Yesterday, the State Senate passed SB6, a bill that makes tweaks to various early childhood initiatives in Connecticut. Most controversially, however, the bill also makes changes to the requirements of municipal-run summer day camps, mandating that they background check employees and receive licensure from the Office of Early Children (OEC), by May 2026.
These licensing requirements did not appear out of a vacuum; last fall, Anthony Mastrangelo, a 25-year-old counselor at a summer camp run by the town of Bethany, was arrested after allegedly sexually abusing five children. The story brought attention to the lack of safety measures municipal day camps must have in comparison to their private counterparts. One of these children’s parents, Amy Lestinsky, has publicly supported the increased scrutiny asked of municipal day camps by the bill.
Despite this fervor for increased regulation, 29 municipalities testified in opposition to the measures included in the bill, on the grounds that it would prohibitively increase costs, requiring them to raise prices or even shut down. Republican lawmakers carried their torch onto the Senate floor, calling the requirements another unfunded mandate placed on municipalities, arguing that the unintended consequences of the bill may make it unwarranted.
“As we know, costs get passed on and in many of our communities, our municipal day camps are not just an affordable option, they are the only affordable option,” said Sen. Jason Perillo (R-Shelton). “My concern here today is that we may be taking from our disaffected youth the one summer outlet they have to keep them occupied, to keep them engaged, to keep them socialized.”
Despite the pushback, Democratic lawmakers held strong in their conviction that the bill simply would bring public day camps in line with the expectations held of private ones, in an effort to keep children safe.
“We know that for many, many, low-income families, or many families, that municipal camps are, in essence, childcare,” said the Children’s Committee Co-Cair, Sen. Ceci Maher (D-Darien). “So if OEC is overseeing child care and overseeing camps, and we have municipal camps, which are both child care and camp, it stands to reason that it is the best practice to oversee municipal camps.”
Maher explained to Perillo the new requirements asked of municipal day camps by the bill. She said camps would have to conduct “three no-cost background checks,” which would include a criminal history records check, a check on the Connecticut Child Abuse registry, and a check of the National Sex Offenders registry.
Perillo argued that, while he supported the idea of background checks, he didn’t believe that they should be characterized as “no-cost” measures. He said that he had heard from “a number of different sources,” such as from advocates and public hearing testimony submitted on the bill, that background checks are currently being funded by ARPA funds, which are set to run out.
“If you would like to go right now on to the judicial website, if you would like to go onto the child abuse registry, if you would like to go on to the National Sex Offender Registry, you can do that yourself right now,” replied Maher. “They are not dependent on ARPA funding.”
Perillo said that while he appreciates that “there are checks that one can do online at no cost,” he was skeptical of whether the checks required under statute “are indeed free.”
Maher also explained to Perillo the full list of new requirements that municipal day camps must meet to be OEC licensed, in addition to the background checks. Per Maher, camps must meet OEC-mandated staff-to-child ratios, have health and immunization records for children and staff, pass yearly state inspections, have a director, assistant director, and on-site director of first-aid who are all above the age of 21, as well as have waterfront and watersports directors. Additionally, counselors in training (CITs) must be at least 14 years of age, and camps would have to meet OEC-mandated toilet-to-child ratios as well as have a quarantine isolation site.
Perillo grilled Maher on the toilet ratios, pointing out that many camps are run on school grounds, and that while OEC’s toilet-to-child ratio is 1:20, the ratio required of schools is 1:50. He asked Maher whether or not the bill would have any provisions to fund municipalities that wish to bring their infrastructure in-line with these requirements. After a long pause, Maher replied that there were no such provisions.
“I think that what we will find, as we begin this process of municipal camp licensing, is that there will be things that we will need to address, which is why this legislation is not going to go into place until next year,” added Maher.
While prolonged debate over the bill typically followed the usual party lines, Sen. Kathy Osten (D-Sprague) proved to be a noteworthy deviation. Osten shared the emotional story of her daughter, who was molested by one of her sister’s boyfriends at the age of 12, while staying at her mother’s house. Osten said that she herself used to be a working-class, single mother, and that while she felt for “the people in Bethany,” the bill would not protect children, but only hurt parents who struggled financially like she did.
“This bill will not stop people from molesting children,” said Osten. “You’re not going to stop bad people from doing bad things by passing a law in this chamber, because the person who hurt those people in Bethany had never been recognized, would not show up on any single registry.”
Osten explained that there will always be first-time offenders who do not show up on registries, and that the only thing that stops them is “to incarcerate those people, make sure they stay there for a really long time, and then when they get out, to follow them and make sure that they get the treatment they can.”
“There is no way that some of those parents, parents like me, who didn’t have a car, are going to be able to pay $200 for a camp to go to because we want them to have a license,” said Osten. “It doesn’t help out with the situation.”
Republicans introduced several amendments to the floor; one which would provide grants to municipalities to help fund expenses associated with licensure, another which would strike the licensure requirements as a whole but would maintain background checks, and another which would raise any sexual crime committed by a day camp employee to the level of aggravated sexual assault of a minor.
Ultimately, none of these amendments passed, and the bill passed in a vote of 22-12.
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