Utah won't expand child care access this year
Children work with a staff member at Stepping Stones Tooele, a day care that shares a campus with Harris Housing and Switchpoint Tooele Community Resource Center in Tooele on Friday, May 24, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
A bipartisan effort to retrofit old, unused state buildings into child care facilities that would enter into public-private partnerships with child care businesses died on the House floor in a 22-48 vote Thursday after intense debate between lawmakers. It's the second year in a row that Utah, which places high value on families, voted down a Child Care Capacity Expansion Act.
SB189 was recommended as a solution to the child care crisis in Utah from the Women in the Economy Subcommittee under the Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity. The subcommittee also conducted studies that concluded an estimated 75% of mothers with school-age children work, and that 74% of two-parent households with children under age 6 in Utah needed two incomes to cover household expenses.
Sen. Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, the bill sponsor, ran a similar bill last year that died in the House due to fiscal concerns.
Rep. Nicholeen Peck, R-Tooele, opposed the bill, saying she didn't think it was the government's responsibility to facilitate day care centers for the community, and adding that the phrase 'child care crisis' does not mean the same thing as it does in a third-world country, like Kenya, where 'there's a mom, in a hut, who drugs her children so that she can go out and work for a few hours to make enough money to get a bowl of rice, because there's literally no one around safe.'
'We might inadvertently be pulling children away from home-based child care, which actually gives them environments closer to their home environment, which is better for them socially and developmentally,' Peck said.
Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, said many women in Utah don't choose to work, but have to.
'I just hate to compare us to another country when we live in the United States of America, and we are this family state that we claim to be here in Utah, but yet we don't want to provide a private-public partnership to ensure that our children are safe,' Romero said. 'I find that problematic.'
Other critics of the bill said the state should be selling unused buildings.
'We should be selling them off or utilizing them for state-owned purposes,' Rep. Mark Strong, R-Bluffdale, said. 'We shouldn't be in the business of private child care.'
Rep. Anthony Loubet, R-Kearns, said he had spoken to representatives of Utah's Division of Facilities Construction and Management, who, according to him, said they were concerned about the cost of retrofitting a building proposed for the project, and instead of the $2 million estimated cost to remodel the building, it would be $2.7 million.
'With us being very careful with how much money we're doing this year, I'm cautious about supporting the bill,' Loubet said.
Rep. Christine Watkins, R-Price, said Utah needs to provide help to families.
'If you've never been in a situation where you have no place to take your children, it's awful,' Watkins said. 'I've been there, and we have many, many smart, strong, hard-working women who would like to go to work, but they don't have a place to take their children.'
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