House committee moves forward bill expanding child care subsidies for industry employees
An Oklahoma lawmaker is making a renewed attempt to provide child care workers in Oklahoma with the opportunity to have care for their own children covered. Child care worker Kayla Champagne watches her son, Jaxson, 3, climb at the Little Learners Academy in Smithfield, R.I. (Photo by Elaine S. Povich/Stateline)
OKLAHOMA CITY — Lawmakers pushed forward with an initiative that would give more child care workers the opportunity to have care for their own children covered in an effort to address the shortage of qualified employees in the profession.
House Bill 1849, authored by Rep. Suzanne Schreiber, D-Tulsa, would allow child care providers at licensed facilities to exempt their household's income from consideration when applying for the Child Care Subsidy Program as an attempt to incentivize new industry workers and retain current employees.
A House budget subcommittee on human services unanimously passed the bill with a bipartisan vote. It can now be heard by the general House Appropriations and Budget Committee.
Schreiber said she authored a similar bill during the 2024 session, but the previous version was 'too blunt' and this year her bill is more 'detailed and advanced.'
She said she plans to add an income cap to the bill to limit the financial impact on the state and ensure the families who need subsidized child care are able to receive it.
'Let's say someone had $150,000 household income or something like that, so we'll have to exempt them, but we're still having all those conversations,' Schreiber said. 'The state of Oklahoma invests a total of $20 million of taxpayer dollars in our child care system. We serve over 65% of our kids in a licensed child care system. So we invest very, very little. This is actually a very small dollar amount for a huge return.'
House fiscal staff estimated the bill's financial impact will be between $10 million and $21 million, although Schreiber expects this number to drop once income caps are included. The $21 million number includes workers who currently qualify for subsidies, so House fiscal staff said the impact will be lower.
The Oklahoma Department of Human Services currently bases eligibility for the program on the federal income eligibility threshold per family size. This threshold cannot exceed 85% of the state median income per family size, which the U.S. Census estimates was $63,603 in 2023.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated in 2023 that the average child care worker in Oklahoma made about $12.51 per hour, or $26,010 annually.
Arkansas made changes to its own child care subsidy program in 2024 to include child care providers whose households meet the same income requirements and work a minimum of 10 hours per week at a licensed child care facility.
Tina Feltman, the director of a Durant child care facility, said this bill is one that providers wanted Schreiber to run again after people pushed back because of its cost last year.
For Feltman, this legislation would help her retain current employees and incentivize others to work in the industry.
With child care workers in Oklahoma being paid low hourly wages, she said she struggles to compete with other businesses for employees, but sees the offer for subsidized child care as a perk to advertise.
'I'm not complaining about wanting more money,' she said. 'But do you know how much Starbucks pays? I mean, yeah, you might have some high maintenance clients come in, but you're not trying to potty train eight two-year-olds. And you're not in a classroom with six toddlers and three of them are going through a biting phase.'
Feltman said she has attempted to provide cheaper child care for her staff at the facility she runs, but in turn she loses out on revenue.
'I was trying not to charge them because I wasn't able to pay them a huge amount,' she said. 'So they would have really been like, 'It's not really worth me working if I've got to turn around and pay the child care bill.' So it was a perk to them.'
Feltman hopes Schreiber's bill can help to offset the difference in wages between her and other employers by providing a way for industry workers to offload the cost of child care for themselves.
