WHAT HEELS: Frazzled Brooklyn Census Office Cranks Out Bogus Forms
Census Bureau employees outed Brooklyn field office managers Alvin Aviles and Sonya Merritt for “min[ing] the phone book and Internet to make up answers to questionnaires,” instead of going door-to-door to complete them, regional director Tony Farthing tells the New York Daily News:
[A]t least 10,000 surveys need to be done or redone, officials said. …
"Basically, people were being asked to forge [questionnaires]," said one worker in the North East Brooklyn office, which covers 95,000 households.
"We went in and did a full investigation," Farthing said. "We found out two managers on the weekend of the 12th of June cheated by using phone books or Internet sources." …
Farthing said he believes the branch's earlier work is kosher, but the pair decided to break the rules at crunch time when they were looking at a huge stack of unfinished surveys, and their bosses were pushing for results, even if it meant more night work.
"We were telling them to go back on all non-interviews and hit this stuff hard. None of this 9-to-5 stuff, go when they know someone will be home," Farthing said.
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