Brooklyn: Local Census Officials Instructed Workers to Falsify Questionnaires, Says Inspector General

Tuesday, July 20, 2010
By Edwin Mora

(CNSNews.com) - The Commerce Department’s Inspector General (IG) has confirmed whistleblower allegations that management at a local Census office in Brooklyn, N.Y., “directed employees to falsify Census questionnaires during” the decennial count’s largest and most expensive operation known as Non-response Follow-Up.

Furthermore, the IG noted that during the Census Bureau’s efforts to re-count the fabricated questionnaires, employees charged with that task “were inferring the number of household residents through improper means.”

“The complaints specifically alleged that the [Brooklyn Northeast local Census office] manager and assistant manager for field operations had directed employees to falsify enumeration questionnaires using information from an Internet database rather than attempting to conduct in-person interviews as required by Census procedures,” Todd Zinser, IG for the Department of Commerce, stated in written testimony prepared for a hearing held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Monday. the rest