Child care providers balk at fee hikes

Child care providers and their allies want Gov. Jan Brewer to tap federal stimulus funds to avoid — or at least delay — a sharp hike in licensing fees.

In a letter to the governor Tuesday, representatives of eight organizations said the increase is being foisted upon them, and, by extension, the parents who pay for care of their children, without proper consideration and without a chance to prepare.

They say Brewer has millions of “discretionary” stimulus dollars at her fingertips that she could use to underwrite the cost of licensing and inspecting these facilities rather than simply raising rates.

Dana Wolfe Naimark, president of the Children’s Action Alliance, said the amount of money to be raised — the health department needs to generate an extra $5 million to make the program self-sufficient — is a worthwhile use of those dollars.

“There are a lot of serious issues,” she said. “And this is one of them.”

And Naimark, at the Capitol for a rally and then to testify at a public hearing against the Department of Health Services proposal, pointed out that Brewer has tapped that account for other purposes.

“If we can use stimulus dollars to fix the roof on the Veterans Memorial Coliseum (at the state fairgrounds), we can use them to keep the roof from falling in on child care,” she said.

Gubernatorial press aide Paul Senseman said Brewer, who has not taken a position on the proposal, is willing to consider the request, at least in the short term.

But Senseman said Brewer has less than $100 million left of the original $183 million in discretionary dollars.

And he said the governor has to decide among competing demands, some of which are more important than others.

In this case, Senseman said, what those opposed to the fee hike are demanding amounts to using stimulus dollars to cut the costs for child care center operators.

“Obviously the downside to utilization of stimulus funds for that (is) it could be taking dollars away from parents and giving it to operators,” he said. Senseman said there are other demands for more money, including making up for cuts in programs that subsidize child care cost for low-income parents.

Senseman also sought to distance Brewer from the move for the sharp increases.

He said the reason the health department is asking for the higher fees is that the Legislature refused to consider a temporary sales tax to balance the budget. Instead, Senseman said, lawmakers directed the agency to make the child care licensing program self-supporting.

Those proposed increases are significant.

Right now, all child care centers pay $150 a year every three years.

The proposal would hike that fee for the smallest centers — those with no more than 10 children — to $351. But the plan includes a sliding scale, with the fee for the largest of the care centers going to more than $13,000.

Interim state Health Director Will Humble said that jump is not as much as it might seem. He said it comes out to about 40 cents a week for each child.

But Bruce Liggett, executive director of the Arizona Child Care Association, said that computation is based on each center’s rated capacity. He said some facilities are operating at less than half of that.

Liggett said nonprofit centers operated by religious institutions and schools simply can’t afford the hike.

Liggett said center operators, who were unaware of the plan until recently, haven’t been collecting those higher fees from parents for the last three years and don’t have that kind of money in the bank to pay them.

Liggett said he is willing to consider “a realistic phase-in plan,” doubling fees this year and doubling them again next year and again the third year. He said that’s where the stimulus dollars come in, bridging the gap between the cost of the licensing and inspections and what the operators can pay.

Senseman also defended Brewer’s use of $1.7 million in discretionary stimulus funds for the roof repair at the Coliseum.

“It’s a revenue generator,” he said of the building, which serves as the venue for concerts during the three-week state fair.