Latest news with #ChildCareCounts
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Bill rewards employers for child care aid. Providers say it won't fix crisis.
Children at Mariposa Learning Center in Fitchburg. (2023 file photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner) While providers, their supporters and Democratic lawmakers are pressing for a substantial continuing direct state investment in Wisconsin's child care sector, Republicans in the Legislature are pursuing another route: expanding a child care tax credit for employers. So far, child care providers and some small business owners aren't interested. The legislation circulated in draft form in early May. On Friday, May 30, it was formally introduced in the Assembly (AB 283) and the state Senate (SB 291). 'We really think it's an important opportunity to reward employers for getting involved in child care,' Neil Kline, who says he encouraged GOP lawmakers to draft the tax credit legislation, told the Examiner. Kline is executive director of Family Friendly Workplaces, a nonprofit based in Woodville that works with businesses in Burnett, Pierce, Polk and St. Croix counties. The organization certifies employers as family-friendly 'to support their recruitment and retention efforts,' Kline said. To that end, one of its missions is focusing on workforce-related problems such as housing and child care access. In early May Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Karen Hurd (R-Withee) circulated the proposed bill seeking cosponsors. The legislation was written 'to encourage more businesses to invest in child care in their communities,' Marklein and Hurd wrote in their May 12 cosponsor memo. 'These changes will increase the number of available child care slots and provide more options for families.' The legislation has been introduced while child care providers and Democrats are continuing their campaigns to revive direct support for the child care sector. During the COVID-19 pandemic the Evers administration used federal pandemic relief funds to pay child care providers monthly stipends through the Child Care Counts program. The $20 million a month that the state doled out helped providers stabilize child care, increasing workers' pay while keeping care more affordable for families. When Evers tried to use $360 million from the 2023-25 budget to continue Child Care Counts with state money, none of the Legislature's Republican majority got behind the measure. The governor was later able to reallocate other federal dollars to fund Child Care Counts through June 2025, but at half the original amount: $10 million a month. With lawmakers now writing the 2025-27 budget, Evers, child care providers and their advocates have been campaigning for $480 million to continue the program for the next two years. A survey commissioned by the state and conducted by the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty forecast closures and tuition hikes if the state payments end. At their very first budget vote, however, Republicans on the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee removed the proposal along with more than 600 other items Evers had included in his budget draft. The GOP outnumbers the Democrats 3 to 1 on the committee. Democratic lawmakers responded by circulating a draft stand-alone bill to reinstate the Evers proposal. 'Child care providers are facing increasing cost to operate while still making poverty-level wages,' said Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) at a May 22 press conference to announce the Democrats' bill. 'This has made it extremely difficult to hire and retain quality staff. [Meanwhile] providers desperately want to avoid rising costs and rates on families already struggling to afford child care.' As yet no Republican lawmakers have gotten behind the Child Care Counts proposal. Instead, the bills that Marklein and Hurd have introduced would make changes to the Business Development Tax Credit, which is provided through the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC). That tax credit is granted to reward a variety of business investments and reduces the state income tax that a business pays by the amount of the credit. Currently, a business that spends money on starting a child care program for its employees can get up to 15% of that cost taken off its tax bill. The credit applies only to capital investments, however — building or remodeling the child care facility. 'Unfortunately, we have heard that the current program parameters limit the incentive for businesses to invest in child care programs,' Marklein and Hurd wrote in their co-sponsor memo. 'While many businesses may want to provide child care as a benefit to employees, the current credit limitations reduce the incentive for this investment.' In addition to capital expenditures, the draft bill would extend the tax credit to cover 15% of several other costs: An employer's spending on child care program operations; Spending to reimburse employees for their child care expenses; Spending to buy or reserve openings for its employees at a child care center; Contributions an employer makes to an employee's flexible spending account for dependent care. The draft bill also allows the tax credit for 'any other cost or expense incurred due to a benefit provided by an employer to facilitate the provision or utilization by employees of child care services.' The tax credit would be refundable: Even if the credit totals more than the employer pays in taxes, the company would get its full value back from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue. It also would give a refund to nonprofit employers, which don't pay taxes. 'While not a silver bullet, these changes are another step in the right direction to address the child care issue in Wisconsin,' Marklein and Hurd wrote in their memo. Kline, the Family Friendly Workplaces director, said the proposal would help engage employers more directly in addressing child care shortages. 'We really think it lays the groundwork for ongoing, self-sustaining support of child care in Wisconsin,' he said. 'The primary goal is to help introduce new money into the child care — really, the child care ecosystem — by rewarding employers to support the ongoing expenses of child care, because the reality is that the sector needs additional money in it.' Kline said he understands that 'the ongoing operational economics' is a central problem for the child care sector. 