A recent report from the Department of Planning to the General Assembly’s budget committees claims the state is the envy of the nation is census readiness. “Maryland is leading the nation in Census preparedness,” the report cheerfully concludes. Mr. McCord insists matters are safely on schedule and even suggested to The Sun’s Pamela Wood that launching outreach of the April census too early can lead to “census fatigue” and people losing interest in filling out their forms when the proper time comes around. Yet a quick review of this newspaper’s reporting of a decade ago found articles about census hiring at Maryland’s nine local census offices (including two in Baltimore) at this point in January. Four have been opened by the U.S. Census Bureau (with just one downtown) as of today. Perhaps, the administration will argue that Speaker Jones has unwisely contributed to “fatigue” by drawing public attention to the census, but it’s more likely that she’s caught some self-satisfied folks underestimating the challenge of census outreach in low-income, transient neighborhoods that are often quite difficult to draw an accurate bead on.