OLYMPIA, Wash. — The heftiest budget cuts Washington Democratic lawmakers are proposing this year focus on day care subsidies for low-income families.
In the initial House and Senate budget plans, this paring of Working Connections Child Care totals more than a half-billion dollars over the coming years. The largest portion of proposed spending reductions for the program deal with how child care providers are reimbursed by the state and federal governments based on when children attend day care.
The aid is available to working Washington families earning below 60% of the state median income. As of last February, the program had an active caseload of over 33,000 families.
Currently, providers can receive a full month of subsidies even when a child who qualifies for the subsidies only attends one day that month. The budgets would make this policy more restrictive.
In total, the Senate calls for $168 million in reductions for the program in the current biennium that started last July, and $857 million over the next two budget cycles. The House proposes roughly $112 million in the current budget and $601 million over the next four years.
The competing plans would make changes to the two-year budget lawmakers passed last year.
Grappling with another shortfall, Democrats in both chambers of the Legislature are proposing a range of cuts to deal with rising caseloads in state-funded social services and mandatory spending due to federal changes to Medicaid and food stamps.
Lawmakers have two weeks to hatch compromises to pass a supplemental budget before the legislative session adjourns March 12. Overall spending in the plans they’ve proposed is around $79 billion over two years.
Under the Senate plan for Working Connections Child Care, providers would be able to claim reimbursement worth 15 days if a child attends at least one day per month, and further payments for each day beyond 15.
The House handles this a bit differently. Under its framework, families are eligible for a full-month subsidy if their child is absent up to 10 days, while 11 days or more of absences qualifies for half a month of reimbursement. Under the current practice, a month of attendance is 21-23 days, according to the Department of Children, Youth and Families.
“This is a cut to child care providers, because child care providers who have a child in a classroom for 10 days or fewer out of the month will get half of the payment they would have otherwise gotten,” said House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, D-Seattle. “That’s a challenge for providers, because they’re not necessarily able to enroll more kids just because they know that some of them aren’t there every day.”
The Senate proposal is outlined in Senate Bill 6353, sponsored by lead budget writer Sen. June Robinson, D-Everett. The reimbursement changes would take effect Oct. 1 for child care centers, and July 1 for family home providers who care for up to a dozen children in their homes. The legislation also changes the scope of collective bargaining for family home providers with the state.
Budget writers are also assuming $45 million in savings in this budget from a federal rule axed by the Trump administration requiring states pay child care centers prospectively based on enrollment and not specifically how many days the child attended. There’s also $15 million in reductions in both budgets from eliminating longstanding enhanced subsidy rates in a few counties.
Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson also floated cutting from Working Connections to help balance the budget. He took a different approach, proposing to cap enrollment to save an estimated $217 million in this biennium.
Neither the House nor Senate budget frameworks use the governor’s idea.
“We heard from many people, people who use Working Connections Child Care, people who provide those services, advocates in the larger community, that that is a policy that many people believe really destabilizes the child care workforce,” Robinson said.
Robinson added that her proposal “should have less of an impact on families” than the governor’s plan.
“There’s certainly a conversation that we’ll have in the remaining days of session about the impact on providers and trying to mitigate that impact,” Robinson said. “We want to keep a robust provider network.”
Republicans could support the proposed attendance policy changes on their own, said state Rep. Travis Couture, R-Allyn. But alongside other cuts and without reforms to improve accountability with state child care spending, he said Republicans aren’t on board.
“We have to look at everything at once and how that affects our communities and the things that they’ve put together are devastating,” said Couture, the leading budget voice for House Republicans.
Robinson wasn’t sure why lawmakers hadn’t made the proposed changes sooner to the attendance policy. “The Legislature is slow to react sometimes,” she said.
This would be the second year in a row that state lawmakers have scaled back child care and early learning funding to make ends meet.
Last year, they delayed expansions to the 2021 Fair Start for Kids Act and Working Connections that would have opened programs to more families. Robinson’s legislation eliminates entirely expansions for Working Connections, set for 2029 and 2031.
This year, both the House and Senate are also proposing reductions to the Transition to Kindergarten program.
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