'That's why we are so focused on helping employers find avenues and be rewarded for helping defray the expenses that are related to child care and helping support that ongoing operational side of child care.' To date the existing child care employer tax credit hasn't had any takers, according to the WEDC. In January, as part of an overall evaluation of the state's business development tax credit, an outside consultant told WEDC that 'due to the high operational costs of childcare centers, affordability would likely be better achieved through subsidy as opposed to a tax incentive.' The proposal to expand the tax credit isn't gaining traction with providers or small business owners. Main Street Alliance, which organizes small business owners to advocate for state and national legislation, has already announced objections to the bill. 'These kinds of programs and tax credits are often advantageous for employers who can afford compliance and the procedural costs and have economies of scale,' said Shawn Phetteplace, MSA's national campaign director. That leaves out the typical small business, said Phetteplace, who sent lawmakers a memo calling the proposal 'deeply unserious.' Evan Dannells, a chef and owner of two Madison restaurants, questioned how a relatively small business like his would benefit from the tax credit. Of his eight full-time employees, one has two children. Most of the others are graduate students. Directly paying for the one employee's child care, even if receiving a tax credit, doesn't feel fair to the others who don't have that expense, Dannells said. 'If you put the onus of taking care of child care on the employer, the employer won't hire people with children,' he said. Dannells considers the cost of child care a legitimate use of his tax dollars. 'This is why government should be doing this,' he said. He observed that children are required to go to school when they reach the age of first grade. 'Why can't we take care of them from age 1 to 5?' While the tax credit may make it easier for a particular company's employees to afford child care thanks to the employer's support, skeptics of the proposal say that assistance only helps some people — not the system as a whole. 'That doesn't help keep the doors open,' said Heather Murray, who operates a child care center in Waunakee. 'We're hitting crisis mode and centers are shutting down now, and a quarter of them will be gone if [Child Care Counts] isn't renewed. We need the investment to go directly to providers to make sure that the doors stay open.' National child care analyst Eliot Haspel is also skeptical. Haspel is a fellow at Capita, a think tank that works in the area of family policy. In February 2024, the think tank New America published his report raising questions about the impact of various employer-sponsored child care benefits. Haspel views child care as a public good that benefits society broadly. For that reason, he contends, it should serve families regardless of whether they work for an employer able to fund a child care benefit. 'Small business will never be able to offer a really robust child care workplace benefit,' Haspel says. That puts small businesses and small business employees at a disadvantage if supporting child care is primarily an employer's responsibility, he argues. The large number of low-wage workers and 'gig workers' 'also raises the specter of increasing inequalities,' he writes in the New America report. Haspel says that tying child care to a job also locks people into a job — or strands them from needed care if they lose their job. It also disrupts children's early education at a time when they need consistent and reliable connections with their caregivers, advocates say. 'It's really bad for workers and it's really bad for kids for your child care to be tied to your employment,' Sen. Kelda Roys said at the Democrats' May 22 press conference. Tying health insurance to employment has been 'a disaster,' Roys said. Health care is 'rationed based on the job that you have or the wealth that you have,' she added, 'and we do not want to exacerbate the current problems in our child care system by tying it to people's employment.' In his New America report and in an interview, Haspel says the problem isn't providing child care at the workplace. 'I'm not against the idea of onsite child care — that can make all the sense in the world,' he says. 'You can have an onsite center as part of a publicly funded system' — one to which employers contribute as taxpayers. Focusing on the employer, however, carries with it 'an opportunity cost,' Haspel says. 'The more we say child care should be solved primarily through employers, the harder it is to say we need a fully public system that is universal and reaches everyone.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Advocates rally to save child care support in Wisconsin
HORTONVILLE, Wis. (WFRV) – A dedicated group from the Western Outagamie Rural Democrats gathered early this morning to call for continued funding of Wisconsin's Child Care Counts program, which has helped keep thousands of child care providers open since the pandemic. A new state-commissioned report warns that without renewed support after June, one in four providers could shut down, and over a third may cut hours or reduce the number of children they serve. Wisconsin Humane Society offers $16 vaccines amid Distemper virus surge Rural communities, where options are already limited, face the greatest risk, with closures expected to impact families, workers, and local economies. The program, which once distributed $20 million a month in federal relief, is running out of funds, and advocates are urging lawmakers to support Governor Evers' proposed $480 million investment in the next state budget. Without action, fees may rise, waitlists could grow, and up to 20% more providers may close. Supporters are urging residents to contact their state representatives and make it clear: Wisconsin needs Child Care Counts. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Wisconsin is Cutting State Funding for Child Care. Providers are Taking a Stand.
