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Austin American-Statesman - March 10, 2010

By Juan Castillo

Gov. Rick Perry’s announcement yesterday that he has named Secretary of State Hope Andrade as Texas census ambassador is drawing tempered praise from a state lawmaker who says Perry was too slow to promote the 2010 census.

“I trust that Hope Andrade will make the most out of the limited time she has to do her job,” state Rep. Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio, said in a statement today. Villarreal says he was the first elected official to publicly urge Perry to take action on the census. Last October, he wrote the governor urging him to establish a statewide Complete Count Committee to support census participation. He said he never got a response.

“It is in the best interest of our state for every Texan to be counted in the census, in terms of representation and our tax dollars flowing back to Texas,” Perry said in a prepared statement Tuesday. “I am thankful to Secretary Andrade for her dedication to ensuring all Texans understand the importance and value of participating in the 2010 Census.”

Villarreal noted that a study commissioned by the U.S. Census Monitoring Board found that approximately 373,000 Texans were not counted in 2000, costing Texas more than $1 billion in federal support for education, transportation, health care and other services during the past decade.

In January, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) said Perry’s inaction on the census led it to convene a Texas Latino Complete Count Committee. MALDEF is working with more than a dozen organizations to promote a complete count among Latinos, who according to the state demographer, are responsible for about two-thirds of the state’s population growth since 2000.

Look for your census forms in the mailbox beginning Monday. Andrade and members of the legislative Mexican American and African American caucuses are scheduled to speak at a census rally Friday at the Capitol.

National Census Day is April 1, the date people will be asked to report where they live when they fill out their forms.