When it comes to funding streets, hospitals, roads and a host of other things Hays County is going to need in the next 10 years, residents have some explaining to do.

And they’re not alone. Three weeks have passed since the U.S. Census preferred to receive completed forms for the 2020 Constitutionally-mandated count of every person residing in the county, and the nation as a whole had a response rate of only 50.7 percent on April 19.

Texas fared even worse with a statewide response rate of ...