The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Lamont has a plan for Connecticut education funds
HARTFORD — Gov. Ned Lamont began an effort Wednesday to publicly lobby support for his administration’s plan to address the state’s critical shortage of child care, even as Democratic leaders signaled their desire to take another approach.
The governor’s plan would invest an additional $43 million in early education over the next year — nearly the same amount that his administration has proposed cutting from tuition aid to magnet and charter schools.
The proposal to shift money towards new priorities has frustrated some Democrats, who have accused Lamont of backing out of a deal brokered last year to boost spending for public schools, and shifting more of the costs on local school districts.
“I thought early childhood was education,” Lamont told reporters Wednesday, when asked about those concerns. “I thought this was broadly within the parameters of where we wanted to make these investments. I also realize when it came to K-12 education, we have well over $400 million in federal funding that’s not yet been put to work.”
In an effort to build support for his plan, Lamont made a visit to a day care center in Hartford’s South End on Wednesday morning, along with the city’s newly elected mayor, Arunan Arulampalam.
Nearly half of the new funding in Lamont’s plan, $20.1 million, would come from the state’s general fund to boost child care subsidies for low- and moderate-income families and improve school readiness programming.
The remainder of the package is composed of one-time federal funds for child care providers, including a $1.8 million grant to establish a pilot program in eastern Connecticut that will create between 250 and 300 child care slots funded by the state, local employers and parents.
“Having a kid home from school, having a kid home from day care, has such an impact on the ability of families to get to work and to do their jobs,” Arulampalam said. “The economic impact it has on our state as a whole, across many families across the state, is in the billions of dollars.”
At about the same time across town however, House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, told reporters
“Having a kid home from school, having a kid home from day care, has such an impact on the ability of families to get to work and to do their jobs. The economic impact it has on our state as a whole, across many families across the state, is in the billions of dollars.”
Arunan Arulampalam, Hartford mayor
gathered in his office that the governor needed to re-calibrate his plan to find a new way to pay for child care initiatives that would not take money away from K-12 schools.
Specifically, Ritter proposed placing funding into a trust fund created by lawmakers last year and that lays outside of the state’s fiscal guardrails — which Lamont has said should be left in place.
When asked whether such a solution would be seen as a budgetary gimmick that could spook credit rating agencies, Ritter said it would do the opposite, pointing to the findings of a Blue Ribbon Task Force last year that estimated the economic impact from the lack of child care providers was as much as $1.5 billion each year.
“They said from an economic development perspective, we believe the single biggest thing is putting people back to work so they have jobs and they are paying taxes, and the single biggest thing holding them back is child care,” Ritter said.
The speaker added that he had had “conversations” with Lamont’s office regarding his concerns, adding brusquely that the issue would likely remain a source of disagreement between the governor and lawmakers, to be worked out over the course of the next several months.
“Don’t do blue ribbon commissions, don’t set up trust funds, if you don’t intend to fund them.”