While education and policy advocates took to today’s Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee meeting in support of HB 5002, a wide-sweeping child care bill, Jeffrey Beckham, Secretary of the State’s Office of Policy and Management (OPM), took aim at the bill in his written testimony which vehemently opposed it.
The bill would allot $50 million to the State’s recently created Early Childhood Education Fund, and authorize the State Bond Commission to issue state bonds of up to $50 million in support of the Fund. Proceeds made from the sale of these bonds would go to the Office of Early Childhood (OEC) to support early childcare and childhood education programs. Furthermore, the bill would establish a pilot Tri-Share Child Care program in New London County aiming to reduce the cost of early childcare and education services and create a child care and education services grant program under the purview of the OCE.
“[If passed] Connecticut would again be a leader in the country in investing its own state funds for childcare,” said Lea Woods, Senior Policy Associate of the Century Foundation, who testified in support of the bill.
The Early Childhood Education Fund was established in last year’s general session as part of Governor Ned Lamont’s Start Early – Early Child Development Initiative. The Fund will be managed by a yet unnamed treasurer who can receive private and public donations, gifts and grants, and invest or spend these funds for the furtherance of the State’s early childhood education and care programs.
“In New Mexico, we did something similar to what HB 5002 is looking to accomplish, and truly it’s been a game changer in our state,” said Jacob Vigil, the Deputy Policy Director of New Mexico Voices for Children, who spoke in support of the bill. Vigil said that New Mexico’s early childhood trust fund received an initial endowment of $300 million upon its founding in 2020, and is now sitting above $5 billion in 2024. Vigil said that last session, the fund provided $250 million to New Mexico’s Early Childhood Education and Care Department’s budget, a department that Vigil said was New Mexico’s equivalent to the Office of Early Childhood.
“In a state where child care access and affordability have long been barriers, and our children and working families have faced so many challenges, what we’ve been able to accomplish through creating this permanent, long term funding source for early care and education has really been nothing short of a generational transformation,” said Vigil.
While several childcare program employees and education advocates provided testimony in support of the bill, the State’s Office of Policy and Management Secretary, Jeffrey Beckham, submitted written testimony in opposition.
“Prior to passage of the legislation establishing this Fund, the administration was supportive because we were assured it would not require General Fund support – the Fund would simply be a repository for private gifts or donations that would support early childhood education,” wrote Beckham. “Less than a year later, this bill would require taxpayers to support $100 million in contributions to this fund by transferring $50 million from the General Fund to the renamed Early Childhood Care and Education Fund as well as authorizing $50 million of bonding for such Fund.”
Due to the bill’s language dictating the Fund’s independence from the state’s budget, Beckham declared that the bill would attempt to skirt the state’s fiscal guardrails.
“Any expenditures from the fund would escape the scrutiny of the annual appropriations process and circumvent the spending cap component of the fiscal guardrails,” wrote Beckham. “Taking steps to circumvent these guardrails risks returning to the days of a permanent fiscal crisis – a crisis that was the product of unsustainable spending increases that exceeded our taxpayers ’ ability to pay as measured by the State’s constitutional spending cap.”
Beyond the allotment of $50 million from the General Fund, HB 5002 would also establish an advisory committee for the fund, acting under the purview of the Legislative Department. The commission would review and report on the financial status and future sustainability of the fund, and submit and update ten-year plans to the General Assembly. The committee would serve to assist the fund’s Treasurer in decision-making, review and monitor the fund’s investments and expenditures, and obtain any data necessary from other state agencies required of the Treasurer.
In addition to its ten-year plans, the committee would also submit a yearly report to the General Assembly outlining the Fund’s deposit amounts, its annual expenditures and expected expenditures, rates of return on investments made by the Fund, and any recommendations for policy changes or amendments that would help further the Fund’s goals.
