In 38 states, including Indiana, the cost of child care for an infant exceeds the in-state tuition of a four year public college.

Given the exceedingly low odds of a six month old passing a college entrance exam, many working parents find themselves grappling with the same conundrum should we stretch our finances or even go into debt to pay for child care?

Or should we quit our jobs to care for our kids?

Hi, I'm Jon Schwantz, and on this week's show, we'll examine that all too common quandary with an eye not only toward the well-being of parents caught in such a predicament, but also toward the overall vitality of our state's workforce and economy.

Indiana lawmakers from the statehouse to your house.

Indiana lawmakers is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations, with additional support provided by ParrRichey.

Limited availability and increasing costs are leading to a childcare crisis in the state.

The Indiana Youth Institute noted that Indiana's average cost of center based child care for a toddler is more than $8,500 annually.

During the pandemic, the federal government gave the state $1 billion for childcare.

This has been used to support the Child Care and Development Fund, which in turn supported daycares, preschools and after school care centers.

Lawmakers in the state declined to use state funds to continue this expansion long term, leading to the decision last year to freeze childcare vouchers for low income working families until 2027.

An estimated 32,000 children were on the waitlist as of last fall at the time of the announcement.

Early Learning Indiana reported that more than 20% of childcare providers within the state depend on these voucher funds to maintain operations.

As a result, childcare centers across the state have been forced to close as families find themselves unable to pay the steep cost.

At the same time, the Indiana General Assembly has loosened regulations for childcare providers by removing age requirements for staff, by increasing ratios to permit more children with fewer adults, and by minimizing restrictions on unlicensed home care to serve more children for longer hours.

This deregulation aims to attract more individuals to the field.

Childcare workers nationwide make an average of just $14.60 per hour, making it one of the lowest paid professions.

Joining me to talk about child care in Indiana are Representative Carey Hamilton an Indianapolis Democrat Representative Danny Lopez, a Carmel Republican.

Vanessa Green Sinders, president and CEO of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

And Sam Snideman, vice president of government relations for United Way of Central Indiana.

Now, I'm a few years removed, believe it or not, from child care.

So.

But I understand there's an issue here.

Some would even call it a crisis.

And in fact, at a committee hearing Ways and Means this week, Greg Porter, Democrat, arguing for two amendments that both were soundly defeated, said it's not just, you know, challenges.

It's not just difficulties.

It is a crisis.

Danny Lopez, you were happened to be on that committee and we're in that hearing.

Is he right?

Look, I don't think there's any doubt.

And I don't think you're going to get any argument from anybody that this is one of those issues that crushes just about anybody in any community that has kids, right?

It's a workforce issue.

It's an issue for our our companies and our employers, but it's an issue for people across the the economic spectrum as well.

And it's something that has to be addressed.

And we, you know, we created a cliff inadvertently, but we created a little bit of a cliff and we're having to deal with that.

Obviously we're in a non budget year.

So presents a little bit of a challenge.

But there are things that we can look at.

And we are looking at this session to try to ease some of those regulations and, and get employers to the table or continue to bring employers to the table and give them new tools to invest in our families and our kids.

Because, you know, I think Representative Porter is right.

There's probably a few things that are as pressing as this issue and as significant and consequential, for, for life, for just about everybody here in Indiana.

Not enough to get you to vote for either of his amendments.

All right.

So we're we're working on some really good work and all the other stuff.

All right.

Carey Hamilton, same question.

Crisis.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And you've said, you this is an issue that's been near and dear to you.

You've been on this very couch, talking about it in the past.

You say it's critical infrastructure.

Elaborate on what you mean by that.

That's right.

Well, so first of all, the the state Chamber of Commerce, actually, at the end of 2024, did an economic impact study, and they show that there's a $4.2 billion economic hit every year in Indiana due to the lack of access to affordable childcare across our state.

So clearly that's infrastructure that we don't have, right?

I mean, families rely on childcare to be able to go to work, and we don't have access to it.

And so many of our communities and folks who even have access often can't afford it.

So that's the economic impact, that big hit.

And that study also show there's 1.1 plus billion dollars in lost tax revenue.

That's part of that, that economic of the overall.

So imagine if we invested just a small portion of that billion dollars every year in shoring out that childcare system so that there's more access in our communities and it's more affordable so that we treat those providers as the professionals, that, you know, that are trained and are paid, compensated appropriately, as, you know, the educators and caretakers for our youngest Hoosiers.

You know, there are so many numbers and stats and figures we could employ in this conversation.

