Bills Before Legislature Aim to Make Child Care More Affordable, Accessible

As the Legislature nears its midway mark, lawmakers are looking to a state-sponsored scholarship program as a vehicle for addressing Montana’s growing child care access and affordability woes, and eyeing tax credits as another prospective avenue of relief for parents, child care workers and employers across the state. 

A pair of proposals introduced this month by Rep. Jonathan Karlen, D-Missoula, seeks to use an income-based state assistance program — the Best Beginnings scholarship — to make the rising costs of child care more affordable for a wider swath of Montana families. House Bill 456 would establish that all child care workers at licensed facilities who work a certain number of hours automatically qualify for the program regardless of income. House Bill 457 would slash the family income eligibility threshold from 185% of the federal poverty level to 85% of the state median income. The measures come with budget requests from the state General Fund of $5.5 million and $17 million, respectively.

“One of the biggest problems child care providers face is it is hard to recruit and keep talented early child care education professionals,” Karlen told the House Business and Labor Committee on Feb. 21, in reference to HB 456. “In large part that’s because of low wages.” He referenced a 2023 state Department of Labor and Industry report that found the average child care worker earns about $23,000, telling the committee “realistically you can earn more working in a retail store.”

HB 456 and HB 457 advanced out of their initial committees with bipartisan support in recent days and will appear on the House floor at a later date. 

Child care advocates have hailed Karlen’s twin Best Beginnings bills as a promising effort to stabilize Montana’s child care system by both addressing recruitment and retention issues for providers and making child care more affordable for more parents. Caitlin Jensen, executive director of the Helena-based early childhood advocacy organization Zero to Five Montana, told MTFP the eligibility adjustment in HB 457 mirrors efforts in other states to tether financial assistance to state median incomes, adding that calculations based on the federal poverty level have continued to render some working families ineligible despite the growing need for assistance. Montana Advocates for Children Coordinator Grace Decker echoed that point, saying Karlen’s proposal creates a more “Montana-specific” eligibility measure.

“Over the years, child care has become a part of everyday life not just for parents leaving poverty, trying to get out of poverty, not just for single parents, but for all working parents,” Decker said. “For most families now, child care has become necessary in order to make their family economic picture work, but it’s very expensive based on the typical family’s income.”

In the Legislature’s other chamber, Sen. Josh Kassmier, R-Fort Benton, is spearheading a bipartisan push to create a series of child care tax credits to combat Montana’s mounting crisis. Kassmeir’s Senate Bill 321, introduced earlier this month, includes a $1,200-per-child credit for qualifying families as well as a $1,600 credit for child care workers and a credit of up to $5,000 for businesses that provide direct child care assistance to their employees. The proposal also sets up a formula for gradual reductions to the per-child credit for parents making more than $40,000 a year (or $80,000 for married couples filing taxes jointly), and requires child care workers to work more than 20 hours a week for at least six months in order to qualify for the $1,600 credit.

SB 321 has yet to appear before a Senate committee for its debut hearing. According to a fiscal note released by legislative staff this week, the tax credits proposed in SB 321 would result in a roughly $65 million annual reduction to the state’s general fund starting in 2026. The bill’s co-sponsors include 24 Republicans and Democrats from both legislative chambers.

Jensen likened the tax credits to a proposal pushed last session by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, who included a $1,200-per-child credit in his budget request to the 2023 Legislature. Though widely popular, the move was ultimately stymied by House Democrats frustrated by Republican inaction on the minority’s other policy priorities and resistant to conditions such as work requirements that were attached to the child tax credit. Kassmier, serving in the House at the time, sponsored the bill containing the credit. Jensen said she’s hopeful SB 321 will gain firmer traction this time around.

“It’s a really good policy, it’s a good start,” Jensen said. “Given where we’re at in our economic realities — the costs of food are really high, the cost of child care is really high — this isn’t going help to address all those things. But we know just from data and research that this level of tax credit, just getting money … it helps a lot with a lot of those costs that come with raising young children.”

Also in the Senate, Zero to Five Montana and other stakeholders are keeping tabs on a series of bills tied to ongoing disagreement over new child care regulations at the Department of Public Health and Human Services. Last spring, the agency completed an extensive multi-year overhaul of the rules governing child care licensing and operations in Montana, but lawmakers on an interim committee issued a formal objection to the rewrite, halting implementation until the Legislature had a chance to draft and debate changes of its own. 

Those proposals have begun to crystallize in several bills introduced by Sen. Dennis Lenz, R-Billings, which aim to revise the state’s requirements for child care businesses. That includes Senate Bill 285, a nearly 50-page measure that would make sweeping changes to state regulations around hiring, staffing and physical environments at child care facilities.

Lenz told the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Safety Committee Feb. 19 that he could have simply brought a one-page bill barring the implementation of DPHHS’s new rules, which will go into effect at the close of the 2025 session unless lawmakers pass their own rewrites. “Instead,” Lenz continued, “we took the route of doing a large amount of work to operate within the rules because many people within the daycare community said that this is what they want.”

Lenz framed SB 285 in particular as an effort to ensure new regulations around child care establishments reflect the Legislature’s input and goals, which he argued were ignored during the interim. However, DPHHS staff testified the proposal could jeopardize millions in federal funding by putting Montana out of compliance with health and safety requirements and would lengthen the time between mandatory criminal background checks for child care workers from every year to every five years. The Montana Chamber of Commerce, the American Heart Association, child care providers and parents were among those who joined DPHHS in opposing the bill along with Senate Bill 269, a similar measure from Lenz centered on smaller family-based providers.

“We’re watching that very closely because that could have a huge impact on child care, on existing providers,” Jensen told MTFP. “But also we’re just concerned about what that could mean and look like if it does move forward in terms of parents being able to feel comfortable with their kids going to child care because it does reduce quite a few health and safety regulations.”

As of Thursday, neither of the proposals had been voted on in committee. Meanwhile, various child care organizations continue to await the introduction of a talked-about effort among child care advocates and lawmaking allies to establish an early childhood trust fund in Montana, which Jensen said could help address gaps in the quality of child care options available for families.

This story originally appeared in the Montana Free Press, which can be found online at montanafreepress.org.