When the U.S. Census Bureau released its 2007 population estimates earlier this month, Baton Rouge officials couldn’t have been more indignant. For three years, they’ve been trying to claim that the city is the most populous in the state. This latest estimate now suggests that not only did the city of Baton Rouge lose people last year, but that it did so at a faster rate than almost any other city in the U.S.
The federal estimate was the latest blow to a beleaguered capital with an inferiority complex. Earlier this year, the Census Bureau released parish-wide population estimates showing East Baton Rouge Parish to be well below what the parish itself says it is. The state’s own estimates, which were released in January, reach the same conclusion.
City-parish officials have been quick to criticize the data and the methodology used to arrive at the estimates. But while they’re long on rhetoric, they have yet to take formal steps to challenge the latest set of mid-census estimates.
Even assuming they do file a challenge in the weeks to come, observers say this issue is about much more than mid-census estimates. They believe the real motive is to apply political pressure to the Census Bureau in anticipation of what are sure to be disappointing numbers when the next real head count is taken in 2010.
“That’s what this is all about,” Shreveport-based demographer Elliott Stonecipher says. “To get the Census Bureau to adjust the 2010 numbers in their favor. It’s pure politics.”
Mayor Kip Holden’s administration dismisses such claims as ludicrous. But then, they’re dismissive of anything that contradicts what they say is a growing Baton Rouge. According to city/parish estimates, East Baton Rouge Parish had upwards of 495,600 people last year, an increase of more than 78,000 since 2005.
By contrast, the U.S. Census Bureau puts the parish population at 430,317, about 1,000 residents fewer than it estimated the parish had in 2006. More strikingly, the feds estimated the population of the city of Baton Rouge declined by 1.6% last year, falling to 227,071 from 230,715 in 2006.
Arguably more significant are the state’s population estimates, which determine how money from revenue-sharing programs like the tobacco settlement is doled out. Those estimates come from the research division of the College of Business Administration at Louisiana Tech in Ruston, and though demographers there use different methodology than the U.S. Census Bureau, they have come to much the same conclusion.
“I have no faith in their numbers,” Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Mike Futrell says of both the state and federal numbers. “There is no way they are close to being accurate.”
The number crunchers beg to differ.
“We all use different methodology,” Louisiana Tech Demographer Caroline Leung says. “But none of us has come up with a calculation that is anywhere close to 500,000 people.”
No one really knows for sure, but the Census Bureau and the state use methodologies very different from that used by the city-parish. According to a spokesman at the U.S. Census Bureau, mid-census population estimates come from birth records, death records and migration data, which the bureau determines by cross-referencing the addresses on federal tax returns from one year to the next. Once it has estimates for an entire parish or county, it looks at the data on housing units in each city, town and so-called sub-county unit to determine population estimates for individual areas.
Leung uses a similar methodology. She bases her parish estimates on a combination of birth records, death records and school enrollment. She plugs the data into a formula to arrive at a figure that she then crosschecks with Census Bureau field estimates. To arrive at municipal population estimates, she breaks the data down further.
For its part, the city-parish bases its population estimate on traffic counts. Holden described the methodology in an appeal he filed with the Secretary of State earlier this year.
Specifically, the letter argues, vehicle trips throughout the metro area were up in 2007 by nearly 60,000 a day. Based on that additional traffic, the metro-area population was estimated to be up by some 125,000. Because East Baton Rouge Parish accounts for 63% of the metro area as defined for the purposes of the traffic count, its own population is therefore up by 78,400. When that figure is added to the pre-Katrina population for the parish, the new figure comes to 495,634.
But demographers say that methodology is potentially flawed, not in the least because the metro area includes high-growth parishes like Livingston and Ascension, and doesn’t take into account that just because more people are traveling through the area doesn’t mean they actually reside in the parish.
“Kip [Holden] refuses to recognize the difference between his daytime population and his residents,” Stonecipher says.
But the administration offers other evidence to bolster its claim, including the following:
• Local road counts were up 6.63%;
• Subdivision final plat approvals were up 44%;
• Site plan applications were
up 48%;
• Building permits were up
nearly 2%.
All of which means very little, say demographers.
“So you have a lot of building permits, so what?” Leung says. “How many of those buildings are sold? How many are empty? They build, build, build, but are they occupied?
Futrell concedes that some of his supporting evidence is anecdotal. But he argues that when taken in combination with the hard traffic counts, it points in only one direction.