But I'm trying to remember we're talking about kids and humans, but we've talked about $8,500 on average, the cost for Hoosiers paying for childcare, $12,000, I think, is the figure for infant care.

We could talk about the thousands of people on waiting list.

We could talk about all of these things.

But that $4 billion has gotten a lot of mileage.

4.2.

If we're if we're getting the full amount again, that was the U.S.

chamber, a few years ago, came out with that.

Is that resonating with lawmakers when you say, hey, look at this figure, this isn't just about struggling Hoosiers.

This is about potential loss to the state.

Yeah, I think definitely I think you have to put it in economic terms to, kind of you know, help the conversation move forward.

And that was a study that, as you mentioned, the Indiana Chamber, along with the US chamber and early learning Indiana, did together to quantify the importance.

As Representative Lopez said of this issue.

And for us, we hear about it all.

The time from employers, because it is keeping their workers from coming to work or staying at work or coming back to the workforce after they've had kids.

And we all know that talent and workforce is key to Indiana's future economic success.

And so, this is an issue that we got to work on.

And, of course, and this is an issue important to your organization as well, approaching it perhaps maybe not from the business perspective, but from the human services perspective and the needs in our state.

How do you size this up?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that when you look at, these cost, figures for child care, right?

Our state's, median wages just haven't kept up.

Right.

And so most people are paying, on average, more than 10%, more than 11% of their incomes on childcare when they've got, kids that need care.

That just puts a significant strain on individual households.

What we're also seeing are the nonprofit, providers and really even the for profit providers that are really struggling in this moment.

We've already lost 200, child care providers, really, since the reimplementation of the Ccdf waitlist in December of 24.

And, you know, thanks to some surveying by early learning Indiana, it seems like we may lose an additional 10 to 15% of our capacity over the next year if some things don't change.

And what that means for households, whether they are subsidized through Ccdf or on my way, pre-K, or whether they're self-pay, families who can afford their own care, is that when providers are in trouble, that has downstream impacts to households and then further downstream impacts to the employer community.

And just to dive into a few of those numbers here, I thought I wasn't going to get into numbers, but you mentioned 7 or 11% is the average, impact in terms of the household income being expanded on on these needs and services, if I'm not mistaken, US Health and Human Services says the target should be no more than seven.

Correct.

So, yeah.

So you know, and in many of our households, right, that number is much higher than 11%, particularly when you add additional children into the mix.

It becomes prohibitively expensive.

And so, as you've seen in the chambers research and research elsewhere, many people are opting out of the workforce because it just doesn't make financial sense.

And often it is women.

It is, folks who are of lower incomes and who can't afford to take these hits that are bearing the brunt of the fiscal cost.

And I think the same makes a really important point.

And I think this is why we have to look at this holistically, as opposed to just thinking about how do we, how do we cut a check year after year into the system, which, you know, again, when as we head into the budget next year, we're going to be looking at how we close that gap from a fiscal standpoint.

But it really kind of reminds me of the way Fred Glass speaks about food insecurity at Gleaners.

You've got to deal with the with the the crisis, right?

You've got to deal with the with the issue facing our families, and then you've got to shorten the line.

And I think, you know, we've got to continue to do things to get wages up right.

We've got to do things to to continue to cut regulations, to bring the costs of providing that daycare, that child care down.

So I think there's it's really about looking at this holistically.

And that's a lot of what we're doing, you know, thinking about how we get employers new tools.

These are the kinds of things that I think we have to be focused on this session as we, you know, ramp up into into January of next year.

And when you say it's not just about writing a check.

And you mentioned earlier when we the first time around the panel here, you talked about being at a cliff.

I was suggesting I take it that there was too much willingness to write a check, perhaps during the pandemic, when federal dollars were flowing.

But those were One-Time dollars, and that's.

Yeah, the cliff.

You're.

Yeah, but I wouldn't classify it that way.

I mean, I think at the end of the day, we made significant investments.

During the pandemic, rightly, I think, in our families.

But the dollars were flowing.

But when those dollars dry up, there has to be a plan, right?

Because you just can't sustain that indefinitely over time.

And so I think what we're dealing with now is the result of that, escalated enrollment escalated in the vouchers, escalated funding for that.

But once that dries up, then where do you go?

And that's what we're sort of grappling and that's.

Yeah.

Let's talk about digging into some of these solutions.

First of all, just think about families at all parts of the economic spectrum right now with the ccdf waitlists that we've created, that's more than 25,000 families that suddenly don't have access to childcare.

These are the lowest income, hard working families.

