‘The children of Idaho will suffer’: Plan to cut child care regulations advances in Senate

Idaho resident Mark Kirby choked up Wednesday while sharing the story of his 11-week-old nephew, who died of asphyxiation last year at a day care that he said was violating state laws around supervision and child-to-staff ratios.

Sabrina Dunn, the owner of Kuna’s Little Beans child care center, shared her experience of working for less than minimum wage at a separate center that was desperately understaffed. There, she said, she watched the owners cut corners and spread their workers as thin as possible to save money.

“The safety of the children was no longer the No. 1 priority,” Dunn said.

Kirby and Dunn were among the dozens who signed up to voice their opposition to House Bill 243, which proposes cutting back on state requirements for child care businesses – and barring local jurisdictions from enforcing regulations that go over and above state requirements.

There were 38 people who signed up to testify against the bill Wednesday, and only two testified in favor. The numbers mirrored the overwhelming opposition in a February public hearing for the bill in the House.

Providers, local government officials and industry advocates called the bill an unproven, experimental solution that would put children at risk.

It didn’t matter. A Republican-dominated Senate committee sent the bill to the Senate floor for a full hearing, although two GOP senators voted against. It has already passed the House.

Much of the discussion Wednesday centered on a proposal to remove child-to-provider ratios from state law, instead allowing individual centers to set and adhere to their own “appropriate” standard.

“What this does is says to a provider, ‘Hey, use your judgment based on the children in your care, and you do what is appropriate for those children,’ ” said Kate Haas, a lobbyist with Kestral West who presented the bill to the committee.

Supporters said the move would increase the availability and affordability of child care in a state with a desperate shortage, and they argued that the “free market” would naturally push providers to maintain standards that parents would accept.

“I would hope that we would trust our parents to know that if there was a one-to-12 ratio for babies, they wouldn’t leave their baby there,” said Rod Furniss, R-Rigby.

But Sen. Camille Blaylock, R-Caldwell, pushed back on that idea. Wealthier families might be able to afford paying more for higher standards, but minimum standards ensure a baseline level of safety for all families.

“We set standards in law to address bad actors within industries,” Blaylock said.

Dunn was blunt with the senators.

“I understand freedom. I understand wanting to give the decisions directly to child care centers,” Dunn said. “But the actual truth of the matter is that child care centers will push the ratio. Please, please know that if this bill passes, the children of Idaho will suffer.”

Idaho has a ‘broken’ child care system. Is deregulation the answer?

There appeared to be a consensus Wednesday that Idaho’s child care industry is in crisis, with workers and parents stretched to a breaking point.

In 2023, the Statesman previously reported, Idaho lost more than 1,300 child care spots and 86 centers, due in large part to turnover among workers, according to a report by IdahoSTARS, a nonprofit. Nearly 300 of those spots were in Ada, Boise, Elmore and Valley counties, IdahoSTARS reported.

In 2020, the state had a nearly 30% gap between the number of children who needed care and the number of slots available, according to a study by the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank founded by former Senate leaders of both parties to craft bipartisan solutions to problems.

“Parents (are) paying so much of their income into child care, and yet the people that are working in it aren’t making what they need to stay in it,” Luci Willits, the lone Republican on Boise’s City Council, told the Idaho Statesman. “This is a broken system.”

But Idaho’s child care regulations are already among the least restrictive in the U.S., second from the bottom only to Louisiana’s, according to a study at West Virginia University. Kirby and other people who testified Wednesday blamed lax regulation and enforcement for tragic outcomes. They argued that further deregulation would not increase access to affordable child care and was instead a move in the wrong direction.

“It feels very experimental in nature,” Kirby said.

Christine Tiddens, the executive director of Idaho Voices for Children, argued that “stripping these key safety standards from law opens the door to operators and bad actors who cut corners to save costs.

“In a child care setting, cutting corners results in babies being put into harm’s way.”

The bill’s supporters argued that Idaho had tried to increase access to child care through federal and state subsidies of programs.

“But as demand continues to grow, costs continue to rise,” said Niklas Kleinworth, the policy director for the Idaho Freedom Foundation, who testified in favor of the bill.

He and others decried what they called “onerous” regulations in cities such as Boise, which has a more restrictive staff-to-child ratio than required by state law, among other additional safety rules.

Those regulations are impeding Idaho residents’ ability to start up day care centers at home, Furniss said, “where moms can stay home and supplement the household income and watch a few kids.”

Kate Nelson, Boise’s deputy chief of staff, acknowledged in a presentation last year that there was a “trade-off” between quality and cost.

The city has worked to offset some of that added cost through incentives for child care businesses. It has offered property tax rebates for in-home providers and incentive pay for workers; waived first-time licensing fees; and consolidated the licensing application process, according to Kathy Griesmyer, Boise’s director of policy and government affairs, who addressed the committee Wednesday.

Those efforts have seen some success, city spokesperson Maria Ortega told the Statesman. As of December, there were 240 more licensed child care workers in Boise than there were in January 2021. As of March 2024, Boise had seen an increase in child care centers over the past year, jumping from 195 to 215. (That number had dropped back down to 205 as of February, though there were another four centers in the license application process, she said by email.)

Willits has been vocal about the need to expand access to child care, but she argued that deregulation was not a “silver bullet.” She highlighted efforts in other states to pay child care workers on a salary schedule with benefits, or remove red tape in the licensing process.

Willits said she’s generally in favor of deregulation and free-market solutions, but “there’s something in my gut that feels very uneasy about losing ratios for younger children,” she told the Statesman after Wednesday’s meeting. “It just feels dangerous.”