On September 10, the U.S. Census Bureau published a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) in the Federal Register that would add two new parts to the federal regulations governing the decennial census ahead of the 2030 Census.
Overview
The first part would set new residence criteria that decide who is counted and where. It would:
- Include only U.S. Citizens and lawful permanent residents in the apportionment count.1 Other foreign citizens, including people on temporary visas and people without legal status, would be left out (§ 60.4).
- Define a person’s “usual residence” as the place where they lawfully spent the most days between January 3 and April 1 of the census year, and say it should be consistent with tax records (§ 60.2). A day counts if the person spent at least one hour there. The 2020 definition was where a person lives and sleeps most of the time.
- Leave open how legal status would be verified. The Bureau is considering using administrative records, such as tax, immigration, health and postal data, and asks for comment on the addition of a legal status question to the short form.
The second part would limit the demographic questions the census can ask. It would:
- Remove questions on race, ethnicity and sexual orientation (§ 70.2).
- Allow questions on biological sex, date of birth and household relationships, which would still be required.
- Make answers to any other demographic questions voluntary.
- Restrict publication of demographic data when privacy safeguards would require altering or introducing uncertainty into official population totals.
The Bureau stated that they expect to keep publishing statistics separate from the apportionment count and the American Community Survey would not be restricted.
What This Means for RDOs
Although the rule does not directly regulate NADO members, Census data is the foundation for much of what RDOs do every day, and when it gets less accurate, the effects will show up in funding, eligibility, and planning.
- Federal dollars follow the count: Census data drives allocation formulas for hundreds of federal programs, including highways, transit, Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), workforce programs, and aging services. Many RDOs administer these programs or help local governments access them. An undercount means a smaller formula allocation for the region, or even potentially dropping out of eligibility. This funding shift, though not permanent, would last until the next decennial count.
- Eligibility can change even if the community doesn’t: Many programs use population thresholds or demographic measures to decide who qualifies. EDA’s distress criteria rely on per-capita income and related data, and rural and urban classifications across several agencies depend on Census-defined population thresholds. In a county of 5,000 people, losing a few hundred from the count can change the numbers meaningfully. A region can drop below, or go above, an eligibility threshold, receive a higher match rate, or lose its competitive position because the data changed, not the realities, or need, on the ground.
- Planning documents lose their accuracy: Comprehensive Economic Development Strategies (CEDS), grant applications, needs assessments, labor-market analyses, housing studies, and hazard mitigation plans all rely on accurate demographic and workforce data. If an RDO cannot trust that baseline, it cannot make a credible case for a project, and reviewers discount applications built on data they view as inaccurate.
- Small places bear the brunt: Census estimates for small areas already come with wide margins of error. Miss a few hundred people in a small county and that’s a big share of the population. A large metro can absorb that. Most rural RDOs can’t afford to run their own surveys to fill the gap.
- A bad count lasts a decade: The decennial census benchmarks the population estimates and controls for the following ten years, so an inaccurate count is a long-term problem for every region that relies on those products for funding and investment decisions.
- The rural workforce is directly affected: The workers in agriculture, meatpacking, and hospitality who could be missed are often the labor base that anchors a local economy. If they are undercounted, a region’s labor force, housing demand, and service needs are understated, which affects everything from employer site-selection analysis to infrastructure planning.
Effects will vary by region, so each NADO member may need its own analysis on the potential impact the proposed rule could have.
What’s Next
The comment period now runs through November 2, 2026. The Census Bureau extended it on October 5 from the original October 13 deadline. Comments can be submitted on Regulations.gov under docket USBC-2026-0628. The Bureau says comments received by the deadline will be considered as it decides on a final rule. NADO will be submitting comments and will update the blog to include them.
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