By Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – Gov. J.B. Pritzker wants to make Illinois the best place for raising young children, but one state lawmaker said before putting in more taxpayer resources, the state needs to clean up its act.
Illinois already has an All Kids health insurance option and a child care subsidy for families 200 percent of the federal poverty line. Pritzker announced this month that would increase how much the state spends on early childhood programs such as the Child Care Assistance Program.
“Child care reimbursement rates for all center and home-based providers statewide are increasing by 5 percent,” the governor’s office said in a statement, “which will improve access to stable care for low-income families and increase wages of early childhood providers.”
The governor’s also announced the state would increase childhood workforce training dollars by $3 million.
Pritzker also met with a new task force he created to establish funding goals and ways to pay for providing early childhood services for all children up to five years old.
“I’ve asked all of you to join me today as we set an audacious goal. Illinois will be the best state in the nation for raising young children,” Pritzker said.
The new 29-member Illinois Commission on Equitable Early Childhood Education and Care Funding will chart a new course for early childhood funding, the governor said.
“This commission is tasked with developing the most innovative approach to affordability for early childhood education and childcare services for all children, birth to five,” Pritzker said.
The governor’s new commission is set to deliver recommendations by January 2021.
State Rep. Darren Bailey, R-Xenia, was critical of creating another task force.
“These task forces – name me one task force that’s even suggested anything decent?” Bailey said. “It’s a joke. Why waste anybody’s time? Let’s focus on what’s the business at hand. We can do this. We don’t have to add $4 billion to the budget as we did last year. We can do what we need to do and run efficiently.”
He said Illinois must spend the money it has efficiently before creating new programs to spend more money.
“They just do things and they stand up in Springfield and they say ‘we’ve got a revenue problem,’ and I stand up and say ‘no, we’ve got a spending problem,’” Bailey said.
While crafting this year’s budget in the spring session legislators discovered the Child Care Assistance Program actually had a surplus. Pritzker said his administration has increased the number of children served by nearly 20,000.
Lawmakers appropriated $1,172,599 to the Child Care Assistance Program for fiscal year 2020. Through November, the state had spent $348,869 of that total. However, officials said that with an upcoming rate increase for providers, the entire amount is expected to be spent by the end of the fiscal year.
Illinois Radio Network can be reached at [email protected].
