Winnie VanDusen, 3, plays with blocks at Bumble Art Studio day care center in Astoria, Ore., Friday, Sept. 2, 2022. From Oregon to New York, demand for child care far exceeds supply. Families are growing increasingly desperate as providers deal with staffing shortages exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic as well as historically low pay worsened by inflation. (AP Photo/Craig Mitchelldyer)

By Susan Tebben

Special to The Times

Child care providers and local officials talked about the challenges that would be brought from two Ohio House bills focused on how alleged child care fraud is investigated, and how attendance is overseen at individual child care centers.

Ohio House Bill 647 and House Bill 649 were brought up by Republican co-sponsors in response to allegations of child care fraud in Minnesota made by a right-wing social media influencer, that made national headlines and caused the Trump administration to freeze federal child care funds to that state, and other Democratically led states.

Ohio officials have stood by their system, and child care providers do as well, but four legislators decided to introduce bills that would change the lead authority for child care fraud investigations, and propose new methods of verifying the attendance of children in facilities who accept state funds for Publicly Funded Child Care. H.B. 649 raised concerns from legislators and child care providers alike when it included a provision to take photos of the children being checked into the facilities, rather than the parent or guardian.

“I am completely opposed … around anything with doing facial recognition or photos of the children,” said Karen Lampe, owner and operator of a child care facility, who also spoke on behalf of the Ohio Association of Child Care Providers. “There is a privacy issue there.”

An amendment was added to the bill at the March 24 committee hearing prohibiting the storage of photos or videos taken at facilities, and would only allow footage of the facility and those checking in taken from devices specifically provided by the Ohio Department of Children and Youth.

“I think there’s not a broad amount of support for (child photo or video capture) staying in the bill,” state Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, said during the committee hearing.

Lampe and other child care providers also told the committee that the provisions of H.B. 647 that would limit “back-tapping” – allowing a child to be checked in retroactively for a day when check-in was missed – could cause problems and more administrative hurdles for providers. The legislation would reduce the current time period to change a child’s attendance record from 30 days to seven.

“While providers fully support accountability and timely documentation, this change is not operationally feasible and would unintentionally harm families, providers, and the very system it seeks to strengthen,” Lampe said.

Child care providers already have a system to remind parents to check in their children, and staff on hand who are specifically tasked to contact parents who haven’t yet added the previous attendance records.

Even on the day of check-in, the process can be a struggle, especially for those with multiple kids, and facilities with a limited amount of electronic check-in stations. The measures in H.B. 647 would only add to delays at the beginning of the day for parents who may other issues to handle, according to Lampe.

“Here’s the reality of drop-off and pick-up,” Lampe said. “Mom is late for work, she’s got three kids, one kid is screaming, another kid is having a meltdown. There’s somebody else that’s standing at the (check-in) machine, so she takes the kids to the classroom, she comes out, there’s somebody else standing at the tap machine, she’s got to get to work, she’s gone. That’s the challenge.”

As for H.B. 649, after comments made specifically mentioning Franklin County at a previous hearing on the bill, Franklin County Commissioner Erica Crawley came to the committee to speak.

Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney Shayla Favor spoke at the previous committee meeting, where Click mentioned accusations he’d heard that the commissioners had held up child care fraud investigations. Favor denied the allegations, saying the commissioners had no role in such investigations, and Crawley further defended the commissioners.

“Despite assertions made before this committee last week, the Franklin County Board of Commissioners and its agencies have no role in investigating these centers, nor have we interfered in any such investigations,” Crawley said.

The commissioner is also a former state legislator, who said in her tenure as a state representative, she worked on child care issues, and attempted to improve the system statewide. In her time, and since then, she said “we really have not moved the needle,” and said questions the legislature is asking about child care should be centered around making it more affordable and accessible, and supporting providers, who are “the workforce behind the workforce.”

“This isn’t a fraud issue, this isn’t an education issue, this is an economic infrastructure issue,” Crawley said. “We know that, at the end of the day, our economy would crumble if we had child care providers continue to close.”

Child care facility leaders who attended the March 24 hearing also expressed concern about the possible closure of facilities in a state that already struggles with child care “deserts.”

“If we continue to have more and more burden in this system, we may have to consider certain programs not serving (Publicly Funded Child Care) students, just because of the sheer fact of the amount of work that would go into that.”

Most of the Ohioans who spoke on the two bills said the measures were attempting to create a solution without a problem to solve.

“Ohio already operates one of the strongest and most sophisticated child care fraud-detection systems in the nation,” Lampe said. “We believe that if improvements to this system need to be made … it is tweaks to this already robust system, not an atom bomb to low-income families and the fragile provider system that serves them.”

Original story can be found at https://ohiocapitaljournal.com