Duggan blasts 'clown show' US Census Bureau after another Detroit population drop
DETROIT (FOX 2) - Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan isn't holding back about the US Census Bureau after another recent count of reduced city population.
Census numbers equal federal money and if they are perceived to be under-counted, like Duggan is claiming, that means missing out on additional funding.
"The census bureau is the most incompetent division in the entire federal government," he said. "Who runs a ship like that?"
Duggan even referred to the census bureau – as a "complete national clown show," in a Thursday tweet.
The man at the helm of the bureau, is Director Robert Santos. The Detroit mayor has a big bone to pick about newly released numbers that say the City lost about 8,000 residents from July 2021 to July 2022. That is about 1 percent.
"I have no idea what city the census bureau is looking at," Duggan said.
He says – there is no way those numbers are accurate, they undercounted.
"You have got DTE saying that there have been 5,000 more houses in Detroit that have electricity and gas," Duggan said. "The US Postal Service says we're delivering mail to 6,000 more houses."
The US Census Bureau estimates Detroit’s population stands at 620,376, ranking us the 29th-largest city in the country - which in 1950, used to be 5th.
Duggan’s battle started brewing in 2020 when numbers showed a 10.5% population drop.
"Each year they have an estimate, and they're supposed to give you a formula they use for that estimate," Duggan said. "Last year they refused to give it to us even though we sued. This year they said they will give it to us."
Why do we care? Well, federal dollars are tied to census numbers for food stamps and Medicaid, each person missed, the city loses about $5,000 in funding.
"I want our folks counted and we are going to fight until every Detroiter is counted," he said.
Santos said after the 2020 Census that communities of color were undercounted. Here in Detroit it was about 20,000 less than what it should have been.