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‘A tale of two Mike Madigans': How the ex-Speaker's trial testimony offered his life story but also route to 7 1/2-year sentence
Months before a federal judge sentenced former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan to prison on Friday, the once-mighty state Democratic Party chairman took the witness stand in his corruption trial in an attempt to save himself. The only politician in America to serve 36 years as a House speaker guided jurors through his version of a complex personal and political life where few have gone before. For a high-profile Chicago politician that some called the 'sphinx' because of his secrecy, Madigan's decision to testify demonstrated he could not sit by and let his fate play out without speaking up. On Friday, Madigan found himself in a different posture, pleading for mercy as he asked for more time with a family that included an ailing wife. 'When I look back on my life, being speaker is not what gives me the most pride,' Madigan said. 'I am most proud of being a good husband, a good father and now a good grandfather.' 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After 11 days and 64 hours of deliberations, jurors came back with a split verdict that found Madigan guilty on 10 of 23 criminal charges. Despite Friday's sentencing, Madigan is still expected to battle on appeal to overturn the verdict and rewrite a legacy that now paints him as just another crooked Illinois politician, one who squeezed ComEd to put his cronies into no-work jobs while the fate of the utility's legislative agenda rested in his hands. Ever since the Madigan investigation exploded six years ago, he has argued that he simply made job recommendations for people over the length of his half-century career, considered it a part of his job, and rejected the allegation that he took official action in exchange for a thing of value — insisting he never engaged in an illegal quid pro quo. 'When people ask me for help, if possible,' Madigan testified, 'I try to help them.' When Madigan was born 83 years ago, his father was a cog in the Democratic machine who became a political stalwart as 13th Ward superintendent. Madigan's mother was a homemaker, and his sister was five years younger. He grew up in the Marquette Park area on the city's Southwest Side. 'My father dominated the house,' Madigan said. 'My mother was quiet and reserved.' 'In that house,' Madigan testified, 'the word 'nurturing' didn't exist. My parents never told me that they loved me. They never embraced, never hugged. That was just the condition that existed at the time.' Madigan's parents also were 'very strict' about his schoolwork, particularly after a nun saw he scored better than she expected on his fifth grade exam at St. Adrian, a Catholic grammar school, and told his parents to 'get on my case.' 'And so, as it was in those years, they got out the whips, and they went to work,' Madigan testified. 'So I became a more diligent student.' In Madigan's seventh and eighth grade years, yet another nun urged him to go to St. Ignatius for high school, one of a handful on his father's approved list, and then, after high school, going to the University of Notre Dame became a 'foregone conclusion.' Along the way, Madigan held jobs typical of a family embedded in the Democratic machine, which by 1955 was beginning to be run by Mayor Richard J. Daley. He worked a couple of summers as a junior laborer at a nearby Chicago Park District nursery when he was around 14 or 15, helping to grow trees and bushes for the park system. He then landed a job on a 'dirt truck' under his father's jurisdiction, picking up discarded mattresses and broken refrigerators placed on curbs and scooping dirt piled up by street sweepers and shoveling it into a truck to haul to a dump. Eventually, though, he convinced his father to be reassigned to a garbage truck, a job that came with a 'nightly interrogation' since his father supervised ward services. 'This became difficult,' Madigan testified. 'And my father had been an alcoholic who had quit drinking. He carried an anger problem, short fuse. And so when something went wrong or something went against his wishes, why, there would be a display of anger. And if anybody happened to be in the line of fire, why, it was not a pleasant experience. And in my case, why, it just — it just had me develop a habit where I never wanted to disagree with him, So if I'm in a conversation with him, he's not happy, he's disparaging me, I would just say, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, sir, yes, sir, yeah, yeah, yeah,' just to get out of the conversation.' The vignette appeared to be aimed at explaining why Madigan habitually gave brief 'yeah' or 'mmhm' answers to questions, such as an attempt to diffuse prosecutors' arguments that his innocuous phrases condoned alleged misdeeds. Madigan also testified his father's alcoholism played into a life lesson once when the young Madigan came home around 2 or 3 a.m. 'greatly under the influence of alcohol.' 'My father greeted me at the door, and I got a good, solid slap right across the side of my face,' Madigan said. Later that morning, Madigan's mother sent him to his father's office for a 'very somber meeting.' 'My father really never talked about drinking until this meeting. … He was very concerned that I might have the same problem that he had,' Madigan explained. 