Child care cost-sharing model brought back to the Ohio General Assembly
Ohio lawmakers are trying again with measures to attack the child care crisis that advocates are warning continue to hurt the state's families and economy, including with a bill that spreads the cost of child care out among employers, employees, and the state.
State Rep. Mark Johnson, R-Chillicothe, reintroduced a bill he said came 'late in the game' last year, giving it an uphill battle to passage as the Republican supermajority sought to close up the General Assembly term with other priorities.
But Johnson's bill is now Ohio House Bill 2, and has been introduced very early in the new General Assembly, with its first hearing in the House Children and Human Services Committee held on Tuesday.
This bill, and its companion bill led in the Ohio Senate by state Sen. Michele Reynolds, R-Canal Winchester, looks to direct $10 million to a 'Child CareCred Program' within the Ohio Department of Children and Youth, to be distributed 'on a first-come, first-served basis,' according to Johnson.
The bill models its child care program after Ohio's TechCred program, which incentivizes employers to enroll employees in skill-building programs and connect them with credential providers in exchange for reimbursement.
The child care program would create an application process for employers who identify needs within their employees for child care assistance.
A program that engages the employer, the employee, and the state is Johnson's way to address what he and child advocates say is a crisis that only hurts Ohio's economy more the longer it goes on.
The average cost for child care has gone up on a yearly basis, and a 2024 report from Care.com found 1 in 5 American households are paying $36,000 annually on care for their children.
'This financial strain has forced many parents, especially mothers, to reduce their working hours, or leave their jobs entirely to manage child care responsibilities,' Johnson said.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
In some areas of the state, workforce participation rates are as low as 50%, according to Johnson, who said that while there are other reasons for a low participation rate, child care is a major reason parents are unable to work or are choosing to leave their jobs.
'If we want to remain known as a business-friendly state, we need to address the child care crisis,' the representative told the House committee on Tuesday.
Johnson mentioned the proposal by Gov. Mike DeWine in his proposed executive budget, released on Monday, to increase eligibility for publicly funded child care from 145% to 200% of the federal poverty level. But Johnson said that by just increasing the eligibility level 'we are rewarding employers who pay meager wages.'
The Children and Human Services Committee chair, state Rep. Andrea White, R-Kettering, is no stranger to pushing the legislature to address the child care issue, having successfully championed a wide-ranging bill in the last General Assembly that directs different state agencies to study processes and programs on everything from infant mortality to child care programs such as Head Start.
Though she's still hoping to see the funding that was left out of her bill come in the new operating budget, White isn't done addressing aspects of child care and child welfare.
On Tuesday, White and fellow Republican state Rep. Sharon Ray, R-Wadsworth, introduced House Bill 7. The legislation seeks to 'increase the number of stable, safe family foster homes and long-term kinship care options by providing publicly funded child care for children in the foster care system in these placements,' White told the committee.
Ray said that about 14,300 children are in foster care in the state, with 4,000 of those placed with a relative or family friend in kinship care.
'Across the board we have a need for more foster families, whether very young children or teens,' Ray said. 'Let's take the objections off the table by removing the things that get in the way for current and potential foster and kinship parents, so that more loving, caring families can say yes to our children.'
Both bills will see further hearings to allow supporters and opponents to give their opinions of the bills before they are voted on by the committee, and if approved, moved forward to votes of the full House.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
UPI
an hour ago
- UPI
On This Day, Aug. 17: Turkish earthquake kills thousands
1 of 5 | On August 17, 1999, an earthquake in a densely populated region of northwestern Turkey killed at least 17,000 people and injured about 40,000. UPI File Photo | License Photo Aug. 17 (UPI) -- On this date in history: In 1807, Robert Fulton began the first American steamboat trip between Albany, N.Y., and New York City. In 1915, a hurricane struck Galveston, Texas, killing 275 people. In 1946, George Orwell publishes Animal Farm. In 1969, the Woodstock music festival ended after three days on a 600-acre farm in Bethel, N.Y. In 1978, Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman completed the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by balloon, landing their helium-filled Double Eagle II near Paris. In 1987, Rudolf Hess, Hitler's former deputy, was found strangled in Berlin's Spandau Prison. He was 93. In 1996, the Reform Party nominated Texas businessman Ross Perot for president. He would go on to lose the 1996 general election with 18.9 percent of the popular vote and zero electoral votes. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, won with 43 percent of the popular vote and 370 electoral votes. Republican George H.W. Bush lost his re-election bid with 37.4 percent of the popular vote and 168 electoral votes. File Photo by Chip Somodevilla/UPI In 1998, addressing the American people, U.S. President Bill Clinton said he had a relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky that was "not appropriate." In 1999, an earthquake in a densely populated region of northwestern Turkey killed at least 17,000 people and injured about 40,000. In 2017, a man drove a van into a group of pedestrians in Barcelona, Spain, killing 14 people and injuring another 130 people. The driver killed a 15th person in a carjacking while fleeing the scene. In a related attack hours later, a group of terrorists drove into more civilians, killing a 16th person. All told, eight attackers were also killed. In 2019, an explosion at a Kabul, Afghanistan, wedding hall killed at least 63 people. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. File Photo by Jawad Jalali/EPA-EFE
an hour ago
In letter to Putin, US first lady asks him to consider the children in push to end war in Ukraine
WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (AP) — Melania Trump took the unique step of crafting a letter that calls for peace in Ukraine, having her husband President Donald Trump hand-deliver it to Russian President Vladimir Putin during their Friday meeting in Alaska. The letter did not specifically name Ukraine, which Putin's forces invaded in 2022, but beseeched him to think of children and 'an innocence which stands above geography, government, and ideology.' Nor did the American first lady discuss the fighting other than to say to Putin that he could 'singlehandedly restore' the 'melodic laughter' of children who have been caught in the conflict. 'In protecting the innocence of these children, you will do more than serve Russia alone — you serve humanity itself,' she wrote on White House stationery. A copy of the letter was first obtained by Fox News Digital and later posted on social media by supporters of the U.S. president, including Attorney General Pam Bondi. The first lady said that Putin could help these children with the stroke of a pen. Putin's invasion of Ukraine has resulted in Russia taking Ukrainian children out of their country so that they can be raised as Russian. The Associated Press documented the grabbing of Ukrainian children in 2022, after which the International Criminal Court said it had issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine.
