Gov. Lamont pushes for childcare funding

Gov. Ned Lamont made a push for his plan to increase funding for childcare, trying to convince lawmakers that the influx of cash is necessary.

Lamont’s budget proposal looks to utilize $300 million for this year’s budget surplus to create the Universal Childcare Endowment.

The endowment would then provide free or low-cost childcare to many families around the state.

“There's no dispute about how important early childhood education is for these kids,” Lamont (D-Connecticut) said during a press conference in Hartford.

He hopes the endowment will reach $1 billion over the next few years by utilizing surpluses.

Lamont’s budget proposal also seeks to modify the volatility cap – a restriction on how much the state can spend from less predictable revenue sources – by reclassifying $300 million in revenues as “stable.”

The governor wants to spend 10% of the endowment each year to provide free childcare to families earning less than $100,000 a year.

Households earning up to $150,000 could also qualify for aid so that their care costs no more than $20 a day.

“It's important to have high quality and affordable [childcare], and for my children we haven’t been able to have both,” Marinda Monfinston, a mother from Cromwell, said.

Monfinston said her family spent roughly half its income on childcare for her oldest child, now six, and she’s worried the cost will be higher for her six-month-old son.

And that’s if she can find childcare.

“We were navigating four different towns and four different school systems and she was also on a wait list for two years,” Monfinston said about getting her daughter care.

Lamont’s plan has raised some criticism, specifically his proposed changes to the fiscal guardrails.

Aside from possible changes to the volatility cap, the endowment would sit outside the limits of the spending cap.  

“He found a legal mechanism in which he can blow by the intent of the spending cap,” Sen. Stephen Harding (R-Minority Leader) said.

Harding suggested the state find $30 million within the roughly $27 billion Lamont looks to spend in the first year of his two-year, $55.2-billion spending plan.

Businesses have said childcare remains a hurdle to hiring, but the Connecticut Business and Industry Association said they don’t want that to be a reason to change the guardrails.

“While going to childcare is certainly a key investment to be made, using the guardrails as an investment to do that is not the way to,” CBIA President and CEO Chris DiPentima said.

Lamont believes his plan leaves the protection of the guardrails in place while providing a fund specifically for childcare.

“I wanted something that’s not going to be subject to the ups and downs, recessions, the ins and out,” Lamont said.

Office of Early Childhood Commissioner Beth Bye said the state is also taking other steps to get more people into the field.

This includes making it easier to become licensed and letting people work as teachers in childcare centers while they continue their education.

Still, she said wages remain the biggest hurdle to addressing a worker shortage.

“It's hard to get people in the pipeline if you have lowest paying professions, so I think that's the big game changer,” Bye said.