OC Supes Approve Funding Nonprofits' Census Outreach

ORANGE COUNTY, CA -- Orange County supervisors on Tuesday voted to disburse funding to several area nonprofits for outreach to hard-to-contact residents for next year's census, despite pleas from Santa Ana Unified School District leaders and a congressional staffer to let school officials do the job.

Orange County supervisors Andrew Do and Doug Chaffee, who were on a census outreach ad-hoc committee with county Chief Executive Officer Frank Kim, defended their recommendation to pay the nonprofits to reach out to hard-to-count residents for the census. County staff had graded the city of Santa Ana and the school district the highest in a request for proposals.

Claudio Gallegos from the office of Rep. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, asked the board to ``reinstate funding for the city and school district. With millions of dollars of federal funding at stake it's important that we have an accurate count.''

Gallegos said the city and school district ``have demonstrated a strong outreach program and submitted all specifics the county is looking for'' to fund the effort. The nonprofits can focus on other areas of the county such as Anaheim, Westminster, Garden Grove, he added.

Santa Ana Unified Board President Valerie Amezcua rejected arguments by Do and Chaffee that many residents who are immigrants would be ``distrustful'' of government agencies and would resist outreach.

She accused Do of playing politics with the money because she spoke out against a homeless facility the board recently approved in Santa Ana.

Santa Ana Unified school board member John Palacio told the supervisors that ``35% of the undercounted in Orange County is in the city of Santa Ana.'' Palacio vowed to appeal to the state legislature to have the census money taken back by the state.

Do said the decision was a policy-based one, not political, and also rejected as a ``misstatement of fact'' that any funding was rescinded from the city and school district.

No other governmental agencies were awarded the same funding in the county, Do said, and added that it was ``demeaning'' to Chaffee and Kim to suggest politics played a role in the decision.

Do explained that Cal Optima, the agency he serves that provides health insurance for the area's poorest residents, did a survey that concluded two-thirds of its members did ``not take advantage of our services because one-third did not know what services we provide and another third was because of the stigma of government.''

The agencies receiving funding will be AltaMed Health Services, $120,000; Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, $68,253; Community Action Partnership of Orange County, $60,000; Latino Health Access, $65,000;Multi-Ethnic Collaborative of Community Agencies, $270,728, and Vision y Compromiso, $111,500.

City News Service contributed to this report.