Raising child care funding

Full-time child care for a preschooler and an infant costs a family between $15,000 and $24,000 annually in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, and between $12,000 and $16,000 in Greater Minnesota, according to Child Care WORKS executive director Susie Brown. That’s not manageable for many low-income working families who may pay, on average, up to 30 percent of their income for child care.

However, the state’s Child Care Assistance Program’s Basic Sliding Fee subsidy, intended to help such families, has not kept pace with the actual cost of providing care, even when parent co-pays are added. That disparity risks some providers’ business viability.

Rep. Carlos Mariani (DFL-St. Paul) sponsors HF768 that would raise the maximum provider reimbursement rate for child care assistance programs to 75 percent of market rate, and cover additional families on the waiting list for the sliding fee subsidy.

Mariani is concerned the state has “slipped” in its commitment to offer child care assistance since 2003, when the Legislature made significant cuts, but acknowledged the $125.67 million price tag over the next two fiscal years is much to ask in the current fiscal situation.

“It’s not my intention that we approach this as all or nothing,” Mariani said.

The subsidy is important in economically stressed regions. Rep. Gail Kulick Jackson (DFL-Milaca) said that in 2003, when her youngest child was 3 years old, the child care facility where he was enrolled nearly closed when reimbursement rates were frozen at levels set in 2001.

“And that would have not only deprived those parents who were working at low-wage jobs,” said Jackson, “but it would have deprived me of having the one quality care center in a small town in rural Minnesota.”

The House Early Childhood Finance and Policy Division laid the bill over March 12 for possible omnibus bill inclusion. Its companion, SF575, sponsored by Sen. Linda Scheid (DFL-Brooklyn Park), awaits action by the Senate Health and Human Services Budget Division.