House effort to offer more, and cheaper, child care advanced by committee

A proposal aimed at expanding child care in Missouri, which received broad House support last year, is among the earliest of bills to be approved by a House committee this year.

Representative Brenda Shields (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      Numerous supporters, including many from Missouri’s business organizations, testified at the hearing about what they say is a crisis facing the state’s employers and, therefore, the state as a whole.

      “Perhaps the single greatest barrier to workforce participation today is the lack of child care resources,” said the chairman of the Workforce and Infrastructure Development Committee, Representative Louis Riggs (R-Hannibal)

      Representative Brenda Shields’s (R-St. Joseph) House Bill 1488 would create three new tax credits, one of which is for employers who help fund child care for their employees, and one that is for providers who boost their employees’ salaries or improve their facilities. 

      “It addresses Missouri’s workforce crisis by addressing the root problem:  the lack of affordable, quality, reliable, safe child care for working families,” Shields said.     

Shields told the committee that 58 percent of businesses in Missouri report that child care is a barrier to recruiting employees, and 63 percent say it is a barrier to retaining employees.  Parents says child care is often unavailable, and 43 percent of them say when it is, it is unaffordable.

      She said her proposal would let communities respond to these issues in whatever ways best suit their needs.

      “It is local businesses, churches, family homes, group homes who will create the child care that they need in their community,” Shields said.

      Besides the economic issues, Shields said improving child care throughout Missouri would mean improving the lives of children in the state and offering stability to more of them.  

      “[Having] reliable people in a child’s life is important.  We have to stop the revolving door of workers in our child care facilities.”

      The proposed Child Care Contribution Tax Credit would be for up to 75 percent of a contribution used to improve a child care provider’s facility, equipment, or services, or to improve the salaries of a facilities’ staff.  The Employer Provided Child Care Assistance Tax Credit would be for up to 30 percent of child care expenditures paid by an employer.  The Child Care Providers Tax Credit would be for up to 30 percent of the cost of improvements made by providers, such as facility or service expansion or employee raises.

      Each program would be capped at $200,000 per taxpayer, and $20 million overall, however an additional fifteen percent would be allowed in areas considered “child care deserts,” regions of the state with the most acute discrepancies between children in need of care and availabilities.   

      In testifying about the high price of child care, Kara Corches with the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that care for her one child last year cost more than $21,000.  Upon hearing this, Representative Travis Wilson (R-St. Charles) said, “That’s with one child, so if a family has two children, even if they got a multi-child discount at a child care provider, they could still be looking at, say, $30,000 a year.  I think that kind of makes the case all on its own.”

      Corches said providers are not to blame.

      “Their margins are extremely narrow.  It is very costly, if you think about liability insurance you have to have when you’re watching the lives of that many children, just supplies, etcetera, so it is a complicated situation where child care providers are struggling to make ends meet but they can’t just raise rates because then parents can’t afford it.”

      One provider with three facilities in the Jefferson City area, Nicci Rexroat, told the committee, “We’re talking about middle class families with two kids who are paying $35,000 a year for early childhood [care].  We can’t raise our rates any more and our staff are still making well below what they deserve.”

      “I know it was mentioned before that it’s the hope that we will reinvest in our employees, and for me and other child care providers it is the plan,” Rexroat said.

      Emily van Schenkhof with The Missouri Children’s Trust Fund, which works to prevent child abuse, reminded the legislators that the issue isn’t just about the workforce and the economy.

      “When families aren’t able to meet their basic needs, families become more stressed out.  Whenever stress increases in families, bad things happen to kids, and so this child care crisis … is harming Missouri families and it’s harming Missouri children.”

      “All children deserve to have access to safe, quality child care and that is something that we are not doing right now,” van Schenkhof said.

      Shields told the committee Missouri can afford these tax credits. 

      “It is estimated that Missouri’s economy last year lost $1.35 billion because we didn’t have enough workers.  If we collected the tax on those employees … that’d be $280-million,” Shields told her fellows. 

      She noted that when the state tries to get businesses to come here, it touts its location, its access to multiple modes of transportation, and its infrastructure, but businesses want to know that they will be able to find employees, and that those employees’ ability to work will be supported.

      “I truly believe if we solve the child care crisis … businesses will flock to our state,” Shields said.

      Last year’s version of Shields’ legislation was voted out of the House 133-20 but it stalled in the Senate.  She hopes it will fare better this year.

      “I think the time is now.  I think it’s time that we do this for our parents and that we do this for our businesses.  We can’t continue to kick this can down the road.”

      The committee this week voted 10-0 to advance Shields’ bill.

Missouri legislature completes special session, sends two bills to Governor Parson

The Missouri legislature moved quickly to pass two bills that were the subject of a special session called by Governor Mike Parson (R).

Representative Kevin Austin (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Parson called lawmakers back into session to reexamine issues covered in two bills he vetoed.  One of those would establish statewide standards for treatment courts, such as drug and veteran courts; the other would allow high school computer science courses to count toward graduation requirements for math, science, or practical arts credits.  The House voted on Wednesday to send those bills to the Senate, and today the Senate approved those bills without making any changes to them.  That means they go to Parson for his consideration.

Representative Kevin Austin (R-Springfield) sponsored House Bill 2, which deals with treatment courts.  Such courts in Missouri provide a court-supervised, comprehensive treatment program as an alternative to jail time.  Lawmakers and prosecutors agree the program is not an easy out for a defendant.

Over the years courts have been established in numerous districts in the state but without universal guidelines for how to operate.  HB 2 seeks to provide those.