And they're, you know, really, really struggling.

And then at the other end of the spectrum, we have folks say in the suburbs around Indianapolis waiting 12, 18, even 24 months for access to child care in their community.

They can't even get in the door.

So that's kind of the crisis we have, let alone can they afford.

Is that because there aren't I mean, the dollars aren't there, or because the facilities aren't there?

I know there I've seen data that suggests that there are two thirds of the counties in Indiana that are essentially a desert, a desert.

That's absolutely right.

So we have we have to tackle this from many perspectives or angles.

We we clearly have deserts.

Right.

That's the you just said the statistic.

So how do we build up that.

Again basic infrastructure I want to point to.

So this really crisis in our state, lots of states have been trying to figure out how to deal with building out childcare infrastructure.

And they're coming up with solutions.

They're coming up with targeted investments.

They are making investments, the very strategic, targeted investments in different parts of the system to lift it up, to make sure that those workers are paid, decently so that they can support their own families so that maybe they can even afford childcare themselves.

Jon, imagine that our childcare workers being able to for childcare and having access to affordable health care.

These are some of the tools that different states are employing.

But I want to point back to Ccdf.

It's critical to remember which is the fund, the child care for the lowest income families, child care development fund.

We've we you know, it's a year and a half ago, if you were eligible for that fund, very low income working parents, you would have access to affordable childcare today.

You do not.

80% of that investment is federal dollars.

So when we don't match, we're turning away a major federal investment in that basic infrastructure.

I think that's a mistake.

And lots of states are doing things.

Some are capping the amount that a household can spend somehow.

New Mexico, if I'm not mistaken, actually was the first state in the country to say universal child care, not only for parents grand.

If you're a grandparents and you're taking care of kids, sign here, sign you up.

It's free to all comers.

Yeah, well, I actually want to talk about an example here in Indiana because I think, as we've all mentioned, this is just an issue that we have to be really creative on and think about lots of solutions and think about it holistically.

I mean, back to Representative Lopez's point.

I think we increasingly think about it not as child care, but as early learning and the the start of a child's education, which is going to pay off not only for that child but that family, Indiana, the workforce.

And so, again, I think thinking about it more holistically, but also we have examples here in the state, the northeast, Indiana Early Learning Coalition up in Fort Wayne is has a pilot going a tri share model where they're using, kind of economic development grant as a piece of the funding.

Parents are contributing.

And then employers are contributing to, again, close that gap so that those kids can, you know, go to, daycare and and get that education.

And they have, I think, close to 150 kids enrolled, 17 employers.

And again, it's a pilot, but I think it's just indicative of how we're all trying to roll up our sleeves and figure out how to do it.

Kind of the model that could be House Bill 1177, which you're a coauthor of a coauthor on representative cash has worked on, very passionate about this issue actually gets to at some of these issues that, that Vanessa cited.

I mean, how do we allow, local economic development actors to tap into Tiff as an example to use in providing, child care in their tax increment financing district?

So if you're getting property tax, right, you know, expanding, you know, we we admittedly have not done, nearly enough to, to promote, to get information to Vanessa so she can get it to her members and other groups on the, the employer, childcare expenditure tax credit, which is underutilized.

So expanding that, but doing a better job is you zero right.

Right.

Nobody tapped into it that passed in.

And so what you want to do is expand eligibility so you can do it not just in-house, but you can a company could hire a party and expand to expand the pool of who could use those tax credits as well.

Right now, it's confined to businesses of 100 or less.

We want to expand that to 500.

So I mean, I think part of it is expanding.

Who can use it.

Part of it is, is also just making sure that we're talking about it and messaging it correctly so people know about it.

But the other, the one thing I did want to hit on, just real quick, is because I think it's an important point, is, you know, one of the steps that we took during the last budget session were really critical and ensuring that the people that were on the families that were on the program already receiving Ccdf could stay on and continue to receive that funding.

So we preserved that funding.

It hasn't been, except the vouchers have been worth less to providers.

The their goal, the goal.

But the goal is to ensure that the people who need this most can continue to receive, the funding that they need to have their have their, children in childcare.

We've got to make the fund sustainable.

And we can't we can't just kind of go along the route that we were going.

Same as this is this approach.

You like this notion that what's in 1177?

Again, there's another approach.

I'll talk about a bill that didn't get a hearing, that another member of the panel, authored.

But is it all of the above approach or weigh in on this?

I, I think Representative Lopez is right.

I think an all of the above approach is right.

I think representative Porter has had offered a bill around repurposing or redirecting some portion of the state's fiscal responsibility, an opportunity growth fund that was passed in the last session.