“When you have as robust an economy as we do with robust traffic and increased building permits, how can you come to any other conclusion?” he says.
While the administration is quick to criticize, it has yet to challenge the Census Bureau estimates, despite a well-publicized method for doing so that is often resolved in favor of the local jurisdiction. Last year, the bureau upwardly revised its estimates for nearly 60 municipalities around the country.
It has heard from dozens more so far this year seeking to challenge the 2007 estimates. New Orleans, for instance, is among those that have requested the paperwork necessary to file a formal appeal, though it has not returned the completed documents. Baton Rouge has yet to even ask for the forms.
“They’ve never challenged our estimates,” says Greg Harper, a spokesman with the Census Bureau.
When questioned as to whether the city-parish plans to file a formal challenge, which must be done by September, Futrell said the administration would file a challenge. It hasn’t yet, he says, because it has never received an official letter from the Census Bureau documenting the latest estimates.
“Once we get notification, we will certainly challenge,” he says.
But observers say that’s just a red herring. They believe that even if a challenge is filed, the issue isn’t about a mid-census population estimate as much as it is about building up to a challenge of the 2010 count.
And that is significant because the next census will determine federal funding formulas and political representation for the decade to come. If Baton Rouge is determined to be smaller than it claims to be, it will lose its share of a pie that is expected to be smaller than ever. That’s because Louisiana is losing population—a fact that no one can dispute.
“No one wants to talk about the fact that we’ve been losing population over a 28-year period,” Stonecipher says. “So we’re just going to keep challenging, and it’s pure politics to keep from talking about the hard issues.”
Comments
Posted by richyb on August 1, 2008 at 3:26 p.m. (Suggest removal)
BR's population numbers would be helped greatly if they "annexed" a few area's that are considered inside the city; but are not actually in the limits boundries that count in those numbers. BR's city limits take on the appearance of a jagged pork chop. Most people wouldn't believe Towne Center and Mall of La. are not even in the city limits.
Communities not included in the 227,000 that could be annexed....(estimated pop.)
*Westminster - 2,515
*Inniswold - 4,944
*Shenandoah - 17,070(probably more now)
*Village St.George - 6,993
*Oak Hills Place - 7,996
*Old Jefferson - 5,631
*Gardere - 8,992
*Merrydale - 10,427
*Brownsfield - 5,222
*Monticello - 4,763
*Millerville - 3,500 (estimate)
That adds roughly 78,000 more people! Baton Rouge could easily be a city with a pop. of 305,000 instead of the reported 227,000. And that's not even including the unincorpotrated hole around Towne Center/Corporate Blvd and a small area around Coursey/Cedarcrest/Sherwood Forest.
Even if they annexed 1/2 the places mentioned above BR's pop. would be somewhere around 265-270,000!
Posted by MightyFavog on August 2, 2008 at 4:12 a.m. (Suggest removal)
To be from Baton Rouge -- and Louisiana -- is to eventually develop a keen sense of where the tragic meets the absurd.
I've been contentedly gone for 20 years now, and yet you hear the same old thing coming out of the Red Stick . . . over and over and over again. Baton Rouge will progress when it develops a civic culture and stops thinking (and acting) like a high-functioning Third World hellhole.
I live in Omaha now, a place where government generally works and people generally care. In the two decades since my wife (an Omaha native) and I left BR for here, Nebraska's largest city has grown by more than 100,000 people (just the city, making it nearly twice as big as BR) and has utterly remade its downtown.
You can read about that in The Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12167644...
Meantime, BR barely has grown at all (if you don't count the outlying white-flight parishes), the school system is a worse mess than ever, and all the places I used to know so well are undergoing a gradual Port-au-Princification.
Perhaps BR's poobahs, instead of traipsing to Portland and the like, might find it profitable to plan a trip to my neck of the woods.
But I'll tell you one problem with Kip's grand schemes (and all the ones that preceded Kip's grand schemes): BR is trying to build cool stuff on a foundation of sand, not bedrock. A bedrock foundation includes things like clearing away or redeveloping the blight that is a huge chunk of BR. It also includes a functioning public-school system and a functioning infrastructure.
And you can add functioning mass transit to the list, too. And an educated, capable workforce.
Without those kinds of things, you got squat.
But Baton Rougeans never have been particularly big on any of that, have they? I know. I grew up there.
