Brooklyn Paper

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz claims Bklyn got shortchanged.

Don’t count out Brooklyn! Borough leaders were slamming the US Census Bureau on Thursday after the agency claimed that Brooklyn grew by only 40,000 people over the past decade.

Markowitz: CH and Willyburg Increased by 40,000 Alone

Brooklyn Paper

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz claims Bklyn got shortchanged.

Don’t count out Brooklyn! Borough leaders were slamming the US Census Bureau on Thursday after the agency claimed that Brooklyn grew by only 40,000 people over the past decade.

“It’s a mistake,” said Borough President Markowitz, pronouncing himself “flabbergasted” by the allegation that the borough grew by only 1.6 percent to 2,504,700.

“It is inconceivable that Brooklyn — the hottest borough in which to live, work and play — grew only a small percentage in the past decade,” said Markowitz. “If you just count the Hasidim from Williamsburg, the Satmar and the Lubavitch Hasidim in Crown Heights, you’ve got 40,000 increase right there over the last 10 years.”

Brooklyn’s population is up from 2.465 million in 2000, but well below 2.579 million that the Census Bureau projected in 2009.

And the federal bean counters claim that the entire city of New York only added about 166,000 people since 2000, for a total population of 8.175 million, although the city says it is likely 8.4 million.

If the numbers from the constitutionally mandated decennial count hold, the city will face long-term consequences.

New York State is expected to lose two congressional seats when districts are redrawn later this year — and political insiders believe that Brooklyn or Queens could lose one of them.

And federal and state funds to the city, which is tied to population, would likely diminish

As such, state Sen. Marty Golden (R–Bay Ridge) joined his fellow politicians in calling the Census count an “abomination,” an assessment that has become an once-a-decade ritual among urban lawmakers.

“Literally billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars were expended on this failed effort,” said Golden. “All avenues, including legal action, need to be explored in order to correct this injustice.”

Then again, it could be worse — Queens apparently grew only 0.1 percent, or 1,300 people since 2000.

7 Comments

  • Simon

    Marty Markowitz you’re a blowhard. The census bureau doesn’t have a magic wand. If people don’t cooperate then they don’t get counted and their area loses funding and representation. Period. The census bureau made very effort to count the people, both my mail and in person. When people refuse to be counted for religious reasons, because they think “Obama” invented the idea, because they’re angry at the federal govt because of Rubashkin, or whatever … then they can ver geharget. It’s not the census bureau’s fault. The billions that were earmarked for Brooklyn, for emergency services, for hospitals, street maintenance, elder care, child care, Police … etc. and etc … will now stay in Washington. Each PERSON that refused to be counted is a loss of $20,000 – $30,000 over 10 years. Let the people suffer for the next 10 years and maybe they’ll wise up in 2020, or maybe they won’t. They’ll refuse to be counted and Brooklyn will lose the money again. It’s the people of Brooklyn’s own fault.

  • Lloyd a cohen

    Number 1: You got to realize that as the elections of 2010 showed, many people are fed up with big government’s interference and instrusion into their privite lives. many of the questions were out of line and should not have been asked. Because of this many people, and I know many, refused even to tell how many people were at a specific address because they stated they the questionnaire requested information that was not consistent with the purpose of the census and told then that that information was none of the governments and especially Obama’s business. P.S. IN CASE YOU DID NOT KNOW, THE CLAIM THAT ALL THIS INFORMATION IS CONFIDENTIAL IS A HUGE PIECE OF HAZARAH AND IT IS A LIE AS THE ACT THAT RUNS THE CENSUS AUTHORIZES THE CENSUS DEPARTMENT TO RELASE THE INFORMATION IT HAS GATHERED TO ANY FEDERAL AGENCY THAT WANTS IT.

  • Simon

    Lloyd Cohen you are the problem, and people like you are what cost Brooklyn 100s of millions in federal dollars. If people are “fed up with big government” so they don’t answer the census then they get no federal money for cops, fire dept, EMS, emergency rooms, nursery school, elder care, libraries, etc. If you think many (or any) questions “where out of line” then you obviously didn’t even see the 2010 census questionnaire. They barely asked anything. The purpose of the census –as stated in the U.S. constitution- is to take a count of people and housing in the United States every 10 years. There was also an additional question to figure out how many Latinos are in the U.S. (about 50 million) (how does this information hurt you?) and what the ethnic makeup of the country is (how does THIS negatively affect you?) The census has been conducted every 10 years since 1790. To mix Obama into this equation doesn’t even warrant a response. As to census confidentiality … the privacy act was passed in 1974. If you can prove even ONE case of individual census info released to another government agency, you’ll be a hero to every anti-government group in the country. Prove even one instance. You can’t, because it hasn’t happened.
    As for not disclosing how many people live at a particular house … in case of a major disaster the fire department will request from census how many people, no names – just number of people, were counted at a particular house, and then they will continue searching until that number of bodies are found or live people accounted for. Major disaster is the only instance where census will tell emergency workers how many people they counted at a particular house. And if it’s zero, well guess what? They move on to the house where people were counted. Anyone who didn’t cooperate with census was misinformed, or willfully ignorant. They are closing the elder care in Crown Heights, because of not enough federal money. Whose fault? People who didn’t fill out census form. Cutbacks on programs. Whose fault? People who didn’t fill out census form. Broken streets? Shortened library hours? Critical care shortages? All the fault of people who didn’t fill out their census forms. The blood is on your hands.

  • lloyd a cohen

    All they need to know is (1) how many people reside at a particular address as of a certain date. (2) are they male or female? (3) Caucasian, latino, native American or African-American. (4) general age group–school age or not. They do not need to know speicific age, specific race, do you rent or do you own? And, there is no guarantee of confidentiality as I mentioned above. Until the government does the census right, tough luck.

  • Simon

    Okay, Reb Lloyd A Coheh, so we’ve narrowed it down to three questions you don’t like. Specific age, race, rent-or-own. Without specific age, how does the government know whether to build more children’s hospitals or geriatric wards? Without race questions how do they know if certain services also need to be available in Chinese, Russian, Spanish, or Hebrew? And if they don’t know renters vs. owners how can they properly set property taxes, interest rates, landlord tenant courts and probably half a dozen other government functions. When you give out the kind of money the fed does, then you’ll get to set the questions. Until then either answer their questions, or don’t, and forfeit the cash. You don’t punish anyone but the residents of the neighborhood when you blow off the census. And since nobody else seems to care about this issue, I’m probably not going to post anymore on this subject. But as a person who cares about folks in the neighborhood, as I’m sure you do too, I ask you to rethink your participation in the census. It can’t hurt you and we need the money.
    The only people who were ever hurt by census information were the Japanese during WWII. I’ve heard that the government used that data to know whom to round up. That was 65 years ago, and the government has apologized and made it ILLEGAL for census info to ever be used that way again. The IRS/FBI/IMMIGRATION, and certainly the local housing depts. and whatnot can go pound sand. Census will not release anything, but summary data, for 72 years when they transfer the information to the national archives. Have a kosher and happy Pesach.

  • Simon

    Oh, and as for specific age, they use that to help tell people apart when names are identical or very close. Such as are Jose Hernandez and Joe Hernandez or Mendy Cohen and Mendel Cohen who live in the same building/household the same people or not. As for the confidentiality, read up on the privacy act. It’s spelled out in black and white. Your info is confidential for 72 years.

  • lloyd a cohen

    simon–read the law and a lot of questions are personnel in many respects and people feel that the government has no business prying into you personal affairs. The big lie is the seventy-two years of confidentiality where the law itself states clearly that any government agency can access the information y ou have given.