A legislative committee has removed $15 million from the governor’s proposed budget that would have gone toward grants for child care providers that struggled financially emerging from the pandemic.
The money – a one-time appropriation proposed by the governor – would have replaced federal funds that the state received during the pandemic to help offset the operating costs of providing care during the pandemic.
The state money was intended to help act as a bridge as millions of dollars in federal funding for child care providers came to an end.
The money was included in the governor’s recommended $923.4 million budget for fiscal year 2025 for Department for Children and Families. The budget now goes to the House Appropriation Committee.
Republican state Rep. Will Carpenter of El Dorado made the motion to remove the funding, expressing concern that the state had become so reliant on the federal money that it was now using state tax dollars to fund the program.
“I’m not against child care whatsoever. It’s very important,” Carpenter said in an interview.
“It doesn’t create any more slots,” Carpenter said of the governor’s recommendation.
“It was to help, supposedly, the day cares that are out there, but I don’t know if it will or not,” Carpenter said,
Carpenter said he was primarily concerned about using state general funds to replace federal pandemic relief funds that were flowing into the state in recent years.
“We’re talking about one-time money, and the next thing you know it’s a (state general fund) deal of $15 million,” Carpenter said.
A spokesperson for the governor encouraged the Legislature to push ahead with addressing the state’s child care needs.
“There’s no question that Kansas’ child care shortage is hurting children, stressful for parents, and slowing down our economy,” spokesperson Grace Hoge said.
“Gov. Kelly has made significant progress in creating new slots by investing federal dollars and providing tax credits to make it easier for businesses to provide child care for their employees, but the Legislature shouldn’t stop there,” she said.
“It must continue to make the investments needed – including by keeping with Gov. Kelly’s full proposal in her budget – to support home providers and find solutions for Kansas families,” she said.
The governor proposed spending more than $56 million to expand child care slots and support the child care workforce in her budget.
The governor’s proposal would put $30 million into grants that would be used to construct new child care facilities and $15 million that would go to child care providers, especially those based in the home, to help offset expenses.
The $15 million would have been administered by the Department for Children and Families and go to about 3,500 child care providers who could get $4,000 grants for expenses.
During the pandemic, more than $283 million in federal funding was provided to child care providers in Kansas to offset the operational costs of providing care.
The federal funding was intended to provide a financial lifeline to many providers that were teetering on the brink of closing during the pandemic.
“The ending of this funding could increase costs for families and eliminate wage supports provided to the workforce,” the governor’s budget said.
“A round of state-level funding to support the operation and wages of these workers could help keep facilities open, increase wages for workers, and ensure slots exists for working families,” the budget said.
After the $15 million was removed from the budget, the committee considered putting $2 million into grants for home-based child care services that lawmakers said would actually create more child care slots than what the governor proposed.
Republican state Rep. Tim Johnson of Bashor asked the committee to put the full $15 million into those grants, saying it would attract more providers and create new slots.
Ultimately, that amount was pared to $500,000 for “a non-state partner for the recruitment and retention of home-based child care providers.”
In order to be eligible for funding, the recipient must not be a state entity and must be providing similar services in at least three other states, among other things detailed in the budget proviso.
It was suggested that the money would go for a program operated by Wonderschool, a San Francisco-based company that was represented by lobbyist Colton Gibson before the committee during a hearing this week.
Wonderschool is a home-based child care incubator that recruits providers. Gibson said the company would be willing to go through a request-for-proposal process.
The company says it “empowers new and experienced providers to run their own in-home businesses while providing a much-needed service to families in their communities.
Democratic state Rep. Susan Ruiz of Shawnee questioned whether the money should be going to any organization that the Legislature had not examined more thoroughly.
“They’re not here. They’ve not been here so that we’ve been able to vet them and understand what they are about. We need more time,” Ruiz said.
“Wonderschool – wonder, whatever they call it – needs to be here so that we can ask questions ourselves and not be hidden in some type of proviso language.”
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