'And he extracted two promises out of me. Number one, never drink on an empty stomach. Make sure you have some food in your stomach before you drink. Number two, never drink before sundown. Never drink before sundown. And so I told him I would abide by that, and I have.' Advice from his father shaped many other parts of Madigan's thinking, from his longtime support of organized labor to making an extraordinary political connection while attending law school at Loyola University. In between his first and second year in law school, he worked as an assistant to the 13th Ward alderman, handling often angry and frustrated constituents with requests that ranged from needing a tree trimmed to getting their garbage picked up on time. 'It left me with a lifetime understanding that people like myself involved in government and politics should strive to be responsive to the citizens of the states, citizens of the nation,' Madigan said. He later worked as a law clerk in the city of Chicago Law Department, a spot right next to the office of Mayor Daley. 'We developed an acquaintance relationship,' Madigan said, adding: 'He knew my father.' When Madigan graduated from law school in 1967, he took his first job as a lawyer in the same city Law Department. He then landed a job as a hearing officer at the Illinois Commerce Commission, which oversees utilities. But he soon learned a lesson in politics when a Republican committeeman started pulled strings. 'I was a Democrat, and I was involved with the local Democratic organizations in the 13th Ward,' Madigan testified. 'That organization issued a newsletter, and I wrote a column for the Young Democrats. The newsletter fell into the hands of the local Republican ward committeeman, who also happened to be the Republican Cook County chairman.' But instead of getting fired immediately, as the GOP official wanted, the ICC chairman gave Madigan time to find another job. He landed back in the city law department, once again as part of the Daley administration. Madigan's political career would soon rise. He won a vote among precinct committeemen in 1969 to replace the 13th Ward's Democratic committeeman, who had died. He won election as a delegate to the state's constitutional convention, which crafted the 1970 Illinois Constitution, which is still in place today. One of his fellow delegates was Richard M. Daley, Hizzoner's son and a future Chicago mayor himself. Thanks to Democratic Party slating, Madigan soon won his House seat for the first time in 1970, and he spent his first term 'not active,' but rather 'just observing and attempting to learn.' After Madigan's father died, the new lawmaker befriended a gregarious veteran, Rep. E.J. 'Zeke' Giorgi, a Rockford Democrat who excelled in retail politics. 'My personality was very strident,' Madigan said of his early days as a lawmaker, 'and I didn't do well interacting with the other representatives.' Giorgi's 'personality was completely different than mine,' said Madigan, an understatement to anyone who knew the secretive Madigan and the always-talkative Giorgi. 'He was open, outgoing, did very well at relating to other people, understanding other people, and being able to work cooperatively with them. So he gave me an education as to how I should change my methods and how I should conduct myself differently than I had when I first arrived.' Madigan said the most important lesson he learned from Giorgi was that 'it's really important to strive to know and understand other people. You know, it's one thing to have your own ideas. But in life, but in particular in a legislative body, it's really important that you understand that everybody comes there with their own ideas. They're entitled to support positions that they support, and everybody should be given due respect.' Madigan told jurors he 'developed a lifetime friendship' with Giorgi, who is known as the father of the Illinois lottery and the House champion of riverboat gambling. It became clear in Madigan's testimony that experiences with his father and with Giorgi influenced how he handled the speakership. While establishing himself in Springfield during the mid-1970s, Madigan also met a woman who would become his wife, Shirley, a former flight attendant from Oregon, who worked at a Chicago law office where he would stop to discuss politics with a friend. 'It was a real quick romance,' Madigan said, 'and we got married, and we developed a family of three immediately because she had a daughter from a prior marriage who was about 10 or 11 years old at the time.' Madigan embraced the dual role of being a husband to Shirley and also a father to her daughter, Lisa, as they settled into the 13th Ward's West Lawn neighborhood. 'Shirley had gone through a very difficult divorce, a very contentious relationship with her first husband,' Madigan said. 'And my view was that … I would treat Lisa as my daughter, that I was not the biological father, but I had married Shirley. And, you know, I understood at the get-go that this was a — this is a dual package here. And so I just took on the parental responsibilities.' Madigan testified about Lisa's 'contentious relationship with her biological father' and the time he heard her crying while talking on the phone. 'I took the phone out of her hands, and her biological father was on the phone shouting at her,' Madigan said. 