This is about $300 million, which would address, if I'm not mistaken, the wait list.

Yes, I think that there are pieces.

Representative Hamilton, Senator Condor, I know colleagues in the House and the Senate have all offered different ideas.

Representative Haney and his sgo idea for early learning all of these things are necessary because in this moment, what we actually need is more funds into the system.

They don't all have to be government funds, right?

They should include some element of the business community.

They should include some element of philanthropy, and they probably should include, where possible, some element of family responsibility.

But ultimately this is an issue for providers.

As Representative Hamilton mentioned in, in terms of being able to create a sustainable system so that they can then provide care for kids and families.

Well, the governor in his state of the state address recently said that, you know, he identified this is a very important issue and said he's eager.

I think he said to dig into it in the next budget session, which, again, is great.

But if we've had 200 or some closures already of facilities, and I've heard from a lot of institutions and providers that say, I'm not sure we can make it to a budget session, you're saying this holistic approach may be great, but we need to do something in the short term?

Well, we do, and I so I'll point back, Vanessa mentioned the the tri share model that's working in northeast Indiana.

So I've coauthored a bill with my colleague, Representative Dan Chesser.

It's her bill.

Glad to be a coauthor on that.

That would expand that tri share model across the state.

That's a proven model that's working right now for families and employers.

I also have a bill that, as you mentioned, don't get a tax, hearing and that's, child care tax credit that goes directly to parents, whereas the one would go to businesses that provide the care.

Yours, which didn't get a hearing, would have said, you get an on your person.

Families know it's coming credit.

That's the model that I support.

Although it's not it's not doing anything right now.

This model would immediately help families and we need that immediate relief.

I will also I also want to point out we've in, you know, the last two years the state has, made some backed up some loans to some facilities across the state to help them expand, build new infrastructure, these high quality learning centers in our communities that are now having to they're defaulting on these state back loans because of the cuts to CDF.

So it's really shortsighted decision making that's compounding this crisis today.

Can we afford to wait?

Danny Lopez, how do we get from here to the budget year?

I mean, assuming that that the dollars we do have a rosier forecast updated forecast than than when things look pretty bleak.

But there isn't a desire or willingness to open the budget which which is stipulated here.

I've been, you know, like like some like you, some of these folks, I've been I've been in and out of the state House individuals for 20 years, and I can't remember a none budget year where there wasn't some urgent need that would call for, hey, we've got to reopen the budget.

We've got to take a look at this.

The reality is that's not how we do, fiscal here in Indiana for a reason.

And it served us extremely well.

So I think we need to be cautious.

And I think we need to be smart about figuring out what are the other levers that we can pull in the meantime, as we ramp up to figure out really how you make that program sustainable into the future and take that into a budget year, I think that's got to be the approach.

And I think that is the approach that we're taking, and I think we're taking in a bipartisan way, by the way, I think there's really good ideas on all sides that are going to feed into the solutions.

You know, obviously, you don't want these centers, you know, you hear about these centers that are closing and nobody wants that.

And it's creating a shortage.

And there's a rash of that, too.

But also we, you know, some of the some of these regulations are contributing to this, but the centers also have to figure out how they can be sustainable.

Not exclusively on public funding as well.

Right.

So we've got to figure out that as well.

We can't have centers that are fully reliant on this funding flowing for their business model, because otherwise, again, that's not a sustainable model moving forward.

Vanessa, if let me ask you if if 1177, is passed and I think there's probably a good chance that the governor signs it, our businesses eager to take advantage, as we noted a minute ago, granted, it was a different kind of criteria and structure for getting the tax credit, but zero, of the capacity was tapped.

The governor has said, you know, everybody needs to have skin in the game.

I presume he's talking about the business community as well.

How poised is the business community in Indiana to jump on 1177 and take advantage of it, or anything else?

It might.

I mean, I think we are poised because again, this is an issue that we hear so much about.

And I think that the changes that the bill contemplates are going to allow for that additional flexibility and reach across different sizes of business, and not just go to the, the business, but also if they, kind of contract with a provider or a third party to do those childcare services.

I mean, we, the Indiana Chamber, we did a childcare summit for the first time last November that was really well attended from folks across the state.

Again, back to what we've all been talking about.

Like, this is a tough issue and we've got to figure out how we can come together and address it.

And I just think that that speaks to people being willing to lean in, maybe more or in different ways.

And it is also incumbent upon us as, the, the organization that represents all of business to obviously be sharing the great work, of, you know, should, should hopefully that bill will pass and we'll be out there talking about it.

