Gov. Mike Dunleavy said he does not support a request to add millions of dollars to the state budget to help child care providers, instead announcing the formation of a task force to examine the issue and provide policy recommendations by the end of the year.
Child care, expensive and in short supply in Alaska, has benefited from more than $50 million in federal pandemic aid paid as grants to providers since 2020. With the end of federal funding, child care advocates have asked legislators to add $15 million to the state budget to boost provider wages, which they say average around $13 per hour and could be raised by $5 per hour with the requested funding.
Dunleavy said such a funding boost this year would constitute a “knee-jerk reaction.”
“I’m not going to support $15 million in child care because we don’t even know what the child care is we’re talking about,” Dunleavy told reporters last Thursday in Anchorage. “But just to say $15 million — who knows, after the task force is done, it could be more. It could be less. We don’t know that until we go through this process.”
No state-licensed child care providers operate in Wrangell.
The task force will include three members from state government, and eight members representing child care providers, advocates, the business community, local government and parents. They will be charged with coming up with policy solutions including ones to provide incentives for private businesses to sponsor child care, and to offer on-site care for the children of state employees.
Child care advocates said they were hopeful that the formation of the task force signals a recognition by the administration of a problem that has long plagued the state. The lack of affordable, available child care services prevents many parents from taking jobs, costing Alaska $165 million in lost economic activity per year, according to one estimate.
But advocates also said urgent action is needed while the task force completes its work.
“I’m very concerned about what is going to happen if some funding is not added to the budget to specifically address the low wages that child care providers earn, which is currently the primary cause of the child care shortage,” said Blue Shibler, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Association for the Education of Young Children.
“The child care sector has been largely stabilized with (federal) pandemic-era dollars and those are going away, and we need some sort of infusion of money to replace those dollars right now, as soon as possible.”
The House Finance Committee narrowly voted down an amendment to the state operating budget late last month that would have added $15 million for the child care grant program. But Shibler said she and other advocates in the newly formed Child Care Coalition of Alaska would continue to push the Senate to add the funding to the budget.
Dunleavy announced the formation of the task force at the Credit Union 1 Alaska headquarters in Anchorage, which operates an on-site day care for employee children. Dunleavy signaled that while state investment could be needed, he was also looking to the private sector to provide solutions.
He was accompanied at the announcement by Kati Capozzi, president of the Alaska Chamber of Commerce, who said child care is “one of the top concerns” for the state’s business community, and related directly to recruitment and retention of workers.
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