'And the language was so vile that I don't want to repeat it, but he was using the 'F' word as part of his expression.' Madigan testified he told Lisa that she never again had to see or talk to her biological father. Madigan said he received numerous threatening letters but avoided a physical confrontation with him, a point the Madigan team used to support the argument that he was non-confrontational on thorny matters. A Tribune review of courtroom transcripts revealed Madigan's deep reach into his background drew significant questions from Judge Blakey outside of the earshot of the jury and the courtroom audience. Blakey, in a private sidebar with lawyers outside of jurors' earshot, wondered about the relevance of Madigan testifying about 'some emotional incident' from decades ago. Ultimately, though, Blakey allowed Madigan's team to use the story to demonstrate the longtime speaker's 'approach toward confrontation or how he interacts with people and how he responds, certainly those things are relevant.' But Blakey gave a warning: 'That's not a blank check to bring in every possible experience.' The Madigan family grew as he and Shirley had three additional children, Nicole, Tiffany and Andrew, all of whom are now adults. Madigan adopted Lisa. Over the years, Lisa Madigan drew the most political interest. A former state senator who became Illinois' attorney general in 2003, she looked on track to be the first woman to be governor of Illinois. But that expectation took an abrupt turn in July 2013 when she sent a blast email that shook the state's political landscape. Despite raising money at a faster clip than incumbent Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, she said she would not challenge him. Why? 'I feel strongly that the state would not be well served by having a governor and speaker of the House from the same family and have never planned to run for governor if that would be the case. With speaker Madigan planning to continue in office, I will not run for governor.' Ever since, many have pondered what would have happened if the speaker had stepped aside at that point. Instead, Lisa Madigan ran for reelection as attorney general, completed her fourth term and joined a private law firm. In her final days as attorney general, she would swear in her father to the speakership during a festive ceremony in 2019. 'Congratulations,' she said. 'You're the speaker again.' That would be Mike Madigan's last term as speaker before his own caucus ousted him two years later as the federal investigation began to close in. The Madigan & Getzendanner law firm also took center stage in the courtroom as prosecutors sought to tie Madigan's public actions to his attempts to land business for a practice that focused on winning property tax appeals. Prosecutors used testimony from disgraced former 25th Ward Ald. Danny Solis — who chaired the City Council's zoning committee — to buttress allegations about Madigan making deals with Solis to help score real estate business for the law firm. The straitlaced Madigan testified he had no idea until news broke in January 2019 that the feds had ensnared Solis in a sordid mix of city business, campaign contributions, bribery, sex, prostitutes and Viagra pills. Federal authorities flipped Solis, who helped take down Madigan and 14th Ward Ald. Ed Burke, who spent a record 54 years on the City Council and went to prison for racketeering, bribery and extortion. One pivotal moment in the Madigan trial was a 2018 recording in which Solis told Madigan that developers the speaker wanted in his law firm's portfolio, as Solis explained, to 'understand how this works, you know, the quid pro quo, the quid pro quo.' On the phone, Madigan's reaction sounded potentially like a subtle acknowledgement. But Madigan told jurors Solis' comments caused a 'great deal of surprise and concern.' 'I decided that I wanted to have a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Solis to give me an opportunity to tell him that I would not be involved in a quid pro quo,' Madigan said. A few days later, Madigan testified that he spoke to Solis, who 'genuinely appeared to recognize that he had made a serious mistake.' In that particular allegation, one involving Madigan's alleged pressure on developers of a West Loop high-rise to give him business, the jurors acquitted him of four counts. In all, the former speaker was convicted on Feb. 12 on 10 of the 23 corruption counts he faced. Jurors deadlocked on the marquee racketeering conspiracy charge that Madigan and co-defendant Michael McClain, a ComEd lobbyist, ran the ex-speaker's government and political operations like a criminal enterprise. Jurors could not reach a consensus on any charges against McClain, who stands convicted in the separate 'ComEd Four' case. But the jury convicted Madigan on a series of allegations tied to his talking about getting Solis, a key government mole who testified at length during the trial, appointed to a cushy paid position on a state board during the same conversations in which Solis promised to help Madigan acquire business for Madigan's law firm. As he wrapped up his days of denials, Madigan's testimony provided one more glimpse into what he now was thinking: 'One of my regrets is that I ever had any time spent with Danny Solis.' Prosecutors won pivotal rulings late in the trial to present key evidence to counter the Madigan team's position that he simply sought to help people find jobs. Blakey allowed jurors to see a video of Madigan's 2009 oral history interview with the University of Illinois Chicago about how he used to handle patronage when it was legal during the 1960s and 1970s heyday of the first Mayor Daley's Democratic machine. The video showed Madigan explaining how he taught people who wanted government jobs to sell Democratic candidates to voters like a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. 