SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - New Mexico legislators are setting aside more money to promote participation in the U.S. Census.
The state Senate on Wednesday voted 39-0 to assign $8 million to ensure residents are not left out of the population count that calibrates spending levels for federally funded programs over the next decade.
The spending bill now moves to the state House for consideration. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham supports the measure. The state previously allocated $3.4 million to promoting the census count.
The census determines the allocation of $1.5 trillion in federal spending. New Mexico officials estimate that a 1% undercount would cost the state more than $700 million in federal aid over a decade.
At the same time, about 41% of state residents live in hard-to-count areas - the largest proportion of any state in the nation, an Associated Press analysis of government data has found.
Republican state Sen. William Burt of Alamogordo sponsored the spending bill and highlighted the need to count an influx of oilfield workers in southeastern New Mexico, full-time college students and employees at military bases.
“If we don’t have a complete count, we don’t have those dollars come back to New Mexico,” he said.
Census-takers will confront special challenges in surveying remote desert communities with gaps in communications infrastructure and households that primarily speak Spanish and Native American languages.
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