GOP brings bill to partner child care and employers

A couple hundred people rallied on the Statehouse steps on May 13 for National Day Without Child Care. (Photo by Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal).

Republicans in the House and Senate recognized the “crisis” in Ohio involving child care costs and access, committing in a new bill to partner employers and the state, in the effort to stem the problem.

State Sen. Michele Reynolds, R-Canal Winchester, and state Rep. Mark Johnson, R-Chillicothe, announced companion bills in their legislative chambers that will start a new voluntary program they hope will bring back employees to the state workforce, and provide needed child care for employees.

Reynolds said the impact of the lack of child care access for many Ohio residents is “severe,” and has “far-reaching economic and social implications, affecting child development, workforce retention and overall economic growth.”

“It has become clear that urgent legislative action is needed to address the affordability and availability of child care in Ohio,” Reynolds said in a Wednesday press conference.

The bills – Senate Bill 273 and an as yet unlabeled bill in the House – come after a rally on the Ohio Statehouse called for changes to the system as advocates recognized a National Day Without Childcare, asking for increases in the eligibility level for publicly funded child care and improvements to child care workers pay and benefits.

Child care advocates have sounded the alarm on the problems in child care, the prohibitive cost and provider shortages, since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and even more so when the pandemic caused closures and losses in the industry.

The need for child care continues to grow, but accessibility isn’t universal. A report from earlier this year found that 47% of parents in the U.S. are spending up to $18,000 per year on child care. Even if families can pay, there are other struggles, with the state’s child care staffing dropping 36% from 2017 to 2022, according to Policy Matters Ohio, and 40% of Ohioans living in areas where the amount of child care facilities can’t compete with the population need.

The new bills in the Senate and the House would create a cost-sharing model, the sponsors said, which would split the cost equally between eligible families, employers and the Ohio Department of Children and Youth. Under the bill, $10 million would be allocated, but the future of the program “depends on future legislatures” after the money runs out, Johnson said.

“I’ll be the first to admit it’s not a silver bullet to fix all child care as we stand here today, but it also will stabilize the child care providers, especially those in the private community who are struggling right now since COVID money dried up,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

The program would be “completely voluntary” on the part of the businesses, and discretion would be up to the employer as to which of the employees would be included.

Along with being selected by the employee, under the bill employees are required to be Ohio residents and ineligible for publicly funded child care, according to Reynolds.

Putting the child care program in the hands of employers should be an incentive to businesses who are seeing workers leave the workforce or cut down on hours due to a lack of affordable child care, or child care at all, according to the bill’s sponsors and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, represented at the press conference by Senior Vice President of Governmental Affairs and former legislator Rick Carfagna.

“We have recognized at the Ohio Chamber of Commerce that to have a qualified, reliable and thriving base of employees available to Ohio businesses, any discussion of workforce must include affordable housing, transportation and … child care,” Carfagna said.

He called the child care scarcity in the state “perhaps the single biggest throttle to employment entry or re-entry at this moment.”

Lynne Gutierrez, chief operating and policy officer for child advocacy group Groundwork Ohio said similar models have been passed in surrounding states, and is a “thoughtful and measured approach” to a fundamental workforce issue.

“We know that 800,000 workers in the last year have cut back their hours or retreated entirely from the workforce as a result of barriers to child care,” Gutierrez said.

In October 2023, Ohio Democrats introduced their own attempt to help families deal with the costs of child care, through a family tax credit. The bill was referred to the Ohio House Ways and Means Committee the same month it was introduced, but has yet to see further activity.

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