“It allows the expansion of treatment courts to counties that don’t have it but would like to have it.  It also allows for the coordinating commission to establish best practices based on scientific research that’s been done on the effectiveness of treatment courts and what works and what doesn’t,” said Austin.  “It allows for more data collection as well, it allows for technical assistance from [The Office of State Courts Administrator] to these courts.”

Austin said one of his favorite parts of the bill is a transfer clause, which will allow defendants who are candidates for treatment courts but are in a circuit that doesn’t have them, to be transferred to a circuit which does have them.

“That is not going to result in just dumping from one county to another of these defendants.  It has to be agreed to by both the transferring county and the receiving county.  It has to be agreed to by the prosecuting attorney as well as the defendant,” said Austin.

Austin said treatment courts save lives and improve the quality of lives, and not just the lives of the defendants that go through them.

“There’s people that interact with that person every day.  Maybe it’s their family, maybe it’s their neighbors, maybe it’s the merchants who they might otherwise be shoplifting from, it’s us as taxpayers.  It affects all of us in a very positive way.  It’s a way that we can restore dignity and return this person to a productive life,” said Austin.

House Bill 3 would let computer science courses count toward math, science, or practical arts credits needed for graduation.  Under the bill students could begin in middle school to be prepared for the opportunities they could have in the job market.  Its sponsor, Holts Summit Republican Travis Fitzwater, has been working on STEM legislation for years.

Representatives Jeanie Lauer and Travis Fitzwater (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

“I’m thrilled it’s done,” Fitzwater said on Wednesday after the House passed his legislation.

“What we need is broadening opportunities and this is doing that for kids … and at the heart of it that’s what I’m trying to accomplish with this bill,” said Fitzwater.

Representative Jeanie Lauer (R-Blue Springs) chaired the House Committee on Workforce Development and worked with Representative Fitzwater on the computer science portion of HB 3.  She said it could help move Missouri forward in workforce development.

“We know that from site selectors that are looking for where to place businesses that is the top item that they’re looking for in criteria is what is the workforce pool, and in order for us to be competitive not only within our state but with other states we have to increase the talent that we have, and this is certainly a step toward that,” said Lauer.

Parson announced on August 30 his call for the special session and legislators worked quickly to pass new versions of these bills that addressed the concerns he cited with his vetoes, while spending as little time as possible on the special session.  The session’s costs were lessened because it coincided with the constitutionally-mandated veto session.

Missouri legislature called into special session for STEM, treatment court bills

The Missouri Legislature will convene for a special session next month to reexamine two bills vetoed by Governor Mike Parson (R).

One bill dealt with guidelines for treatment courts.  The other allows high school computer science courses to count toward graduation requirements for math, science, or practical arts credits; and aims to begin preparing students at an earlier age for the opportunities they could have in the job market.

In Parson’s veto messages, he said the treatment courts bill appeared to violate the state constitution’s prohibition on legislation covering multiple subjects.  He objected to a provision in the education bill that he said seemed to narrow a bidding process down so that only one company could qualify.

Representative Kevin Austin (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Treatment courts in Missouri provide a court-supervised, comprehensive treatment program as an alternative to jail time.  Participants must complete a rigorous regimen including interventions and supervision in order to complete the program.  Drug courts, juvenile treatment courts, and veterans’ courts are some examples of these programs.

House Bill 2562 was sponsored by Springfield Representative Kevin Austin (R).  He said in the past the legislature has dealt with treatment courts in a “piecemeal” fashion, and the main goal of the bill was to consolidate the various types of treatment courts and lay out best practices.

“When we start a new treatment court in a county or a circuit, the judge that has that can have some direction and have some guidance on what to do … this is going to provide some of those directions and best practices, which are also evolving as we learn more about treatment courts nationally,” said Austin.

The bill would also allow defendants in a circuit that lacks a treatment court to be transferred to one in another circuit, with certain approvals.

Austin said treatment courts benefit not only participants, but also their families and communities, and they save the state money through factors such as decreasing incarcerations.

The House handler of the education legislation is Representative Travis Fitzwater (R-Holts Summit), who has worked on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) bills for several years.  He doesn’t believe that Senate Bill 894 needed to be vetoed, but is “thrilled” the governor and legislative leadership saw the issue as important enough to revisit it in a special session.

Representative Travis Fitzwater (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

“I think we just need to make sure that we broaden it to the extent that it makes it a process where more software companies can have access to it,” said Fitzwater.

Fitzwater said the STEM portion of SB 894 is aimed at middle school students.

“Why it’s so important to have the curriculum in middle school is because there are studies that show that 25-percent of high schoolers don’t have any idea what’s available to them in career fields when they graduate, and that’s a real problem,” said Fitzwater.  “The reason to have it early it middle school is the earlier the better in giving them some career paths that may interest them or to weed out maybe some fields that they’re not interested in as well.”

Fitzwater said by readdressing his legislation in a special session rather than waiting for the new session to begin in January, its provisions might not have to be pushed back another school year.  This would allow another grade level of students to benefit from it.

Austin said the sooner the legislature can deal with the treatment courts issue, the sooner the state’s courts can begin implementing the most effective practices.  It would also make a difference for defendants who could benefit from treatment courts but might not have access to them, especially in cases in which the transfer language would apply.

The special session will begin Monday, September 10 and will overlap with the annual veto session, which was already scheduled to begin Wednesday, September 12.

Additional audio:  Kevin Austin says treatment courts offer an alternative to jail time, but a defendant must go through a rigorous process to successfully complete the program and faces that jail time if he or she fails.

“Treatment court is not a ‘get out of jail free’ card.  It requires a ton of hard work by the defendant or the participant in the drug court … We’re changing lifestyle habits so it’s not something we can do in six months. It takes time.  The participant or defendant realizes that and actually signs a contract agreeing to this lengthy, arduous process.”