Latest news with #ChildCareCapacityExpansionAct
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
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.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Utah lawmaker renews push for expanded child care access
A bill from Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, would identify obsolete state-owned buildings and state-owned property that could be turned into child care facilities. (Getty Images) Utah, which has been dubbed a 'child care' desert for its shortage of care options, could soon provide retrofitted state facilities for expanded child care services in a new pilot program. A bill from Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, would create the Child Care Capacity Expansion Act. The Division of Facilities Construction and Management would be tasked with identifying obsolete state-owned buildings and state-owned property that could be turned into child care facilities. With the newly retrofitted or constructed buildings, Utah would enter into a public-private partnership with child care operators. 'We're not in the business of child care centers and running them,' Escamilla said. 'It will be them (running the centers), but we will give them the lease, at no cost, so that will be the investment of the state.' SB189 also stipulates that 40% of the capacity of a child care center would be reserved for children of state employees, National Guard members, military and low-income communities in the surrounding area. The bill passed the Senate in Wednesday and is waiting for introduction in the House. A similar bill from Escamilla passed unanimously through the Senate during last year's session but failed to get House approval due to worries about practicality and a fiscal note of $5 million. In a Senate debate Wednesday, Escamilla said she and others in the Women in the Economy Subcommittee under the Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity have been working on the bill for a year and a half and have conducted studies to determine strategies to alleviate the 'child care crisis.' In Utah, an estimated 75% of mothers with school-age children work, according to the study done by the Women in the Economy Subcommittee. The study also found that 74% of two-parent households with children under age 6 in Utah needed two incomes to cover household expenses. 'It's a very small number of facilities that we can use, and we're just trying to find many ways of being creative when it comes to helping with child care and our working families that are right now struggling with their finances,' Escamilla said. Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, said while he does want child care options, there are already hundreds of privately owned and operated facilities in the state. 'I do have some concern with taking state-owned buildings that we otherwise may sell off assets that we no longer need or use for other purposes, and then retrofitting them so that we have a long-term obligation to keep a business in place at a subsidized rate, because we have now provided a facility, and we have provided the retrofitting cost for that facility to do what is otherwise a private endeavor,' he said. 'And I worry about this being an improper role of government.' Escamilla said that with this 'small pilot program,' two concerns are being addressed: access to child care and cost containment. 'We have a problem with child care,' she said. 'What I was told very clearly in this legislature is that we will not do direct subsidies, that the state was not going to invest in direct subsidies, so we have to find creative solutions.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
