HELENA - Kelly Rosenleaf has some advice for lawmakers.
If you're wondering what would happen if the 2009 Legislature froze the rate the state currently pays towards child care for the children of the working poor, take a look at what happened between 2004 and 2006.
Back then, said Rosenleaf, executive director of Child Care Resources of Missoula, lawmakers were faced with budget cuts and decided to freeze the money the state paid to the Best Beginnings Scholarship Program, a child care assistance program for the working poor or parents in college, as a way of saving state dollars.
"What happened?" she asked a panel of lawmakers Monday on the Joint Subcommittee for Health and Human Services. "We saw a dramatic decline in the number of child care centers statewide."
Child care centers couldn't make it; they closed their doors. Lacking child care, some parents dropped out of the workforce, settling for a life on welfare. And many children of the working poor ended up in ''illegal, underground and unregulated'' child care.
"That's unacceptable," she said.
Rosenleaf and about a dozen other child care providers and advocates urged the committee not to freeze the rates, saying poor children may already be priced out of quality child care and freezing the rates will only exacerbate the problem or force their working parents onto welfare.
The subcommittee writes the first draft of the Legislature's budget for a host of human service state programs.
The subcommittee chairwoman, Rep. Teresa Henry, D-Missoula, said after the hearing Monday she couldn't say exactly how the reimbursement rate would fare. But she said she and other lawmakers have talked about trying to get as much money as possible to all contractors, including child care providers, who do human service work for the state.
"We want to get as much funding as we can to the people on the ground," she said.
At issue is the Best Beginnings Scholarship. The federal and state program subsidizes the cost of child care for parents earning up to 150 percent of the federal poverty limit. That comes to $26,400 yearly income for a family of three.
Every year, the state conducts cost surveys in the Montana's largest communities. Best Beginnings will reimburse child care centers up to 75 percent of whatever the average child care costs are determined to be.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer initially recommended upping the rate over the next two years, in accordance with the annual survey recommendations. But the budget the governor ultimately presented to lawmakers suggested freezing that rate along with those for a host of other professionals who provide subsidized or free services to the poor. The move was an effort to keep the budget lean as the state's economic picture worsened.
Several child care center owners said that while those rates are tight now, they were generally able to make it with what the state pays them. Freeze the rates, they said, and many would be forced to either close or charge Best Beginning families to pay the difference between the state rate and the true cost of doing business.
Most scholarship parents can't afford to pay any more, said Ann Lynch, owner of Creative Horizons, an early education child care center in Helena. Faced with paying more, those families often put their children in cheaper, less quality child care.
Then, she said, you end up with a "tier system," where parents with means have their children in quality, educational care and those children ready to learn when they hit public schools. But children whose parents can't afford it may be forced to put their kids in substandard care.
"I think children deserve the best start, whether they're parents can afford it or not," she said.
Many child care providers told committee members that while the lawmakers may be considering "freezing" the rate, in reality, it's more like a cut. No other business costs are frozen for two years, particularly minimum wage.