Last day to represent for Census

Remember all the brouhaha about the Census back in April?

Well, Friday is the last day to call the toll-free number estab­lished by the U.S. Census Bureau in case they missed you.

Douglas County came to national attention when an R-C story about participation in the census by post office box hold­ers was mentioned by Rush Limbaugh on his program.

It turns out that 72 percent of Douglas residents participat­ed in the 2010 census before people started going door-to­door. That's a lot better than we did in 2000, when the county had 68 percent.

We can report that Douglas participation was the same average for the rest of the coun­try, and three points higher than the average for the state.

We'd like to report that puts us in the top five participants, but we can't.

Top honors go to Storey County, where 84 percent of residents sent in their forms.

Carson, Lyon and Churchill counties tied at 79 percent and Washoe County came in at 74 percent, so maybe technically we did come in fourth.

We don't envy the census workers who went to Esmeralda County where less than a third of the residents filled out their forms.

Fortunately, there aren't a lot of folks living there, so they should be easy to count.

If you've been skipped and want to be counted, call (866) 872-6868.

Forget worrying about how much money we receive from the Census, the key danger for us is the loss of representation that may accompany a drop in population.

We get the feeling that with what may be a continuing decline in numbers, we're going to need all hands to maintain the representation we have now in the Legislature and beyond.