On Monday, child care providers across the country participated in the fourth annual Day Without Child Care, closing their doors and gathering to demand a better child care system with more public dollars. In Wisconsin, some providers may remain closed for quite a while longer, according to Corrine Hendrickson, owner of a family child care program in Wisconsin, and one of the organizers of a prolonged protest — dubbed 'State Without Child Care' — which intends to push back against the state legislature's cuts to essential child care funding. While direct actions — a form of activism that uses strikes or public demonstrations — by child care providers remain relatively rare in the U.S., it may be an increasingly important arrow in the quiver when fighting for the system children, parents and providers need and deserve. At issue in Wisconsin is the fate of the state's child care stabilization fund, known as Child Care Counts. Wisconsin is one of six states that doesn't fund child care, relying instead entirely on inadequate federal funding. That temporarily changed during the pandemic, when providers began receiving regular payments through Child Care Counts that allowed them to maintain operations and kept parent fees from spiking. With these pandemic funds drying up, Gov. Tony Evers proposed $442 million over two years to continue the fund, but last week the Republican-controlled joint finance committee voted to zero out the child care money. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter If this funding ends, there will be massive consequences for children, families and providers, which is one reason providers are engaging in such an unprecedented action. As the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported, 'A quarter of child care providers are more likely to close without further funding from Child Care Counts, and those that remain could be forced to raise their rates, according to a survey released April 10 by the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.' This does not appear to be hyperbolic: funding reductions to Child Care Counts over the past few years have already caused providers to increase fees and to have more difficulty hiring qualified staff. Providers have seemingly had enough. Hendrickson stated in a press release that, 'While politicians negotiate over our funding and our lives, Wisconsin working families are once again left without. We've done everything we were told to do. We called. We showed up. We shared our stories. And still, lawmakers voted to cut child care from the budget. No plan. No replacement. No respect. We've had enough and we are drawing the line.' Providers across the state began protest actions in Madison on Tuesday, May 13, and according to Hendrickson, some will remain closed until the legislature guarantees they'll restore the child care funding. Single day child care protests are increasingly common. These have been seen in Australia and Ireland, and they have proven useful at garnering media attention — in fact, the 2020 Irish protest is credited with making child care a major campaign issue that year. These have also occurred regionally in the U.S.; for example, in Connecticut in 2022, providers organized a 'Morning Without Child Care,' which became a landmark event that sparked other communities to follow suit via the now national Day Without Child Care. The Wisconsin protest sets itself apart from these one-day actions though, in that the intention is sustaining activism until the state legislature meets a specific demand. Perhaps the most notable modern example of a sustained child care work stoppage comes from Germany. In 2015, German child care staff across the country went on strike for four weeks to protest their low wages, marking one of the nation's largest post-reunification labor actions and making international headlines. (The strike ended with a modest salary increase.) Similarly, in 2004, Scotland saw a strike of 5,000 child care educators that dragged on, in some localities, for more than three months. One structural element that has made direct child care actions in the U.S. less common than in other nations is the fact that there is less government involvement to begin with. Both German and Scottish child care workers are largely hired by — and have their wages set by — municipalities, and most workers belong to a labor union. In the highly privatized and fragmented American system, there is little unionization and the divisions between employers and employees can be fuzzier; in fact, in many cases it is the owners of U.S. child care programs that are protesting. However, both Connecticut and now Wisconsin have been able to tie their demands to state legislative action, with the presence or lack of state funds for child care acting as a sort of stand-in for collective bargaining. That said, the Wisconsin providers face challenges ahead. While the movement has received support from the community organizing group Community Change, the providers are not unionized. There is no standing strike fund, and for programs operating on thin margins, every day the doors are closed poses a significant loss of revenue. And of course, the participants would much rather be providing care and learning to the children in their programs. Participating in sustained closures is emotionally fraught. For early educators, it's difficult to deprive families of a vital service they rely on. For families who will feel the impact, it's expected that reactions will vary, but looking at Connecticut as an example, parents made it clear that given the choice between a temporary stoppage and permanent closure, reduced quality, or unaffordable fee hikes, they will generally stand alongside their child care providers. Child care providers in the U.S. have long advocated passionately for more support, but have rarely engaged in prolonged protests. In Wisconsin, we're about to find out whether sustained activism is a tool that can sway policymakers.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Local Childcare owner rallies for funding before traveling to Madison
