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Inspector General’s Memo: Census Says It Hired More Workers Than It Needed
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/67156 ^

Posted on 06/04/2010 2:23:50 PM PDT by kcvl

The U.S. Census purposefully hired more workers than it needed, telling the Office of the Inspector General of the Commerce Department that it did so as a “cost-saving measure,” according to a memorandum that Todd J. Zinser of the inspector general’s office sent to Census Bureau Director Robert Groves last week.

“According to Census,” said Zinser’s May 26 memo to Groves, “‘frontloading’ its workforce (i.e. hiring and training more enumerators than necessary to offset turnover) is a cost-saving measure.” The inspector general’s memo, however, suggested that in at least one Census Bureau operation excessive staff had increased the “cost of operations” and that in another operation deployment of an unnecessarily large number of workers "increased the operation’s direct labor and travel costs."

In the first quarter of this year (January-March), personnel from the inspector general’s office observed Census Bureau operations in four programs. These included “update/leave” (U/L), in which Census workers deliver questionnaires to homes that would not be reached by ordinary mail service; “update/enumerate” (U/E), which counts people in communities where the homes lack ordinary mailing addresses or street names; "enumeration at transitory locations" (ETL), which counts people at places where their residences are potentially mobile, such as recreational vehicle parks, campgrounds, marinas and carnivals; and “service-based enumeration” (SBE), which counts homeless people at places such as homeless shelters, mobile food vans and so-called “targeted non-sheltered outdoor locations” (TNSOL).

The inspector general’s memo said that the Census Bureau had “overestimated” the staff needed for the program to enumerate people at transitory locations. “During the ETL operation,” said the memo, “crew leaders overestimated the number of Census staff needed to enumerate transitory locations, thus increasing the cost of operations.”

The memo also said that there were so many people hired for the “service-based enumeration” that there turned out to be one Census enumerator for every seven homeless people counted, and that the inspector general’s office “observed significant periods of enumerator inactivity at certain locations.”

“In another operation [which the inspector general’s office confirmed to CNSNews.com was the SBE program],” said the memo, “we found many enumerator teams to be unnecessarily large—an average ratio of one enumerator for just seven homeless respondents. We observed significant periods of enumerator inactivity at certain locations, which increased the operation’s direct labor and travel costs.”


TOPICS: Extended News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: census; economy; jobs; spending
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1 posted on 06/04/2010 2:23:50 PM PDT by kcvl
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Inspector General’s Memo: Census Says It Hired More Workers Than It Needed As a ‘Cost-Saving Measure’
2 posted on 06/04/2010 2:24:41 PM PDT by kcvl
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To: kcvl

hahahahaha

government is stupid


3 posted on 06/04/2010 2:26:03 PM PDT by GeronL (Political Correctness Kills)
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To: kcvl

Down is up, up is down...we know we’re losing money on each unit, but we’ll make it up in volume...


4 posted on 06/04/2010 2:26:16 PM PDT by craig_eddy (Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome)
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To: kcvl
All I want to know, is when is the word fraud going to be used in conjunction with this lying Inspector General Junior?

My thirteen year old kids were better lairs than Obabi's appointees are.

I feel like I'm back in grade school

5 posted on 06/04/2010 2:27:54 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (J. D. Hayworth, the next Senator, the Great State of Arizona - Sen. Poopdeck, Panama is calling...)
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To: kcvl

They just factored in attrition, arrests and spoilage in the crop of workers.


6 posted on 06/04/2010 2:29:30 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ... Godspeed .. Monthly Donor Onboard .. Chuck DeVore - CA Senator. Believe.)
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To: kcvl

A friend of mine who was hired by the census tells me this:

“That was me - while they were telling us there was no work for us, they were continuing to train more people.”


7 posted on 06/04/2010 2:32:28 PM PDT by craig_eddy (Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome)
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To: kcvl

“Hey Boss! I need to hire 10 more guys to save us lots of money”

Go ahead. Give it a try.


