BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
AB 2368 (Gordon) - Child care and development services:
individualized county child care subsidy plan: County of Santa
Clara
-----------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| |
| |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|--------------------------------+--------------------------------|
| | |
|Version: April 5, 2016 |Policy Vote: ED. 9 - 0, HUMAN |
| | S. 5 - 0 |
| | |
|--------------------------------+--------------------------------|
| | |
|Urgency: No |Mandate: No |
| | |
|--------------------------------+--------------------------------|
| | |
|Hearing Date: August 1, 2016 |Consultant: Jillian Kissee |
| | |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill
Summary: This bill authorizes the County of Santa Clara to
establish a 5-year pilot program for purposes of developing and
implementing an individualized county child care subsidy plan
that meets the particular needs of families in the county.
Fiscal
Impact:
Potentially significant loss in savings to the state due to
Santa Clara County being able to spend more of its allocation
under an individualized county child care subsidy plan. The
AB 2368 (Gordon) Page 1 of
?
plan is allowed to supersede state law in specific areas which
would allow greater access to services within the county.
Without this bill these savings could otherwise be
redistributed for services in other counties. See staff
comments. (General Fund/Proposition 98)
The California Department of Education (CDE) estimates that
this bill will result in initial costs to the CDE of $130,000
for the first year and $95,000 ongoing costs for work across
several positions to review and monitor the new plan. This
estimate also includes travel costs. Costs are expected to
decrease over time. (General Fund)
Background: California offers a variety of subsidized child care and
development services that serve low-income families who are
working, seeking work, in training, or providing community
services. Families participating in CalWORKs receive subsidies
through three stages of the CalWORKs child care program.
Non-CalWORKs families participate in the AP Program, General
Child Care, or State Preschool.
Existing law establishes the San Mateo County, San Francisco,
and Alameda County individualized county child care subsidy plan
pilot projects due to the similar barriers to services of living
in a high-cost area. (EDC 8347, 8335, and 8340) The sunset
date of the San Francisco plan has been extended three times.
Alameda County, San Mateo County and San Francisco all have
individualized county child care subsidy plans that were
developed to address two significant issues facing subsidized
child care in high-cost counties: 1) that low-income families
earning just enough to afford housing in a high-cost area may be
deemed to earn too much to qualify for child care assistance
under statewide eligibility standards, and 2) that the
reimbursement rate paid to contracted child care centers and
family child care homes is often not sufficient to cover program
costs and overhead, particularly in high-cost areas of the
state. Because of this child care subsidies received by
counties were unable to be fully expended. Unexpended funds get
collected at the state level and reappropriated for another
purpose.
According to the author, this bill seeks to maximize state
AB 2368 (Gordon) Page 2 of
?
allocated funding and efficiently use child care subsidy funds
to meet local conditions.
Proposed Law:
This bill authorizes the County of Santa Clara to develop and
implement an individualized county child care subsidy plan, as a
pilot. The plan must ensure that child care subsidies received
are used to address local needs, conditions, and priorities of
working families in the community.
The plan must include:
An assessment to identify the county's goals for its
subsidized child care system, examine whether the current
structure adequately supports working families in the
county and whether the county's goals coincide with the
state's requirements for funding, eligibility, priority,
and reimbursement, and examine barriers to reaching the
goals. The assessment must take into consideration various
things such as the county's demographics, current supply of
subsidized child care, the needs for services, the county's
self-sufficiency income level, cost of providing care, and
other economic factors.
Development of a local policy to eliminate regulatory
barriers to the county's desired outcomes for subsidized
child care.
o The local policy must do various things such
as prioritize lowest income families first; follow the
family fee schedule for families that are income
eligible, as specified; identify existing policies
that would be affected by the county's plan; authorize
an agency that provides child care and development
services in the county through a contract with the
CDE, as specified.
o The local policy may supersede state law
concerning child care subsidy programs with regard to
the following:
AB 2368 (Gordon) Page 3 of
?
§ Eligibility criteria including age,
family size, time limits, income level, special
needs, and inclusion of former and current
CalWORKs participants, as specified.
§ Fees
§ Reimbursement rates
§ Methods of maximizing the efficient
use of subsidy funds, including, multiyear
contracting with the CDE for center-based child
care, and interagency agreements that allow for
flexible and temporary transfer of funds among
agencies.
Recognition that all funding sources used by direct
service contractors that provide child care and development
services in the county and contractors that contract with
licensed providers and centers are eligible to be included
in the county's plan.
Establishment of measurable outcomes to evaluate the
success of the plan to achieve the county's child care
goals, and to overcome any barriers identified in the
state's child care subsidy system.
The plan is required to be submitted to the local planning
council for approval, and after at least one hearing, and if the
Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Clara approves the
plan, it must be submitted to the CDE for review.
By the end of the first fiscal year of the pilot the county must
show an increase in the aggregate days of enrollment in child
care in the county as compared to the enrollment in 2015-16.
AB 2368 (Gordon) Page 4 of
?
The requirements of this bill are scheduled to sunset January 1,
2022.
Related
Legislation: AB 833 (Bonta, Chapter 563, Statutes of 2015),
similar to this bill, authorized Alameda County to develop and
implement, as a pilot project, an individualized county child
care subsidy plan.
AB 260 (Gordon, Chapter 731, Statutes of 2013) extended the
sunset dates of the San Francisco and San Mateo County
individualized county child care subsidy plans to 2016 and 2018,
respectively.
Staff
Comments: This bill establishes a fourth county-wide pilot. It
allows Santa Clara County, a high-cost-of-living county, to
develop and implement an individualized county child care
subsidy plan for five years. The plan may supersede state law
governing child care subsidy programs in certain specified
areas, including eligibility criteria. For example, San Mateo
County and San Francisco currently set their income eligibility
thresholds at 85 percent of the current state median income,
compared to 70 percent as the state does. This allows San Mateo
County and San Francisco to provide services to children with
family incomes above 70 percent, which they otherwise are not
permitted to do without special statutory authorization to
implement an individualized county child care subsidy plan.
In the 2014-15 fiscal year Santa Clara County was unable to
expend $9.4 million of its contracted allocations, or 7.3
percent of the total. As context, across all counties 6.9
percent of allocations went unspent. However, in the 2012-13
and 2013-14 fiscal years Santa Clara County had 1.7 percent and
3.5 percent unexpended, as compared to 5.3 and 5.2 percent
statewide, respectively.
To the extent that implementation of this pilot enables Santa
AB 2368 (Gordon) Page 5 of
?
Clara County to spend more for additional child care and
development services, less unexpended funds would revert to the
state. For example, if 5 percent of the county's $9.4 million
was able to be spent on local services, this would result in
about $470,000 less in savings to the state.
-- END --