And I live elsewhere now, just like (I'd wager) a majority of my high-school classmates.
Posted by fourx5 on August 4, 2008 at 9:29 a.m. (Suggest removal)
My wife and I moved away after trying Baton Rouge out for six months. Not only were people openly racist about blacks and "the Mexicans" at times when they assumed we were like-minded white conservatives, but the job market was laughable during the latter half of 2006. We were told we were too qualified to work as bank employees, and "too strange*" to work at Lamar advertising. The newspaper took four months to tell me they didn't have any openings, and the local "Tech" companies finally started calling us back....almost a year after we left Baton Rouge - nearly 18 months after we'd looked for jobs with them. Not only did it take me nearly four months just to get a decent job offer, the company that did so (IEM) rescinded the job offer a week before Christmas without so much giving me a reason.
We really love being back in California The weather is amazing. Streets in EVERY neighborhood are cleaned and policed by cops who will stop and say hello - again, no matter the neighborhood. We don't even notice the taxes so many people in Baton Rouge cry about. Being inclusive to gays hasn't destroyed our marriage yet, and for all their faults, the city and state government function pretty well. Our city of over a million people has one-quarter the murders of Baton Rouge so far this year - possibly because the city government doesn't ignore half of the citzens. The redevelopment agency also got a head start on our "downtown problem" - they had a master plan for revitalizing downtown in the late 1970s.
I made suggestions for improvement here and in LTEs to the Advocate, but I've pretty much accepted that the city part of my family lives in will wither back to 1990s size or smaller after being given a once-in-a-generation chance with the Katrina outflux. It was wasted - all wasted - despite the best efforts of JR Ball and other like-minded folks to get some action on the part of the city-parish government and local employers. (ctd.)
Posted by fourx5 on August 4, 2008 at 9:37 a.m. (Suggest removal)
(from above comment) After living there for six months, I see why everyone takes off for other parts of this great country. I can always fly back a couple of times a year leaving a few hundred dollars in the local economy (that is, if the airport stays open), but despite the family there, despite the wonderful culture all around, the great outdoor activities, and the remaining good people there, Baton Rouge will forever be held back by the same "clucking class" who hold the reins. Of course, those folks don't read the Business Report, and they're not going to get the message that way.
One more note: I agree with MightyFavog above about the blight in Baton Rouge. Practically the only time I've ever heard anyone talk about North Baton Rouge is to mention they're going to Tony's, suggest a shortcut or complain about what a dump north Baton Rouge and its people are. Meanwhile, (and I like the guy) Kip's great idea is to build a obSimpsonsMonorail^h^h^h...a loop at a time of soaring gasoline, steel and concrete prices.
There's an entire book to be written about the challenges that face Baton Rouge. Maybe one of those hardworking folks on the Metro Council can write it.
I'll admit that our short time living there made us both a tad bitter and dismissive about the city and the way things are perceived there, but I really do hope that some good ideas take hold and start to transform Baton Rouge. We do care - and we want Baton Rouge to do better because we know it can - but we're not willing to stake our careers or livelihoods on it.
Posted by marctravis on August 8, 2008 at 12:38 p.m. (Suggest removal)
So why are you two folks so obsessed with Baton Rouge. If you hate it so much, why do you come here. So much negativity is not constructive at all.
Posted by dwayne on August 10, 2008 at 12:32 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I must agree with the people above who talked so badly about Baton Rouge. I have lived here my entire life. I am twenty two and about to graduate from LSU this fall. There are no jobs and no ways to get ahead in this "fantasy" world Baton Rouge is living in post-Katrina. I am moving right after I graduate to Chicago to further my career in Marketing, which Baton Rouge is no authority in. I agree, it is a lot this city can definitely do to make it stand amongst the best in the nation. But with the "grand ole folks" that run the city, not much change will come. And blatant racism is something I truly believe will ALWAYS hold this city back.
To comment on our school system. It is HORRIBLE. I was lucky enough to go a "decent", not good elementary school, a good middle school and the best high school in the city, Baton Rouge Magnet. But why would a city only have one good high school in its entire school system, but is quick to lie to everyone in the city about what is positive about our school system. I agree that the infrastructure needs a major overhaul. To anyone that is reading this that is not from Baton Rouge, please DO NOT waste your time and money in Baton Rouge, the "false hope" of south Louisiana.
Post a comment
(Requires free registration.)