I returned to school last night after a week of skiing and racing in Vermont with my team. We're by far not the best team around, but we all just love to ski -- so much that we're willing to voluntarily subject ourselves to some of the coldest weather in the country. Who would have thought that 0 degrees Fahrenheit would ever be considered warm? After waking up to an icy 20 degrees BELOW zero on more than one occasion, it was great to see the temperature go UP to zero.

Luckily, the highlight of this year's trip was more entertaining than a stop at the hospital to pick up a teammate suffering from frostnip (not quite as severe as frostbite) -- although we still must survive four more weekends of racing. During Sunday's giant slalom race, a local dog named Hobart invaded the course and took off in hot pursuit through the gates -- right on the tail of the racer who had just started down the hill. Although racer and dog quickly disappeared from sight, I later got word that the latter had caught the former and caused her to crash near the bottom of the course; she was granted a rerun.

When Hobart's snowshoe-clad owner finally caught up with him and led him back to the top of the hill, Hobart opted out of bowing before the crowd for his performance; he preferred to give gate number one the fire hydrant treatment.

Hobart was the star of the show in my book.

-Gabe

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Sacramento normally figures in the news because of something that happens in the state Capitol, or because of court decisions here affecting millions of Californians.

But the seat of California's government has assumed an unusual new role as an experimental proving ground for the Census Bureau's national tally next year. The bureau, caught in the crossfire of a partisan political-legal fight, is testing two counting methods for the Census 2000 and officials had hoped to have decided on the method they are going to use long before this.

The issue is deceptively simple: Should census takers use the classic method or a newer technique called statistical sampling? A lot is at stake.

Both systems use mailed questionnaires as the first step, but since only about half of all people respond to the questionnaire, the Census Bureau sends out counters door to door to follow up. Despite repeated followups, however, many people elude the count.

The Clinton administration wants to use statistical sampling, in which the counters include in their final result an estimate of the number of people who somehow slipped through the cracks of the conventional tally. Minority groups, people who move a lot, those who don't speak English and the homeless, among others, don't get counted. Since many of them tend to be Democrats, the administration wants to make sure they are included. Statistical sampling gives a higher count.

The traditional method does not include the estimates and projections, but makes an aggressive effort to count everybody. It gives a lower count.

In Sacramento, one of three U.S. communities used for test counts for Census 2000, the bureau used both methods and came up with sharply different results. Using statistical sampling, the city of Sacramento has over 403,000 inhabitants. Using the traditional method, the city's population was put just under 350,000.

These numbers may seem to be merely a bureaucratic exercise. But they aren't: Federal money is apportioned largely on the basis of population, so the lower the count the less the money. State officials estimate that for every person uncounted, the state loses $100 per year. That adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Census tracts also serve as the basis of reapportionment, the decennial redrawing of legislative and congressional districts to reflect changes in population.

That means state officials -- meaning the Democrats who control the state Legislature -- will use the census figures to draw the maps of new districts. Reapportionment is a bitterly partisan, complex process as the party in power seeks to draw district boundaries that maximize its own registration at the expense of the opposition.

Since the governor and the majorities of both houses of the Legislature are Democratic, that means that the census is all but certain to wind up as a tool for a flagrantly partisan redistricting.

Republicans, not surprisingly, oppose statistical sampling and have challenged it in court. Two cases challenging the method have been combined into a single case now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court is expected to rule on the case sometime this spring.

For politicians, reapportionment is a fact that drives their lives. The issue largely is ignored by the public, but professional politicians view it as a question of basic survival. If the registration of their districts becomes dominated by the opposition, they have little chance of winning re-election. In some cases, districts are collapsed, forcing two lawmakers from the same party to run against each other in particularly bitter contests.

So the census is more than mere numbers -- it's money and politics, the two principal topics in the Capitol.

Looking for the current roster of the Assembly or Senate? Head on over to http://www.capenq.com/gov/info.html for links to the current lists -- complete with district, member name, party, room and phone number.

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