EAU CLAIRE—A local childcare center closed its doors Monday to participate in the fourth annual 'Day Without Child Care' to highlight the funding needs of centers across Wisconsin and the country. Amid concerns over the consequences of the loss of Childcare Counts funding, Julia Bennker of Ms. Julia's Schoolia organized a local rally and press conference before heading out to Madison to participate in Tuesday's larger rally at the state capitol. '[The center has] been licensed for just over a year,' Bennker said. 'It started as a play group when I was in Colorado seven years ago.' Bennker said said that American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding helped her with all of her start-up costs. 'That program isn't around anymore,' she said. 'I started really lucky. I got involved in child care advocacy in a meaningful way in October. Now that I own a business, it is very clear to me what role I can play in advocacy work.' While the 'Day Without Child Care' is four years old, this year's comes less than a week after the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee voted to remove Gov. Tony Ever's proposed funding for the Child Care Counts program from the state budget. This removes about $480 million, though those at the rally were still hopeful there was time to change this. This proposal was meant to supplement the loss of federal funding for the Child Care Counts program. The funding is set to expire at the end of June, with the last payments to centers coming in July. According to a report released in March by the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, a quarter of childcare businesses in Wisconsin are at risk of closure without an extension of the Childcare Counts funding. Closures in rural areas are currently estimated to be around 35 percent. Attending the rally and press conference at Bennker's center were Senator Jeff Smith (D), Representative Jodi Emerson (D), Representative Christian Phelps (D), Chris Hambuch-Boyle of the Wisconsin Public Education Network, and Eau Claire City Council members Nate Otto and Jessica Schoen. 'We, as a society, need to treat childcare with the same respect we treat any education at all,' Smith said. 'Ninety percent of brain development occurs between birth and six-years-old. Why would we not treat that period of time in a person's life as valuable as we do the rest of their educational process to prepare them for life? And yet the average pay for someone doing that work is $13 an hour.' Smith emphasized that the Child Care Counts program is not enough, but that losing it will have detrimental effects on families in terms of access and cost. Emerson expressed similar sentiments. 'Childcare workers are the workforce of the workforce,' she said. 'Think about all the people that you work with who have kids at home. How many of them would not be able to show up at the office or [would need to] work virtually without these childcare providers.' Emerson mentioned that 60 percent of her daughter's take-home pay goes to providing childcare for just one child. 'Every place in the workforce is looking for workers right now and so this is what we can do,' Emerson said. 'We know that the childcare workers, the educators are drastically underpaid, but we can't keep on putting that on the backs of young families. Look at what young families are going through right now. Housing costs are skyrocketing. College costs are skyrocketing. They're paying off their student loans and then they're paying 60 percent of their weekly wages to a childcare provider.' In addition to several planning to drive out to Madison today, several who attended the rally were also aiming to speak at Monday night's City Council meeting where City Council members Otto and Schoen would be introducing a resolution to support the governor's $480 million funding for early childhood education. 'We want to send a message to the legislature that our community supports investment in early childhood education,' Otto said.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Providers, parents bring the call for child care support to the Capitol
Child care providers, parents and advocates arrive at the state Capitol Wednesday, April 16, 2025, for a rally in support of child care funding. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner) Hundreds of child care providers and parents rallied outside the state Capitol Wednesday, then headed inside to buttonhole lawmakers of both parties, urging support for a $480 million provision in the next state budget for Wisconsin's child care providers. 'Child care is not a luxury, it's not a nice-to-have,' said Claire Lindstrom, an Eau Claire parent who addressed the rally. 'It is infrastructure.' 