There was one other I mean, again, this is smaller, but I think in this environment we need to look at every opportunity to, help on this issue.

There's a bill that would that deals with HOA fees and making sure that residents who live in an HOA area can, you know, open up and have a child care center if you meet all the, you know, HOA can't say we don't want a business.

Exactly.

Yeah.

At least that kind of business.

And again, that's not that is just one piece of the puzzle.

But back to like trying to be creative and think about different solution races.

I think, you know, we've talked about until that show you gave that observation.

We've been talking mostly about how to solve this with money.

We've seen the last couple sessions.

There were regulatory changes, you know, maybe lowering the age of people who are providing the care or supervising the care or allowing unlicensed care facilities to have more capacity, etc., etc.. Is there more to be done on the regulatory?

I think we're very close to hitting this threshold there.

Obviously, we need to be very careful when it comes to providing safe environments for our kiddos.

But Jon, I want to get back to a really important point that Vanessa made earlier about early learning and care.

So we know that about 90% of brain development happens in the first 4 to 5 years of life.

And so when we're talking about making these investments and high quality child care, that's really a high quality learning environment for all of our kiddos, which gives our kids, you know, a level playing field to start off with a strong education.

I think one of the great solutions to help, shrink this child care crisis is to provide pre-K for all.

Right?

Off the bat, you have four year olds and a high quality, learning safe environment all day long.

And that's a proven investment in those kiddos, which has been piloted in Indiana in a number of years.

And it was also scaled back in this most recent budget.

And it's important to mention that the budget that we passed in April was based on a fiscal forecast that was incorrect.

We pretty quickly figured out, Jon, that we had millions, billion more coming in, each year that we could have then said, because this is a crisis, we are actually going to do away with the CDF cuts and the pre-K cuts.

We have not done that yet.

I'm almost out of time.

Quickly.

Do we solve this or is this something we come back to every year?

Is it like roads in Indiana?

It's never done.

I think any any human problem is a problem that we will continue to have to tweak around the edges.

Right?

There are no single, there are no single solutions because every household in every community has slightly different needs.

We will need to continue to innovate on this issue over time.

But that isn't to say that the scale of the challenge doesn't mean that we have we have to, absolve ourselves of the ability to dive into it.

All right.

Good discussion.

Appreciate your, input.

Important topic.

Certainly.

Again, my guests have been Democratic Representative Carey Hamilton of Indianapolis, Republican Representative Danny Lopez of Carmel, Vanessa Green, Sinders of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, and Sam Snyderman of United Way of Central Indiana.

Time now for our weekly conversation with analyst Ed Feigenbaum, publisher of the newsletter Indiana Legislative Insight, part of Hannah News Service.

Ed does anything tangible, significant come out of this conversation about child care this session?

More discussion.

Now it seems like we've turned at least one corner, because it used to be that the child care was a social issue.

And viewed in that context, I think what Greg Porter and some of the House Democrats called human capital, but now it's turned into an economic issue, as you saw by the imperative that Vanessa Green was just talking about earlier.

And so I think that that's really kind of changed and framed the discussion.

And even though it seems like we just keep kicking the can down the road, I think you're going to see something substantial in the 2027 budget session.

And part of the reason, perhaps if we don't see anything sweeping this session, it's because there's no time and it's not a budget session.

A lot of stuff is on the table still.

Sure.

And we've got a compacted session this year, and we got kind of a late start or an early start.

I'm not sure how you'd characterize that.

Both.

And this week was a very active week for second and third readings.

And there were some things on there that came up that I think also weren't really anticipated to be some big issues, that the so-called militarization of the Indian national Guard kind of sucked a lot of oxygen out of the the House chamber yesterday.

But they've also been really accomplishing some things, like a bipartisan utility derail it.

Well, not deregulation, but, really a, cost containment measure that made it through the house earlier this week and looks like it's greased to to run through the Senate.

See, reminder.

Don't ever think you've got the legislature figured out.

Always some issues that aren't there that come up and surprise you.

Ed, as always, appreciate your insight.

Thank you Jon.

Is a casino coming soon to a community near you?

We'll look at efforts to modify the state's multifaceted gaming industry on the next Indiana lawmakers.

Well, that's it for this week's show.

I'm Jon us.

And on behalf of everyone involved in the program, I thank you for joining us.

And I invite you to visit wfyi.org for more statehouse news.

Until next week, take care.

Indiana lawmakers is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations, with additional support provided by ParrRichey.