Ohio business leaders urge support for child care measures in legislature

Yahoo

19-03-2025

Child care worker Marci Then helps her daughter, Mila, 4, put away toys. (File photo by Elaine S. Povich/Stateline.)
Ohio businesses say they're ready to implement pending legislation that would improve the child care industry, and in fact, some already have programs in place that they say prove the usefulness of not only business support, but state support in child care.
Ron Holbrook, of Sugar Creek Packing Company, said the food manufacturer works as an example of public-private partnerships and their ability to work. The company has 2,400 employees in two states, and already has two child care facilities open on or near company worksites.
'As an entrepreneurial, growth-oriented company … we have become intimately aware of 'barriers to work' that many Ohioans face, and have implemented programs to help overcome them,' Holbrook said during a meeting of the Ohio House Children and Human Services Committee.
The committee heard supportive testimony on both House Bill 2 and House Bill 41, bills aimed at increasing the funding and capacity for the child care sector.
H.B. 2 is a Republican-led reintroduction from the last General Assembly of a cost-sharing model that would split child care expenses between the state, employers and eligible employees of those companies. Under the 'Child Care Cred Program,' employers would apply for funds to help employees with child care in a first-come, first-served program that would be funded with $10 million, handled by the Ohio Department of Children and Youth.
H.B. 41 is also a Republican-led bill, one that would require the Ohio Department of Children and Youth to establish a grant program 'to expand child care capacity, support the state's workforce and aid in business growth and recruitment,' according to a bill analysis by the Ohio Legislative Service Commission.
The bill would create grants of up to $750,000 to help employers equip themselves with child care facilities and partner with child care providers, governmental agencies, or nonprofits 'on initiatives to create child care capacity.'
The basis of the child care program at Sugar Creek's facilities — one of which is at the Washington Court House campus and another near their Indiana facility — is utilizing the skills the company has of building and maintaining property and furniture, allowing licensed child care providers to run the day-to-day operations of taking care of children.
In their child care facilities, the first slots available go to Sugar Creek employees, and any leftover slots go to other residents of the community.
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Child care and other benefits have been a focus for Sugar Creek Packing Company because Holbrook said the leadership of the company, specifically owner John Richardson, sees support for workers as a foundation for a successful company.
'He's always told me in my position that you can't have a successful business in a community that isn't successful, and a community can't be successful if their businesses aren't successful,' Holbrook said. 'Aside from that, we need the employees.'
For the Ohio Association of Goodwill Industries, having the needed services like child care helps the employees of their company, but also brings a solution to areas of the state where residents struggle to pay for child care, but also can't find child care to utilize at all.
In 2023, Goodwill of South Central Ohio became the first Goodwill in the state to open a child care center and only the fourth Goodwill in the Midwest to do so, according to Prince Garuba, executive director of the association.
'This center addresses a critical need in Ross County and the broader Appalachian region, which is classified as a child care desert where access to child care facilities is significantly limited,' Garuba said. 'The demand for more centers in this area was, and remains, urgent.'
Rick Carfagna, a former Republican legislator who is now senior vice president of government affairs for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, said the cost-sharing model in H.B. 2 is priority legislation for the chamber, and something for which the chamber has heard plenty of support from businesses.
'They want to be a part of the solution, but they also don't want to assume total responsibility for solving the problem either,' Carfagna told the committee.
In Ohio, Carfagna said the child care problem is two-fold: child care is too scarce, and 'when it's available, it's too expensive.'
'We support these measures (in H.B. 2) and we believe that encouraging employers to privately invest in such an employee benefit is an innovative solution to address costs and reduce barriers to employment,' he said.
That loss of employees due to the rising costs and lack of access to child care has already had significant impacts in the country and in the coffers at the state level as well. The chamber is set to release its version of an annual report conducted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation showing state-by-state financial impacts due to a lack of child care.
The 'Untapped Potential' report has not been released for Ohio quite yet, but Carfagna said he'd seen a 'raw copy' that showed a loss of $5.5 billion in economic activity every year for the state 'because of the child care crisis,' and an estimated $1.52 billion in lost annual tax revenue.
The state could be clawing back that money by supporting the child care industry in the areas of cost, capacity, and staffing support, he said. Through the implementation of the grants included in H.B. 41, it could also be funding more programs like those already underway in the state that are using 'dormant or underutilized commercial properties that are ripe for conversion into child care spaces,' he told the committee.
Ashland County, for example, has a public-private collaborative called the Women's Fund Childcare Initiative, which plans to use donated land in an industrial park for a 12,400 square-feet child care space, after raising more than $4 million from donors to do so.
'These types of partnerships leverage existing facilities operated by trusted organizations within our communities to increase child care capacity,' Carfagna said.
While the measures to improve child care in the state are all important to the chamber, Carfagna also mentioned a component of the governor's executive budget that he and his organization hope to see continue on to the final draft: raising the eligibility for publicly funded child care to 200% of the federal poverty level.
When talking about the cost-sharing model in H.B. 2, Carfagna brought up other states which have implemented pilot programs similar to the model proposed for Ohio.
He said Michigan has now scaled their original pilot program out to now serve about 700 families, in partnership with about 200 employers. The state is kicking in about $3 million for that effort, but the state is also bolstered by publicly funded child care eligibility at the 200% level.
'We actually support that, top priority, keeping what's in the executive budget, but that's a separate issue,' Carfagna said.
Kentucky and Pennsylvania also set their eligibility at 200% of the federal poverty level, though Carfagna acknowledged that raising it from the current level of 145% doesn't come without costs itself.
'If you really want to make the biggest impact, that's the biggest impact,' Carfagna said. 'Now I also know that has the biggest cost to it.'
Budget conversations are ongoing in the Ohio legislature, with a deadline of July 1 to get the budget to the governor for his signature.
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