2 hours ago
Bolivia heads to the polls as its right-wing opposition eyes first victory in decades
LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Bolivians headed to the polls on Sunday to vote in presidential and congressional elections that could spell the end of the Andean nation's long-dominant leftist party and see a right-wing government elected for the first time in over two decades. The election on Sunday is one of the most consequential for Bolivia in recent times — and one of the most unpredictable. Even at this late stage, a remarkable 30% or so of voters remain undecided. Polls show the two leading right-wing candidates, multimillionaire business owner Samuel Doria Medina and former President Jorge Fernando 'Tuto' Quiroga, locked in a virtual dead heat. But a right-wing victory isn't assured. Many longtime voters for the governing Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party, now shattered by infighting, live in rural areas and tend to be undercounted in polling. With the nation's worst economic crisis in four decades leaving Bolivians waiting for hours in fuel lines, struggling to find subsidized bread and squeezed by double-digit inflation, the opposition candidates are billing the race as a chance to alter the country's destiny. 'I have rarely, if ever, seen a situational tinderbox with as many sparks ready to ignite,' Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez, founding partner of Aurora Macro Strategies, a New York-based advisory firm, writes in a memo. Breaking the MAS party's monopoly on political power, he adds, pushes 'the country into uncharted political waters amid rising polarization, severe economic fragility and a widening rural–urban divide.' The outcome will determine whether Bolivia — a nation of about 12 million people with the largest lithium reserves on Earth and crucial deposits of rare earth minerals — follows a growing trend in Latin America, where right-wing leaders like Argentina's libertarian Javier Milei, Ecuador's strongman Daniel Noboa and El Salvador's conservative populist Nayib Bukele have surged in popularity. A right-wing government in Bolivia could trigger a major geopolitical realignment for a country now allied with Venezuela's socialist-inspired government and world powers such as China, Russia and Iran. Doria Medina and Quiroga have praised the Trump administration and vowed to restore ties with the United States — ruptured in 2008 when charismatic, long-serving former President Evo Morales expelled the American ambassador. The right-wing front-runners also have expressed interest in doing business with Israel, which has no diplomatic relations with Bolivia, and called for foreign private companies to invest in the country and develop its rich natural resources. After storming to office in 2006 at the start of the commodities boom, Morales, Bolivia's first Indigenous president, nationalized the nation's oil and gas industry, using the lush profits to reduce poverty, expand infrastructure and improve the lives of the rural poor. After three consecutive presidential terms, as well as a contentious bid for an unprecedented fourth in 2019 that set off popular unrest and led to his ouster, Morales has been barred from this race by Bolivia's constitutional court. His ally-turned-rival, President Luis Arce, withdrew his candidacy for the MAS on account of his plummeting popularity and nominated his senior minister, Eduardo del Castillo. As the party splintered, Andrónico Rodríguez, the 36-year-old president of the senate who hails from the same union of coca farmers as Morales, launched his bid. Rather than back the candidate widely considered his heir, Morales, holed up in his tropical stronghold and evading an arrest warrant on charges related to his relationship with a 15-year-old girl, has urged his supporters to deface their ballots or leave them blank. Voting is mandatory in Bolivia, where some 7.9 million Bolivians are eligible to vote. Doria Medina and Quiroga, familiar faces in Bolivian politics who both served in past neoliberal governments and have run for president three times before, have struggled to stir up interest as voter angst runs high. 'There's enthusiasm for change but no enthusiasm for the candidates,' said Eddy Abasto, 44, a Tupperware vendor in Bolivia's capital of La Paz torn between voting for Doria Medina and Quiroga. 'It's always the same, those in power live happily spending the country's money, and we suffer.' Doria Medina and Quiroga have warned of the need for a painful fiscal adjustment, including the elimination of Bolivia's generous food and fuel subsidies, to save the nation from insolvency. Some analysts caution this risks sparking social unrest. 'A victory for either right-wing candidate could have grave repercussions for Bolivia's Indigenous and impoverished communities,' said Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network, a Bolivian research group. 'Both candidates could bolster security forces and right-wing para-state groups, paving the way for violent crackdowns on protests expected to erupt over the foreign exploitation of lithium and drastic austerity measures.' All 130 seats in Bolivia's Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Parliament, are up for grabs, along with 36 in the Senate, the upper house. If, as is widely expected, no one receives more than 50% of the vote, or 40% of the vote with a lead of 10 percentage points, the top two candidates will compete in a runoff on Oct. 19 for the first time since Bolivia's 1982 return to democracy.