'They wanted a job in the patronage system,' Madigan said. 'I would tell them, 'Yes, we can put you in a job. But you're going to work for the Democratic Party.' ' Madigan attorney Todd Pugh argued putting the recording into the trial would open a 'Pandora's box,' given that anti-patronage laws had changed the hiring landscape. Lead prosecutor Amarjeet Bhachu countered the 'reason the Pandora's box is there is because' Madigan's own direct testimony involved an 'unnecessary inquiry into what Mr. Madigan had done for 50 years.' Blakey followed up on his prior warnings: 'At multiple times, and whether it's a Pandora's box or whatever, whatever kind of box, it was … opened up on the direct testimony of the defendant.' Prosecutors also convinced Blakey to allow the infamous 'bandits' recording of Madigan and McClain talking about longtime labor leader Dennis Gannon getting a $150,000-a-year ComEd consulting contract. 'Some of these guys have made out like bandits, Mike,' Madigan told McClain as they both chuckled. Madigan's team argued the comment should have been barred because Gannon's position was not included in the charges against the ex-speaker. But Bhachu maintained it was fair because Madigan portrayed his motivation for a half-century of job recommendations as being 'solely for altruistic purposes, to help constituents.' In his own testimony, Madigan said the 'bandits' conversation with McClain had nothing at all to do with the no-work ComEd subcontractors at issue in the case. Instead, Madigan testified, they were talking about lobbyists in Springfield who would get paid big money to work six months out of the year. Prosecutors dismissed the counts against Madigan in which the jury deadlocked. Madigan is expected to appeal the sentence and request to remain free pending the outcome. The jury also deadlocked on six counts against McClain. He was convicted two years ago in the far-reaching 'ComEd Four' trial, an outgrowth of the Madigan investigation. McClain and three others also found guilty in that case are scheduled for sentencings later this summer. The government previously dropped a single count of bribery against Solis despite his own checkered history. Solis keeps his six-figure City Council pension, and Madigan's $158,000 annual pension was suspended immediately upon his conviction. In his remarks near the end of Friday's three-and-a-half-hour sentencing hearing, the judge found himself musing about Illinois' sordid history of corruption, saying he was not trying to sentence 'a social problem' but instead the single defendant who was before him in the courtroom. He also reflected on the measure of a man, acknowledging how difficult it is for politicians to achieve the level of integrity of someone like President Abraham Lincoln. 'It's really hard to be Honest Abe right?' Blakey said. 'He's a unicorn in our American history. Being great is hard. But being honest is not. Being honest is actually very easy. It's hard to commit crimes. It takes effort.' The fact that Madigan was a 'man of his word,' as he testified and as many who wrote letters of support agreed on, 'cuts both ways,' Blakey said, since he also 'kept his word with his co-conspirators and co-schemers.' In the end, Blakey said, the forces that landed Madigan in his courtroom were perplexing. 'He had no reason to do the things that he did in this case, and the fact that he is a good man and chose to do it is mystifying,' Blakey said. 'But he did it.'
Axios
5 hours ago
- Axios
What to know about Minnesota lawmakers' shootings that killed Melissa Hortman
A manhunt was under way in Minnesota over Saturday night for the suspect in the shooting of two state lawmakers at their Twin Cities homes that Gov. Tim Walz called a "politically motivated assassination." The big picture: Minnesota state House Democratic Leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were killed and state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were wounded in the attacks by a gunman whom officials said was impersonating a police officer. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said at a Saturday briefing that the injured couple were receiving care in the hospital after undergoing surgery for their gunshot wounds. The suspect, whom officials identified as Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was still at large as of early Sunday and the FBI has offered a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction. What happened: Police said they responded about 2am Saturday to a report of a shooting at Hoffman's home in Champlin, about 22 miles north of downtown Minneapolis. Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said at a Saturday briefing that around 3:35am officers proactively checked on Hortman at her home some five miles away. Police exchanged gunfire with the suspect at Hortman's Brookyln Park home, but Bruley said he escaped. What they found: The suspect abandoned at Hortman's home an SUV that was similar to a police squad vehicle, investigators said.
