* Natasha…

The Rauner administration is vehemently pushing against SB570, which lawmakers are to take up in overtime session next week. The bill would limit the power administration’s have over managing a state program in time of financial crisis. Advocacy groups have blasted Rauner for changing rules to the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) leading one group to erect billboards warning of Rauner’s “dangerous cuts.”

– In a memo obtained by POLITICO Illinois, the administration describes “high costs and unintended consequences” of the bill. “If enacted on January 1, 2016, the bill would add $220 million in program costs for the duration of Fiscal Year 2016 and have an annualized cost in excess of $800 million,” the memo says. READ THE MEMO: http://politi.co/1GLp6vr

* From the governor’s office…

Hi, Rich –
Hope you’re well.

I wanted to pass along the attached memo and the following statement to you. The statement is attributable to me.

“Unfortunately, rather than passing a budget, the Majority wants to politicize this issue. But with a huge price tag for taxpayers and a number of unintended consequences outlined in the memo, the bill presents a real problem for centrist Democrats, especially those who portray themselves as fiscal conservatives. The bill doesn’t just roll back a single emergency rule — it mandates nearly a billion dollars of annual spending regardless of available resources and threatens the viability of the program over the long run. Additionally, even if they pass this - there’s still no money to pay for CCAP so it won’t fix the underlying issue. Bad for taxpayers, bad for child care. It is a plainly political bill that would create as many problems as it pretends to solve.”

Thanks,
ck

Again, the DHS memo is here.

* However, back in August, DHS said it couldn’t determine the bill’s fiscal impact…

Fiscal Note (Dept. of Human Services)

Though the fiscal impact is indeterminable at this time, the amendment would provide the Department with little or no flexibility to manage the Child Care Program and live within established appropriations.

* Groups including Mrs. Rauner’s Ounce of Prevention sent their own letter today. The full response letter to legislators is here. Excerpt…

- 80,000 Illinois families are able to enter and remain in the work force

- 69,000 skilled early childhood education workers are employed in early learning facilities

- 46,450 employers in Illinois rely on CCAP to ensure their employees have a safe place to leave their children and are able to come to work every day

- CCAP generated $2.6 billion in revenue in 2014. For every 100 jobs created in child care, 56 are created in other industries. For every $100 spent on child care, $213 is spent in the economy

* However, nowhere in that letter was anything addressing the new DHS cost claims. So, I circled back to our pal Emily Miller at Voices for Illinois Children. Her response…

Hi Rich,

By now you have received a memo from a group of organizations encouraging lawmakers and the governor to support SB570, a bill that reverses dangerous cuts to child care implemented unilaterally by the Rauner Administration on July 1, 2015.

Notably absent from that memo is direct repudiation of numbers the administration put forward in its own memo issued this morning. That was intentional. The administration’s memo does not include information regarding how they arrived at their numbers - it simply states numbers as though they are factual.

For example, advocates cannot dissect claims of program costs when we are unsure what baseline is being used—are we comparing program costs from before the Governor’s devastating cuts, or after the cuts, when the administration turned away 15,000 children in the first month of the changes?

And what is the baseline for the annualized costs? The pre-cut levels? The post-cut levels? These are questions advocates do not know the answers to, and since we are unwilling to make numbers up, we are unable to refute the Governor’s claims as a result.

What we do know is that while the legislation would require restoring funding for the operation of the child care program, the cost of NOT funding the program is far greater than $220 million, or even $800 million (numbers used in the administration’s memo) due to the devastating impact that the Rauner Administration’s actions are having on working families. That is why advocates have for years called on Illinois lawmakers to identify revenue to sustain the program at the level necessary to meet the identified need.

No serious policymaker can honestly say investing in quality child care for working parents doesn’t save the state money in the short-and long-term. That’s why the coalition joined together to assess the real value of the CCAP program in Illinois. And that’s why we unanimously support the passage of SB570.

Thanks.

Emily Miller

Director, Policy and Advocacy

Voices for Illinois Children

* Related…

* Survey: Rauner’s Child Care Cuts Hitting Families, Providers Hard: Nearly 2,500 families from 100 child care centers in Illinois have lost access to state subsidized daycare because of the Rauner administration’s cuts to the program, according to a new survey of child care providers in the state.