Child care issues on back burner despite need in WV; budget questions could derail potential fixes

Yahoo

20-02-2025

Despite issues with child care in West Virginia, lawmakers aren't making it a priority during the legislative session. (Getty Images)
More than 25,000 children in West Virginia don't have access to child care, and last year, budget concerns stalled bills meant to tackle the issue. This year, a new wave of budget questions could put the problem on the back burner.
Addressing a web of child care issues was a 2024 priority in the West Virginia House of Delegates, where members said the issue was key to improving the state's abysmal workforce participation rate. A stack of child care related bills, including measures creating new spots, never made it to the governor's desk largely due to their price tag.
This year, a House task force meant to tackle the issue isn't meeting, and Republicans leaders, who oversee a supermajority, have so far publicly put their priorities elsewhere.
'We said this was a priority, and we didn't get this done in the way we said we wanted to,' said Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, a mother of two who has spearheaded child care reform legislation. 'Now it's just fallen off the radar. It's no longer a priority.'
Gov. Patrick Morrisey made no mention of child care in his first State of the State address or, so far, put forth any bills on the issue. His proposed budget doesn't increase money for child care.
In the last year, around 150 centers have closed, worsening the state's child care access. Child care centers in West Virginia and across the country are struggling to retain staff and stay open while trying to keep prices reasonable for working families.
'A lot of lawmakers said they were going to make it a priority, and we believed them,' said Tiffany Gale, owner of Miss Tiffany's Early Childhood Education House in Weirton. 'When no bills got passed, it was really disheartening. We're still in the same boat.'
This year, lawmakers are re-introducing similar child care measures, but another year of budget concerns — Morrisey says the state is facing a projected $400 million deficit — has some concerned that bills that require funding could struggle to get traction.
Del. Kathie Hess Crouse, R-Putnam, said she will again sponsor a bill to create a 'Tri-Share Program,' where the state, participating employers and their employees would contribute one-third of the total cost of child care. Crouse said that the program is currently being piloted in eight counties, including Putnam.
'I'm a mom, and I just want women to have those options, and I know there's fathers out there too, but I know it's primarily women that end up staying home with the kids,' she said. 'So I want to make sure that women have those options, whether they want to stay home, whether they want to go to work, whatever it is … and on top of that, we need to work on our workforce.'
Crouse filed the measure last year, saying that she believed it was the biggest share of money she'd ever requested in legislation. The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, which backed the bill, believes it allows the state to allocate a set amount of funding to prevent costs from rising indefinitely. The price could run around $10 million, but it's up to the state what they want to invest.
'[House Finance Committee] is going through all the committee budget hearings, and hopefully we'll have a little bit better knowledge of what's going on after those are completed, and we'll see where we're at and what we can do,' Crouse said on Tuesday. 'But I am really hoping that maybe we can at least get the Tri-Share through.'
The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce has said addressing the child care desert is pivotal in an effort to grow the state's workforce.
'The budget situation is a real concern because you can't fix this issue without putting a lot of resources in it,' said Brian Dayton, vice president of policy and advocacy for the chamber.
Most families are paying $600 to $700 a month for day care, and lawmakers last year did approve former Gov. Jim Justice's proposed Child Care Tax Credit, available to families who already claim the federal child care tax credit. Child care providers said the measure did nothing to create new day care spots as it only helped families already receiving care.
The state's spending on child care has declined over the last decade, said Sean O'Leary, senior policy analyst for the state's Center on Budget and Policy.
'What we've seen in the budget is that funding for child care is flat and it's declined over the past decade. It's not a penny different,' he said.
The Department of Human Services is currently using money from federal grants, state funds and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families dollars to fund a state-run program that reimburses child care centers that serve low-income children.
The state's Early Childhood Education program is serving 7,046 families and 11,537 children.
Pandemic-era funding allowed child care providers that serve families receiving state assistance to be paid based on enrollment in their programs rather than daily attendance so they could stabilize their income. The federal government recently mandated that change.
'DoHS has been paying by enrollment since March 2020. Monthly certificate expenditures for January 2025 were $7.75 million,' said DoHS spokesperson Angelica Hightower.
Young said there's no single fix for child care but noted that adequately funding the program, which is reliant on temporary money, is the biggest issue to address.
'Right now, we're using those excess TANF dollars, and [DoHS] has told providers that they'll be available at the end of this fiscal year. So what happens on July 1?' Young said.
DoHS faced a similar funding cliff last year, telling lawmakers that it needed a long-term funding plan.
Melissa Colagrasso, director of A Place to Grow, a child care center in Oak Hill, estimated that 2,000 children could be removed from the state assistance program if funding issues aren't addressed. She said that child care providers' communication with DoHS had improved under Morssiey's new agency Secretary Alex Mayer.
'It's time for this to be a priority,' Colagrasso said.
Gale added that they'd like to see individuals working at child care centers to automatically qualify for the state assistance program.
Last year, lawmakers questioned why DoHS hadn't used a $200 million surplus to adequately fund the child care assistance program.
Del. Wayne Clark, R-Jefferson, said the department's failure to fund child care led him to introduce a bill, House Bill 2059, that would move child care and early childhood education from DoHS and under the oversight of the state Department of Education. Other states have done a similar change.
'If we take all that line item out of DoHS and put it under the [Department] of Education … we get a fresh start,' he said. 'It's a big lift. Would I love to see it get passed this year, absolutely. But, sometimes you gotta put these big changes in to open up eyes.'
Clark represents one of the few areas of the state experiencing population growth. He regularly hears from constituents about the child care desert.
'The last report that I saw, we have one space for every 51 eligible kids,' he said.
Del. Bob Fehrenbacher, R-Wood, will again try to push a bill to increase the tax credit for employers providing child care for employees. Nonprofit businesses, like church-operated day care centers, would be eligible for a transferable credit where owners could recapture some of those dollars.
'This doesn't cost the state anything because it's a tax credit and I think it would have the most impact,' Young said.
She added that child care also provides early education for children as the state has some of the country's lowest education outcomes. Additionally, the state's substance abuse crisis, including babies born with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, can mean children are in need of early interventions.
'As we are seeing countless headlines about school behavior and school readiness — especially at the kindergarten level — we know this is another way we can get our kids ready for school,' Young said.
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