'We're here today because the people who are doing this very important work can no longer afford to hold up a broken system,' said Toshiba Adams, an instructor and instructional chair in early childhood education at Milwaukee Area Technical College. The rally and afternoon visit with legislators followed a morning gathering of the participants at the nearby Concourse Hotel that included talks by lawmakers, parents and providers. At noon 350 or more people — the largest action by child care advocates in recent memory — marched from the hotel to the rally, with chants of 'Kids first, families first, invest in child care now.' The crowd massed on the Capitol building's west steps for a half hour of speeches. Lindstrom broke down the average cost for child care. A single parent paid the minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, 'would have to work 43 full-time weeks just to cover one year of infant care,' she said. A family making the median income in Wisconsin — about $75,000 a year — will probably spend 20% of their earnings on care for a single child. 'If they have two kids, an infant and a 4-year-old, they're spending over a third of their income just to go to work,' Lindstrom said. 'This is not a personal budgeting issue. That's a broken system.' Gov. Tony Evers has proposed $480 million in the state's 2025-27 budget that would go to licensed child care providers, replenishing the state's Child Care Counts program funded from federal pandemic relief. Without that, Child Care Counts will expire for good in June. At its height between 2021 and 2023, Child Care Counts was credited with stabilizing Wisconsin's providers, who shared in payments totaling $20 million a month. Providers reported that with the money they were able to raise wages for child care workers while holding down increases in the fees that parents paid. 'Our early childhood educators are trained in how to support brain development, emotional regulation, and school readiness,' Lindstrom said. 'We expect them to do this important work and yet we pay them less than workers at Kwik Trip and Culver's.' Evers, a Democrat, was unable to persuade the Legislature's Republican majority to extend the program in the state's 2023-25 budget. He repurposed other federal funds, and the total payment was reduced to $10 million a month. That will run out in June. Providers, advocates and early childhood education experts have argued that only with an ongoing investment like Child Care Counts can providers pay child care workers adequately without pricing care out of reach for the average family. 'We need child care for our communities to function,' Lindstrom said. 'We can no longer afford to treat this like a personal problem. It's a public domain. And the solution is clear. We need to fund child care.' A survey report released April 10 found that up to 25% of Wisconsin providers said they might close without continued support along the lines of Child Care Counts. More than one-third said they might have to reduce the number of children then could serve for lack of staff. Large majorities said they might have to cut pay and that they expect to have more difficulty recruiting workers. More than half said they expect some employees to quit and that providing high quality care would become more difficult. 'We will see dramatically less care available in virtually every single county in the state,' Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, told the crowd. 'Is that acceptable?' 'No!' the crowd roared back in reply. 'Is it acceptable that moms will have to consider leaving the workforce in record numbers because you cannot work if you cannot afford or find child care? Is it acceptable that stressed out parents doing the best they can will have no support from the state to ensure that they can work and contribute to our tax base?' With each question the rallygoers responded with resounding shouts of 'No!' Sachin Shivaram, CEO of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc, told the crowd that businesses should support state funding for child care. His company pays employees with young children $400 a month toward their child care costs, he said. When the crowd applauded, he thanked them, then added, 'but I also feel very embarrassed. … That's so little, and the cost of child care is, you know, several thousand dollars a month, and this is just barely scratching the surface.' Shivaram pointed out the state manufacturing tax credit that his company receives, along with all Wisconsin manufacturers. 'And guess what? We have to do absolutely nothing to get that tax credit,' he said. 'We don't have to invest in any capital equipment, we don't have to train any workers, we don't have to give back to the community, nothing. You know, how about we make that tax credit contingent on helping the child care situation?' In an interview after the legislative visits Schmidt of WECA said the hundreds who took part went to almost every state Senate office and about 90% of the Assembly members' offices as well. WECA organized the event along with Wisconsin Head Start Association and Raising Wisconsin — an advocacy campaign that WECA and allied groups launched in 2022. 'We really wanted this to be nonpartisan,' Schmidt said — 'just an opportunity to tell stories and share, from a real perspective, from the heart what's going on with this industry.' Some of those conversations — with leaders in the Legislature who advocates have already spoken to about the budget request — were 'not necessarily a surprise,' she acknowledged. With other lawmakers, she added, including some of the 30 first-term Assembly members elected in November as well as others who have not served on committees where child care has been an agenda item, 'there was a lot of interest in just learning,' The visits were an opportunity for personal testimony to reach lawmakers and their staff, Schmidt said. 'The power of having parents tell their stories, and the power of having educators tell their stories about how they've been using the public funding when it's available — it was very compelling.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
