CENSUS REPLIES TOP TWO-THIRDS COOPERATION EXCEEDS 1990 LEVELS.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Mirroring a national trend, nearly 70 percent of Antelope Valley residents returned the 2000 census forms mailed to their homes, up from less than 60 percent 10 years ago, the government reports.

The Census Bureau reported that 69 percent of Palmdale residents returned their mailed forms, compared with 58 percent in 1990. In Lancaster, 67 percent returned their forms, compared with 59 percent a decade earlier.

``It's good,'' said Dave Ledbetter, an associate city planner in Lancaster who worked with Census Bureau officials. ``The response over the last couple times has been declining. This is a turnaround.''

Nationally, the average return rate was 67 percent, compared with 65 percent in 1990. The state average was 70 percent, up from 65 percent in 1990.

Census workers were later sent out to households that didn't return the mail-in forms. Census officials said Tuesday it is too early to measure the exact effect of the increased response rate.

In 1990, an estimated 7 percent of California residents went uncounted. In the ensuing decade, that cost the state and its cities and counties an estimated $2.2 billion in federal funding allocated on the basis of population.

In this census, federal officials got local government involved in urging people to turn in their census forms.

Palmdale and Lancaster officials checked Census Bureau address lists to make sure they were accurate, put up billboards, distributed census promotional items, sponsored radio announcements in English and Spanish and trained Spanish-speaking employees to go on radio talk shows to emphasize the importance of the census, officials said.

``I think the reason for the higher response rate is the bureau included the cities more in the census that in any time in the past,'' Ledbetter said.