The Census Bureau is planning to hire more than 750,000 temporary workers over the next 9 months to conduct the Census. They will mail out 150 million questionaires to American households in March, 2010. And they are still without a Director.  Dr. Robert M. Groves was nominated by President Obama in April and confirmed by the Senate in May.  However, one or more anonymous Republican senators have placed a hold on his confirmation vote because of opposition to the "rushed" hearings of Judge Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. Failure to have a director at this critical time in the planning and implementation of the 2010 Census could seriously jeopardize its success.

To shore up the management of the Bureau, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke appointed three former Census Bureau employees to assess the readiness and potential vulnerabilities of the Census.  Dr. Kenneth Prewitt, director of the 2000 Census, John Thompson, Census Bureau Associate Director in 2000 and Nancy Potok, former Chief Financial Office of Census Bureau in 2000 will provide advice on the overall management of the census, contracts and field operations.

 Congress continues to provide advice and guidance to the Bureau.  Two Republicans (Chaffetz R-UT and Bishop (R-UT) have introduced bills to have postal workers count residents who do not return the Census form rather than hiring the enumerators to visit those homes that do not respond.  This idea has been rejected several times by the Bureau and  in 1993 the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council reported that such an action " would have a negative impact on the ability of the Postal Service to deliver the mail.

These Republicans also introduced a bill that would count private American citizens living abroad in state totals.  Utah is particularly intersted in this because of the large number of young people living abroad while doing their  missionary period.  Utah lost a seat to North Carolina in 2000 because they could not count the private citizens.  Currently  only members of the armed forces and federal government civilina employees assigned to duty stations during the the census are included in the state population figures.