8 posted on 06/04/2010 2:33:20 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: GeronL
no not stupid...intentional and fraudulent! merely to falsify the employment numbers...a chicago mafia trick among all the others of this criminal regime and i frankly have had enough of this sh^t!
9 posted on 06/04/2010 2:34:57 PM PDT by ldish (Looking forward to Independence Day)
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To: DoughtyOne
Mr. Zinser's appointment as Inspector General follows 24 years as a career civil servant, beginning as an investigator for the U.S. Department of Labor in 1983. He joined the Department of Transportation in 1991

******

Todd J. Zinser, the inspector general at the Commerce Department, said he would potentially add as many as 30 employees to an existing staff of about 120, using $16 million provided to his office in the stimulus — $10 million to oversee a program to expand broadband Internet service and $6 million for other programs.

The money amounts to a huge increase for an office whose total 2008 budget was roughly $23 million.

10 posted on 06/04/2010 2:36:58 PM PDT by kcvl
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To: kcvl

Yes, and how would Omama be able to say that they had created more jobs if they don’t overhire. This is another one of the “smoke and mirrors” government “jobs programs”. Wasteful won’t even touch the surface.


11 posted on 06/04/2010 2:37:27 PM PDT by TDA2
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To: kcvl

Either the Post Office got really really bad at its job when it came those forms that were mailed back, or they were intentionally “misplaced” once they reached their destination.

The little old lady that came to my house(after I’d sent the form in on time), said she had lots of people in her area that say they mailed them. She just said “the Post Office musta lost ‘em”


12 posted on 06/04/2010 2:40:05 PM PDT by digger48
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To: kcvl
...as a “cost-saving measure” ...

That's community organizer lingo for "I won".

13 posted on 06/04/2010 2:41:30 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer (The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.)
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To: kcvl

AS a COST SAVINGS?????????? OMG!!


14 posted on 06/04/2010 2:44:17 PM PDT by Ann Archy (Abortion,,,,,,the Human Sacrifice to the god of Convenience....)
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To: craig_eddy; potlatch; PhilDragoo; devolve

“...while they were telling us there was no work for us, they were continuing to train more people.”

Someone called in to Rush with the same story. The excessive hires are intended to count in the employment figures. The workers are underutilized so as not to be eligible for unemployment when their gig is over. The de-employment of the census workers won’t show in an increase of unemployment.

Every single thing in this government is calculated.


15 posted on 06/04/2010 2:54:11 PM PDT by ntnychik
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To: kcvl

133% of what it takes in people to man and run the entire United States Navy.


16 posted on 06/04/2010 2:58:00 PM PDT by KC Burke
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To: digger48
That wouldn’t surprise me either. For some reason, in the last month I have not gotten several pieces of mail that I was expecting.

We have had four different mail carriers just this week alone. I know some of them must be ‘new’ because they have to ask me (while going through the mail) if this is mine, how about this, etc. My address is on my office door!

We use to have ONE mail carrier that always came at the same time everyday, knew where he was delivering the mail, etc. Now, it’s a circus!

17 posted on 06/04/2010 3:00:12 PM PDT by kcvl
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To: KC Burke

If we did our jobs like the government did theirs we wouldn’t have one!


18 posted on 06/04/2010 3:01:30 PM PDT by kcvl
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To: kcvl

they use a lot of part-timers to skirt the union demands of a full time carrier.

look for that to change with this administration


19 posted on 06/04/2010 3:03:15 PM PDT by digger48
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To: kcvl

The Regime has been using the Census to jiggle the unemployment numbers for months, and now we are finally getting the proof. There are other reports out this week where census “enumerators” were paid for 40 hours of training, then actually worked 5-6 hours before being laid off, and then once they were re-hired a couple of weeks later, they were counted as a “new hire”.

Stuart Varney interviewed that condescending Christina Romer about this on FBN first thing this morning, and she kept trying to spin this all as good news. She’s so far out of touch on this she might as well be speaking Klingon...


20 posted on 06/04/2010 3:04:10 PM PDT by Bean Counter (Stout hearts...)
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