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On Tuesday, Dillingham released a statement announcing that Cogley and Korzeniewski would join the agency. He praised Cogley’s “distinguished academic record” and said Korzeniewski had “exemplary military and public service experience, including previous field work by the Census Bureau.” He also said that “the support of Dr. Cogley and Mr. Korzeniewski will help the Census Bureau achieve a complete and accurate Census 2020 and study future improvements.”
But within the Census Bureau, a technocratic agency accustomed to carrying out its work without political interference, employees were viewed with suspicion. Not only did they occur while the 2020 census was already underway, but officials did not consider them particularly qualified for their new positions. The fact that the White House installed them only generated more alarms.
“No one has expressed support for the decision” in the office’s decision to hire the two new appointees, according to the Census Bureau official. “There is great concern.”
“They basically swallowed hard,” said a person close to the office. “They have no choice, and they must.”
Prior to Monday’s notification, the Commerce Department, which houses the Census Bureau, and the White House had had no talks with Dillingham, a person appointed by Trump and Jarmin about the possibility of those people joining the office. and they had no contributions for their placement. at the agency, according to the three people familiar with the matter. Senior census officials were also not informed of the hires by the White House deputy liaison at the Commerce Department, Anthony LaBruna, who handles political appointments, until after a deal was made.
LaBruna rejected the idea that census officials were not informed of hiring in advance, but did not question the claim that the White House had chosen them.
“The notion that the Census was not reported is simply inaccurate,” LaBruna said in a text message. “The Commerce Department notified senior census officials in advance of the hiring of Nathaniel Cogley and Adam Korzeniewski. Not only was the Census notified, but Director Dillingham issued a statement announcing that Nathaniel and Adam would join their staff. ”
But for census officials, the arrival of the two political hires was a shock. Despite the fact that Cogley and Korzeniewski started early last week, their titles did not come with the usual defined job descriptions, and Korzeniewski’s paperwork has yet to be turned over to the main Census leadership. Possible responsibilities under discussion for the two include working on census assessments, potential census improvements, strategic planning, and planning for the 2030 census, and working to implement the Evidence-Based Policy Building Foundation Act of 2018. No Jarmin is expected to lose any of his responsibilities.
After being informed that they were on board, the top two Census officials decided to notify senior Census Bureau staff on Tuesday morning and then made an announcement to employees that was posted later in the day on the site. Web. There was also a notification to Capitol Hill, where Democrats have complained about the move.
Representative Carolyn Maloney (DN.Y.), chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, criticized the employees as “fully supporters.”
“The decision to create two new high-level posts in the Census Bureau and fill them with political agents is another unprecedented attempt by the Trump administration to politicize Census 2020,” Maloney said in a statement.
Both Cogley and Korzeniewski had worked since April in Kelley’s office at the Department of Commerce, where Cogley was a senior advisor and Korzeniewski was an advisor. Kelley did not respond to a request for comment.
Cogley’s appointment, in particular, was met with deep skepticism within the Census Bureau.
During the meetings and information calls in his previous role, he had raised some questions about how the census was conducted, a tricky topic since small changes in methodology could lead to dramatic changes in numbers. Everything from redistricting congressional districts to distributing certain federal programs is based on numbers, which lends what might otherwise seem like dubious data collection questions a great deal of political weight.
So, the official said, when political appointees start asking questions about changing the methodology, “some people are nervous.”
For example, there are ongoing discussions about how vigorously the Census Bureau should try to reach people who have not responded to the census questionnaire. That follow-up, which begins on August 11, can mean making up to 16 attempts to communicate with someone at your alleged residence. Minority groups, especially African Americans, have historically been underrepresented in census data; For various reasons, they have traditionally been more difficult to achieve.
“If you change the methodologies, it should be based on the evidence and, in my opinion, it is unlikely that we will find the need for significant changes in the methodology at this time,” the official said. “This has been planned for about 10 years and is based on research.”
Cogley’s new job, as deputy chief policy officer, also raised internal eyebrows; In the past few decades, there has not been a person designated by politics who has been assigned at such a high level.
Career employees at the office have “strong concerns” about the new employees, the official said, because they don’t know why they were placed at the agency and census officials don’t know who pressured them to be hired.
“At this point in the census cycle, it is disturbing that these two positions are created, and it appears that the administration is trying to politicize the 2020 census,” said John H. Thompson, director of the Census Bureau in Los last years of the Obama administration and the first five months of the Trump administration. “If the Census Bureau professionals were ordered to do something that was not in their best interest to get an accurate count, they would simply leave the building.”
A person close to the office said the expectation is that the two will have no hand in the direct operation of the 2020 census and no line authority. That will prevent Census workers from being told which Americans should and should not count.
They are also expected to have no access to the data files that store Americans’ responses to the census or any of the statistical surveys, which is highly restricted to a very small number of the thousands of Census Bureau employees.
Despite the fact that Cogley has a PhD, albeit in political science, not statistics, the data is highly confidential, not to mention extremely complex: it can take someone trained in the quantitative methods a year to fully understand, according to the person Close to the office.
The new hires come as the Census Bureau deals with the coronavirus pandemic, which poses a challenge as the agency seeks to keep employees safe in the field when they begin collecting data in August. All of their offices are now open, and they have a merger center that monitors how state and county reopens are affecting Census offices. The bureau held a one-hour briefing last Friday for more than 350 congressional employees on how the pandemic has affected their data collection.
“The greatest concern to me is the reputation of the Census Bureau as a nonpartisan non-political agency that provides information and supports democracy and helps drive it as additional political people are fabricated and inserted into a federal statistical agency that It really really runs the risk of damaging reputation and raises questions in people’s minds, ”said the person close to the office.
The controversy in the Census Bureau is not new to the Trump administration; Early in the president’s term, officials attempted to add a controversial citizenship question to the Census, but the courts said the official explanations for the attempted incorporation were implausible and legally inadequate. Thomas Hofeller, a Republican agent who died in 2018, also played a key role in getting the Trump administration to add the citizenship question to aid in his words, “Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.”
A spokesperson for Commerce said in a statement: “We thank Dr. Cogley and Mr. Korzeniewski for their service to our country in the Department of Commerce, and we are pleased that they continue their service in the Census Bureau. As Director Dillingham said, they will help the great work that is already underway in the Office and help achieve a complete and accurate 2020 Census. “
A White House spokesman said the White House does not comment on personnel matters.
“There are two poorly equipped people to administer the census,” said Kenneth Prewitt, former director of the office at the end of the Clinton administration. “They are very well equipped to advance political interests, especially the Republican Party. That is his experience and his professional goals. It is unprecedented for two political representatives to be added to the office amid a census count in the recent history of the Census Bureau. ”
