullerton said she and Andrew Conrad, the new borough planner, went through each housing unit in borough records unit by unit to understand where people might be living how they might be undercounted.
“We found several large inconsistencies,” said Fullerton, “There were places where there was a group of mailboxes with the same address and the Census Bureau counted it as one.”
David Howell, a state demographer, said Haines’ challenge “absolutely” had a strong case for its appeal.
“It seemed like a pretty systematic undercount of the Mosquito Lake area. There was a lot of housing units that unexplainably disappeared,” said Howell.
Howell said the state’s annual estimate for Haines in fact showed about a 100-person increase in the Haines population since 2010.
While the borough suspected an error for months, it didn’t submit its official challenge until June 29, the day before the deadline. Fullerton described it as the culmination of “hours and hours and hours” of work.
Challenges aren’t a guarantee that results will be changed. Memphis, Tenn., for example, challenged the bureau’s population estimate. After the Census investigated, it ultimately lowered its results by three people. Other challenges have resulted in increases of more than a thousand people.
“They don’t like to change,” said Howell, but “We are pretty certain there was an undercount in Haines.”
Nils Andreassen, director of the Alaska Municipal League, said several communities reached out to his group, though Haines is the only place to submit a challenge.
“I imagine it would be more widespread if everybody had time to pay attention to it, but it’s not an easy process,” he said.
Borough officials did not have a timeline for when their challenge might be resolved. Some challenges that were submitted earlier have already been reviewed. The Associated Press reported that the quantity of submissions means later challenges could take months to resolve.
Regardless of the outcome, borough officials say they’re glad to have the challenge submitted and off their plates.
“This has been a huge source of stress for me personally,” Fullerton said.