MARIETTA, Ohio — The self-reliant character of Appalachians coupled with suspicion of the federal government could cost local governments when the 2020 Census count rolls in.

Flite Freimann, executive director of the Washington County Department of Job and Family Services and a member of the county’s Complete Count Committee, said Thursday that the Census Bureau’s concern that children were undercounted in the 2010 Census probably applies to Washington County. The Census Bureau strongly suspects that about 1 million children across the country were missed in the last census.

“We have transient children here, some living in nontraditional families and relationships, and we’re a rural community,” he said. “Also, there is in general a cultural distrust of the federal government. People in Appalachia are independent. They want to know, ‘Why are you asking me these questions?’ that sort of thing,” he said.

Freimann, whose agency is the point of contact for numerous state and federal services, said the general sense is that many residents were missed in the last census.

“We’ve looked back, and in 2000 there was a 78 percent response rate, and that dropped to 72 percent in 2010. Even 5 percent missed, in a county our size, 60,000 people, that’s 3,000 people that aren’t counted,” he said.

A significant number of children live semi-transient lives in the county.

“There’s a lot of couch surfing, kids living with mom for part of the week, then with dad, some spend time with grandma or grandpa, a lot of kids floating around,” he said. “The kids aren’t necessarily pinned down, and when the caregivers get the census form, they don’t declare them because they’re not living with them all the time.”

There are also situations in which relatives fear declaring the children because it might have ramifications for child custody, he said. That brings up the confidentiality of the census information.

“At that point in time, the grandma, let’s say, fears that children services will somehow hurt the parents. There’s a real hesitancy. They know the child is there, but they’re afraid to acknowledge it because it might have negative consequences,” Freimann said.

That concern is unfounded, he said.

“The census information is not shared with anyone. It’s locked up for 72 years,” he said, noting that breaching the confidentiality of census information, even to share it with another agency, is a federal crime.

Misunderstandings can also result in residents not being counted.

“We’re a rural area, a lot of family farms of 5, 10, or 15 acres. Sometimes the children come back to live with their families in maybe another building or a camper, but when the census count comes in, grandma and grandpa just count themselves when there might be two or three families living at that address,” he said.

Because the county shares a border with West Virginia, there’s also the question of who gets counted where.

“We’re just across the river from those communities — Belpre and Parkersburg, Marietta and Williamstown, Newport, New Matamoras, there’s a constant bouncing back and forth,” he said. “Folks get concerned that if they’re getting benefits in West Virginia, for instance, but counted in Ohio that might put them at risk.”

All those circumstances can involve children being moved around and difficult to pin down to a specific place of residence on Census Day, which will be April 1.

Although the population in Washington County has been in a gradual state of decline for several decades, Freimann doesn’t think it’s going down as rapidly as the census suggests.

“When I talk to people at (Washington-Morgan) Community Action, at (the Washington County Board of) Behavioral Health, the population they are serving is not doing down,” Freimann said. “We’re fairly confident we’ve been undercounted.”

Freimann said his agency has tracked the number of children in state custody from the mid-1990s, and the usual ratio is about one for every 100 children.

“If you use that as a benchmark, you see a substantial undercount here,” he said. “When you look at food assistance, for example, on average it goes to about 7,000 residents a month, half of whom are children. If you look at that, you think there’s no way we can have that many children in our county if the census numbers are right.”

David Brightbill, executive director at Washington-Morgan Community Action, said it’s a difficult county to poll accurately.

“Geography is one of the biggest challenges,” he said. “It’s harder to get people out in the county, getting information on them. The digital divide is a real thing, not everybody has that access.”

The census for the first time in 2020 will rely largely on digital response, although paper forms will still be available to be sent through the mail. Much of the information about the census is being distributed electronically, which places rural residents at a disadvantage in terms of receiving notice about the census.

Being undercounted could cost the county significant benefits on both the state and federal levels. Nearly all grant money from the state and federal governments comes through state allocations, Freimann said, which are almost entirely population-based.

“Every dollar we receive – we get almost zero direct federal funds, almost all of it comes through the state – goes out on a pro-rata basis. When the governor says he’s going to issue a $25 million grant, they divide that by the number of people in Ohio, multiply that by the county population, and that’s what you get,” Freimann said. “As a back-of-the-envelope calculation, we’ve probably missed out on $12-15 million since 2010 because of the undercount.”

Freimann said his agency has been creating awareness posters to put up in locations where people gather, and Brightbill said that further outreach efforts will probably start after the first of the year.