Jackson E. Betts; Former Ohio Congressman Criticized Census

Jackson E. Betts, 89, a former Ohio congressman who came to national attention when he challenged the need for expanded census questionnaires. Betts, who served in the House from 1951 to 1973, was a senior Republican and the second-ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee. In the 1960s, he criticized the Census Bureau’s evolving questionnaires, which he said increasingly violated the public’s right to privacy. Over the years, the bureau had added questions ranging from the number of bathrooms in a home to income from alimony. But the Census Bureau defended the surveys, saying that all answers remained confidential and that the information gleaned from them was necessary to establish racial composition and living and economic conditions in U.S. homes. A congressional compromise was worked out in which the prison penalties for failing to answer all the census questions were eliminated. In Findlay, Ohio, on Friday of a heart attack.