New Mexico should begin planning for the 2030 Census, expert tells state lawmakers

About 42% of the state’s population live in designated “hard-to-count areas,” which include communities with tribes and pueblos, families with young children, immigrants, refugees and other underrepresented people groups, University of New Mexico Geospatial and Population Studies Director Robert Rhatigan said during a presentation to lawmakers on two interim committees.

How much federal funding states receive for certain programs relies on their population count from each decade’s census. In fiscal year 2016, for example, the federal government gave New Mexico nearly $8 billion based on the state’s 2010 census data.

But ensuring an accurate count can often be difficult in a state as rural and mountainous as New Mexico, Rhatigan said. If an address isn’t on the U.S. Census Bureau’s master list, then questionnaires are not delivered, census workers don’t conduct follow-up visits there and the household is unlikely to be counted.

For example, he said, many residents on the Navajo Nation lack proper addresses and instead rely on landmarks to give directions to and from their homes. In 2018, Rhatigan said the state had to submit more than 100,000 address additions or corrections to the federal data.

“There’s about a million households in New Mexico and we found either 10% missing or placed in the wrong place,” he said. “On the Navajo Nation, these are very non-standard addresses. Somebody on their driver’s license could say: ‘Four miles north of the Chapter house.’ So we have to make sure that the Census Bureau knows exactly where that household is.”

He also pointed to the Permian Basin, where oilfield workers who come from Texas and beyond might not consider themselves New Mexico residents. However, U.S. Census Bureau rules require that people report their residence as the place where they live and sleep “most of the time.”

Rhatigan said he wants to see New Mexico’s next governor prioritize the 2030 census upon taking office in January. In particular, he said the governor should appoint a qualified liaison to work with the Local Update of Census Addresses program, which the U.S. Census Bureau offers for local government officials to review and improve the federal government’s residential address list before the once-a-decade count begins.

That program was responsible for correctly counting more than 10% of one tribal community’s housing units in the 2020 census, Rhatigan said.

In 2019, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham appointed Rhatigan to serve on the statewide 2020 Complete Count Commission, which published a list of recommendations for the 2030 census.

Its biggest recommendations: Start early and invest in identifying accurate addresses.

To accomplish those goals, Rhatigan said lawmakers should consider funding the LUCA program in the upcoming 2027 legislative session so that the work of reviewing and correcting addresses can begin next fall. He also urged them to craft a plan for collaborating with tribal governments.

Rep. Elizabeth “Liz” Thomson (D-Albuquerque), a pediatric physical therapist, recalled working earlier in her career on Laguna Pueblo and trying to give directions over the phone without numbered addresses. She said she wants to see officials get ahead of such challenges as they gear up for the next census.

“I would call for non-medical transportation…and I’d say, ‘You turn at the cattle guard and go past the third tree,’ and they’d say, ‘No. You have to have an address,’” she said during Wednesday’s hearing. “Where I grew up, in Crownpoint, you don’t get mail delivered — you have a Post Office box. I think that’s going to be another confounding factor.”