Beckham took issue with the bill’s inclusion of this committee, saying it “would be duplicative of the significant planning work already done by the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Child Care.” The Blue Ribbon Panel was initiated in 2023 following Lamont’s Executive Order. The panel worked to develop a 5-year strategic plan for the state’s childcare system and submitted a report to the Governor’s office on Dec. 8, 2023. Beckham also criticized the inability of the committee to expend the funds itself, “creating a very practical question of who determines how such funds are expended.”
The bill would also establish a pilot Tri-Share Child Care Matching Program in New London County, lasting a minimum of two years. Tri-Share is a childcare payment model that has been adopted by numerous counties across the country, most notably in the state of Michigan, aiming to reduce childcare costs. Employers who opt into Tri-Share programs agree to help split the cost of their employees’ childcare by matching funds with the employee and the State. Typically, only low-income employees qualify for these benefits, though the specifics of each Tri-Share program varies.
In the program proposed by Connecticut’s HB 5002, qualifying employees would have to work in New London County and be making less than the ALICE threshold, a number set by the United Way meant to denote working people who make more than the Federal Poverty level but not enough to afford basic necessities in the areas they live. Qualifying employees would not be able to receive other public assistance for childcare costs.
The third major component of the bill is the proposed establishment of a grant program for early childhood education programs and early childhood care providers, administered by the Office of Early Childhood. Grants provided under this program would be used to supplement the yearly salaries of childcare and child education workers serving high-need populations.
Mary Oster, Early Childhood Coordinator for the Town of Norwalk, provided verbal testimony at the meeting in support of the bill. Oster said that early childhood education programs are crippled across the state by non-competitive wages, leading to staffing shortages and lack of services.
“It isn’t unusual for classrooms to be closed due to staffing shortages,” said Oster. “Last year, 5 preschool classrooms in Norwalk were closed leaving 100 children without preschool, and families without access to child care.”
Committee Co-Chair State Sen. John Fonfara (D-Hartford) responded to Oster’s testimony, questioning the ability of the bill to change the educational outcomes of students.
“We’ve been investing in early childhood and preschool for a few decades now,” said Fonfara. “And I still have kids in the city of Hartford who are in the 3rd grade and don’t know the full alphabet. Why would I be assured that this initiative has any chance in changing that?”
Oster said that early childhood educators do their best not only to educate kids in the classroom but educate parents on the importance of fostering their children’s education outside of it.
“We are doing a lot of work with families,” said Oster. ”Trying to get parents involved in their child’s education early, their child’s development early. We know parents are key to this, childhood programs and preschools can not do it all.”
“I think that we have a tendency, and if not a general belief, that by another program, more money, that we’re going to be able to address the same challenges,” replied Fonfara. Fonfara said that throughout his 28 years in the Senate, the state has committed hundreds of millions to childhood initiatives, and still has not seen the desired results. “So forgive me if I am not questioning the desire or the commitment, but what it will really take to give these children who need it the most, a shot at life. I hope as we move forward with this initiative that that reality of Connecticut is included in this.”
Fonfara’s sentiment echoed that of Beckham’s, who highlighted in his testimony the recent influx of funding that early childhood initiatives have seen in recent years.
“From FY 2019 through the enacted FY 2025 budget, state General Fund support for early childhood increased by 76.8%, the Governor’s mid-term adjustments build on that growth by adding $25.9 million more,” wrote Beckham. “These significant ongoing investments in the State’s childcare system will allow providers to meet costs, including the cost of raising wages for their staff, without the administrative burden on providers and the OEC of establishing a new program to subsidize wages, as proposed in this legislation.”
Georgia Goldburn fought back against these arguments in her verbal testimony. Goldburn is the cofounder of CERCLE, a New Haven-based non-profit focused on early childhood education, and executive director of Hope for New Haven, a faith-based non-profit that runs a children’s center.
“Imagine you are building a house. You put aside a budget for construction,” said Goldburn. “You take 10% of that budget to build the house. And then you set aside 90% of the budget to fix whatever deficiencies you find after the house has been built. That is what Connecticut has been doing.”
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