Colorado Public Radio’s Jenny Brundin reports on a bipartisan bill that would take a market-based swing at Colorado’s child care funding crisis. The proposal would let state enterprises voluntarily invest portions of idle reserves into a diversified market portfolio, with earnings above the current Treasury pool rate directed to counties for child care assistance. It narrowly passed Senate Finance 5-4 and is headed to appropriations, which means the idea is alive, but not exactly skipping through the Capitol with a parade permit.
The need is real. Colorado’s Child Care Assistance Program, CCCAP, is in a funding crisis, with more than two dozen counties implementing freezes or waitlists affecting more than 13,000 children. Even fully funded, CPR reports CCCAP serves only 11% of eligible Colorado children. That is not a gap. That is a canyon with a daycare bill at the bottom.
The Bullet Point Brief
- The bill would create a special purpose investment authority to manage idle reserves from state enterprises and invest them more aggressively than Colorado currently allows. Translation: make the money work harder than a Capitol intern during budget week.
- Any earnings above the Treasury pool rate, after an incentive for the participating enterprise, would go to counties to fund child care assistance. Not a new tax. Not new general fund spending. Just trying to squeeze more juice out of dollars already sitting there.
- Republican Sen. Scott Bright said the bill takes money the state already owns, money he says is underperforming, and gives it a chance to earn a real market return. That is at least creative, which is more than can be said for the usual legislative solution of “raise fees and look concerned.”
- The bill would not solve the immediate crisis, because funding would not flow for two to three years and the program would have to build a 5% reserve first. So if your family needs child care now, the answer is still apparently “good luck and maybe call grandma.”
- Critics, including Treasurer Dave Young, warn the plan may violate the Colorado Constitution and expose public funds to legal risk and market volatility. Fair concern. Public dollars are not Vegas chips, even if the Legislature sometimes acts like the casino is open.
My Bottom Line
Weld County has been on a CCAP freeze for months. That is not an abstract policy problem. That is parents unable to work, employers unable to count on workers, and kids caught in the middle while adults debate budget mechanics like they are arranging spices in a government pantry.
Affordable, reliable child care stabilizes the workforce. It keeps people in jobs. It helps single parents, working families, and low-income households avoid the spiral where losing child care means losing work, and losing work means needing more help. That is not soft-hearted theory. That is basic economic plumbing.
I balk at plenty of government spending. I have seen enough waste, duplication, and shiny-program nonsense to make a man develop a permanent twitch. But I do not balk at spending on child care. If we want people working, if we want families stable, if we want kids safe and cared for, then child care has to be part of the workforce conversation, not treated like a side issue for someone else’s committee.
I appreciate Sen. Bright for trying something different. Will this idea fly? I do not know. The legal questions matter. The investment risk matters. The details matter because details are where government ideas go to either work or turn into a flaming wheelbarrow. But credit where it is due: he is not just standing in front of a broken system reading sympathy cards into the record. He is trying to find a tool. In a Capitol full of people who confuse talking with solving, that deserves some respect.
Source: Colorado Public Radio
Share your thoughts...