Orange County supervisors 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,” Gallegos said.
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. Amezcua did not object to a homeless shelter but pleaded with the supervisors to include the district in outreach to the community about where it would be placed.
“Supervisor Do, you said this is about politics,” Amezcua said, referring to Do’s comments to City News Service about the school board’s motives.
“This is about what is right for our community,” Amezcua said. “We came and spoke up about the homeless transitional center and the following week we get a letter that our money is being rescinded… It is wrong what you have done. Rescinding it was wrong and it was politics on your part.”
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 added, “You want to play politics, don’t use our kids as pawns… Because you wouldn’t do that in Garden Grove. Would you do it in Westminster. No, you would not. Mr. Do, please do the right thing. It’s for our kids. Do it for our kids.”
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.
“We could do the work ourselves, but we chose not to,” Do said of the county. “Why? Because we feel that whenever you try to reach the hard-to-reach population the inherent distrust of that population of government agencies will reduce our effectiveness… It was a policy decision that we made. It was transparent. It was written. There is nothing ambiguous about what we decided.”
Do also rejected as a “misstatement of fact” that any funding was rescinded from the city and school district.
“The idea that this is politically driven or in violation of process is absolutely not true,” Do said.
No other governmental agencies were awarded the same funding in the county, Do said.
“So you’re not being singled out,” Do said.
Do 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.”
Chaffee said “the goal is to do the very best and most accurate count we can… That means it takes a collaborative effort of all the cities (in the county).”
The nonprofits that work with the hard-to-reach residents, such as the disabled and homeless, can augment the count by governmental agencies, Chaffee said.
“So sorry for the misunderstanding, but we hope we can all work together on this,” Chaffee said.
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.