CYFD seeking budget increase of $26M
Jacobson says most of funds would fill projected shortfall for child care program
New Mexico’s top child welfare official is asking state lawmakers for more than a 10 percent increase in funding for the next fiscal year, mostly to help cover rising costs of subsidized child care and preschool services for low-income families.
The request follows a year in which most state agencies saw a series of budget cuts as lawmakers and the governor wrangled with a fiscal crisis. The most recent revenue outlook for state government was slightly more optimistic than in the past, with legislative aides forecasting about $25 million in new money for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
The budget increase sought by Children, Youth and Families Secretary Monique Jacobson — to $275 million in state funds for fiscal year 2019 from $249 million in the current year — would take all of it.
With federal money included, the agency is seeking a total budget of more than $503 million.
During a Wednesday hearing at the state Capitol, Jacobson told members of the Legislative Finance Committee that an extra $25 million is needed to fill a projected shortfall in a program that helps close an achievement gap for thousands of low-income children in the state and lessens the chances that a child will experience neglect or abuse,
including fatal trauma.
“There is a real fatality prevention component to child care assistance,” Jacobson said.
Since 2015, she told lawmakers, at least nine infants and children in the state have died after being left with an inappropriate caregiver or while unattended after school.
Jacobson requests an additional $1 million to fill 16 vacant social worker positions to address a rising number of children in state custody.
The cost per child for day care and early education has risen, she said, from about $312 per month in 2012 to $535 in 2018, as the agency has responded to pressure to increase the quality of programs and ensure improvements in worker pay and education.
For years, studies have shown that child care workers and early childhood educators in New Mexico are among the lowest paid in the nation, and advocates have pushed for increases.
But there are plenty of other pressures on state government’s $6 billion budget.
Immediately after Jacobson spoke to legislators, state Human Services Secretary Brent Earnest warned that New Mexico will need to cough up $31 million to provide health insurance for 11,000 children around the state if Congress does not renew funding for the federal program that covers them.
The federal Children’s Health Insurance Program, which expired at the end of September without reauthorization, has enough money to cover the young people on its rolls through April or June, Earnest said.
His department, which also provides Medicaid, food aid and cash assistance to hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans, many of them children, is asking for a total budget increase of nearly $84 million next year.
The 30-day legislative session on fiscal matters that begins in mid-January will be the last regular session for Republican Gov. Susana Martinez. The spending plans the governor approves for the next fiscal year will carry into the administration of her successor — a fact that was not lost on lawmakers.
“Half of this funding is going to go to the next administration,” state Sen. John Arthur Smith, a Deming Democrat, told Jacobson. “So that is going to be a challenge for you.”
In an interview with The New Mexican, Jacobson said she believes the governor and legislators understand that the early childhood subsidies are critical in New Mexico, which consistently ranks near the bottom among states for educational measures and has high rates of childhood poverty, abuse and trauma.
The $120 million assistance program for families living at up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level, or $36,900 for a family of four, has grown from serving 17,000 children in 2015, when Jacobson stepped into the position, to nearly 20,000 in the current fiscal year, documents show.
Parents of children in the program must be either working or furthering their education. Under recent federal regulations, however, children can remain enrolled in subsidized child care or preschool programs for up to 12 months, even if a parent’s work or school status has changed.
Children, Youth and Families also is offering financial incentives for child care and preschool centers to meet the more rigorous standards of its highest program levels.
Jacobson doesn’t believe the agency’s request is extravagant. “We’re asking for what we believe we need,” she said.
If the agency fails to secure the funding, she added, it will have to work with the Legislature to determine which children to cut from the rolls.
Staff reporter Andrew Oxford contributed to this report.