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Census Data Now Available for Montana State Legislative Districts

Montana State Legislators now have a new resource for
information on their legislative districts. Today the Montana
Department of Commerce’s Census and Economic Information Center (CEIC)
unveiled a new web page featuring Demographic Profiles for each of the
50 Senate Districts and 100 House Districts. The economic and
demographic data are available thanks in part to the first phase of the
2010 Census planning.

"Demographic Profiles will be a valuable tool for Montana’s elected
officials," Governor Brian Schweitzer said. "This specific information
will help policy makers analyze potential impacts on their constituents
and allow them to provide assistance to areas that need it most. This
will help in everything from energy policy and economic development, to
wildlife and resource management."

These Demographic Profiles consist of 2000 Census data, retabulated by
the U.S. Census Bureau and released in early January. Each Profile
reflects the current House and Senate District boundaries provided to
the Census Bureau by the Montana Legislative Services Division staff in
the fall of 2006.

The Profiles include demographic, housing, social and economic
statistics and will provide Legislators with practical, localized
information for the constituents they represent. More specific
information such as age, race, gender, household relationship, place of
birth, education, employment status, income, and family is presented
district by district.

Department of Commerce Director Anthony Preite says the Profiles are a
tool to help streamline operations in state government. "This is a great
resource for public policy research and analysis. The Profiles will
help legislators and state agencies quickly access essential
information, and determine how bills and policy decisions might affect a
specific district and regions in the state."

Susan Byorth Fox, Executive Director of the Montana Legislative Services
Division, agrees. "In the way that we have been able to use county and
city data, it can now be applied to the legislative districts. It can
help with health, public assistance, business and income policy and
virtually any census data can be used to describe the people that live
in any House or Senate district."

Also available on CEIC’s web site are Geographic Comparison Tables (GCT)
which allow users to compare data district by district for such
characteristics as housing, age, race, educational attainment, and
income.

To access the Profiles and the GCT tables, visit CEIC’s State
Legislative District web page at http://ceic.mt.gov/stateLegDist.asp.

The full data sets for each district (over 200 tables from the 100%
file, or approximately 800 tables from the sample file) are available
through the U.S. Census Bureau’s American FactFinder (AFF) web site.

With this release by the U.S. Census Bureau, Phase 1 of the 2010 Census
Redistricting Data Program is completed. Phase 2, Voting District/Block
Boundary/Block Boundary Suggestion Project begins later this year.

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Marissa Kozel

Public Information Officer

Montana Department of Commerce, Director’s Office

406-841-2772

[email protected]

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