by Ross Williams, Georgia Recorder, [This article first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, republished with permission]

December 13, 2024

This story was updated at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 13 to include comment from Sen. Elena Parent.

Georgia Senate leaders have started to outline specifics of their plans to reduce child care costs when they meet back at the Capitol next month.

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones backed three tax credit tweaks in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed Thursday morning, and at the Capitol Thursday afternoon, a Senate study committee on affordable child care unanimously approved a list of recommendations that could soon be crafted into legislation.

Committee chair Brian Strickland, a McDonough Republican, said he’s optimistic that lawmakers in both chambers will have the appetite to take some serious action this year.

“Even though we’ve seen other issues come up in the past – other people have worked on this particular issue – this is the first time I’ve seen this much conversation about it,” he said. “It’s something that impacts, of course, anybody with children in our state. If you don’t have kids, you have grandkids or you know someone with kids and it’s something that everybody’s dealing with. So I’m just glad to see this conversation happening at such a high level. And so I do think you’re going to see some real reforms.”

Some of the committee’s list of over a dozen recommendations mirror those put forward by Jones.

The lieutenant governor says he’ll back an increase in the tax credit for child and dependent care expenses from 30% to 40%, a new Georgia Child Tax Credit of $250 per child under 7 and an expansion of Georgia’s tax credit for employer-sponsored child care.

“These measures will help families who are struggling to afford the cost of child care and will encourage more businesses to offer child care as an employee benefit,” Jones wrote in Thursday’s column. “Crucially, these efforts will also make day care more affordable and accessible for day care workers themselves, helping to address a critical shortage in that field.”

The committee’s recommendations also aim to bolster recruitment and retention of child care workers by evaluating pay rates for infant and toddler teachers compared with pre-K and K-12 teachers.

Parents could see more slots in the Child and Parent Services Program, or CAPS, which helps low-income families with child care costs or an expansion of lottery-funded pre-K services to 3-year-olds. Parents who are also students in public universities or technical schools and studying for high-demand careers could benefit from new child care grant money.

Atlanta Democratic Sen. Elena Parent, who also served on the committee, said there is bipartisan agreement about the issue, but there will likely be debate during the session about how much the state should chip in.

“It’s a really important issue that has a ripple effect throughout our entire system, communities and economy, so that’s fantastic,” Parent said. “I think that there’s no doubt that in order to try to make child care more affordable for families, it will take some state investment, and so then the question is how much are the Republican leaders willing to make a meaningful investment in these critical needs that Georgia parents have?”

Strickland suggested lawmakers will be cautious about funding and may prefer to focus on expanding existing programs like CAPS rather than creating new programs that could call for high initial investments, such as a proposed early child care trust fund that could cost billions up front but yield more in returns over years and decades. The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute testified that investing $1.5 billion into such a trust fund could yield $1 billion in returns in the first ten years, while a $4 billion initial investment would yield nearly $2.8 billion in the same time frame.

“There’s the idea of increasing the current programs we have, such as more slots for CAPS, and that’s one thing, but you do have to be careful about creating a new program,” he said. “So we did mention in our report evaluating what some sort of trust fund program would look like, but I don’t think you’re going to see someone saying, here’s $2 billion, create a new program right now, because we have to be careful to stay within our finances and and look at what we’re spending.”

Parent argued that a trust fund, which could be a heavy political lift requiring a constitutional referendum and voter approval, would be a good use of the state’s $11 billion-plus surplus because it would continue to yield yearly payouts from the initial investment.

“Gov. (Brian) Kemp has made it clear, as have some of the other leaders, I think Speaker (Jon) Burns said this recently, too, that he does not see the very large surplus we have as being an appropriate use of year-over-year spending,” Parent said. “That’s kind of what I like about the trust fund idea, because it would be self-sustaining, and it would be the type of meaningful generational impact investment that you could make now that we have saved up this huge amount of money.”

The recommendations also call on lawmakers to consider legislation on pregnancy discrimination after hearing testimony that women who become pregnant have been discriminated against and forced out of their jobs.

Strickland, who is the father of two young children, said specific bills based on these recommendations will begin to be filed in January, and he expects more discussions on measures to help the families of the youngest Georgians.

“Looking beyond this, our current law on paternity leave, and we saw a paternal leave law for state employees doubled this last year, and should we go further with that?” Strickland said. “I think you’re looking at a big conversation around doing more to help people with children find ways to work, because it’s obviously good for these families, but it’s also good for businesses and employees as well.”

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