Advocates and lawmakers worked for weeks during this year’s legislative session to ensure New Mexico’s burgeoning universal child care system contained a funded wage and career advancement system for workers and prioritized families who need child care the most.
Then, on Wednesday, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham got out the figurative red pen.
The governor unveiled line-item vetoes of New Mexico’s spending plan that appeared to redirect $60 million in funding for educators’ wage increases and eliminate an obligation for the state to prioritize needy families.
But those changes have not been cause for alarm, lawmakers and advocates say, adding that another measure signed by Lujan Grisham this week, Senate Bill 241, already contains similar provisions and that the state’s existing reimbursement system for child care providers should bring fair wages to workers.
“We’re on the same page, and we’re all working toward the same goal of making sure we’ve got really strong, qualified early childhood educators,” said Rep. Meredith Dixon, D-Albuquerque. “… I do feel very optimistic about that.”
During the legislative session, advocates expressed concerns the state would leave the wage and career ladder by the wayside amid lawmakers’ discussions over how to fund New Mexico’s universal child care system. That ladder, which would encourage career advancement through experience and education, has been touted by supporters as the best way to provide such opportunities to a workforce that has thus far struggled for them.
Lujan Grisham’s administration, however, has argued that wage increases for workers are accounted for in the state’s reimbursement rates for child care providers, particularly those taking advantage of enhanced rates.
Providers have countered that those rates do not always work with their business models, as they come with additional requirements, such as keeping their doors open for longer.
Nevertheless, Early Childhood Education and Care Department spokesperson Jaime Bencomo wrote in a Thursday statement that 46% of the state’s child care providers are taking advantage of the new enhanced rates, rolled out late last year.
“The enhanced reimbursement rate is intentionally tied to compensation: providers who opt in agree to meet a wage floor, so higher public investment is directly connected to higher pay for early childhood professionals,” Bencomo wrote.
In her revision of the budget, Lujan Grisham struck the words “wage increases for” from a sentence appropriating “sixty million dollars … for a wage and career ladder to support wage increases for educators established through the childcare assistance rates and the wage and career ladder.” Bencomo wrote that the $60 million will be used for providers’ reimbursement rates.
Lawmakers’ intent
SB 241 became lawmakers’ flagship bill for funding universal child care. The measure will allow the state to draw up to $700 million over five years from New Mexico’s roughly $11 billion early childhood trust fund.
The bill also contains a number of guardrails — like co-pays for wealthier families and waitlists — that will deploy should New Mexico’s economy take a turn or should enrollment outpace expectations. Notably, it also contains a requirement for child care providers to report on their participation in its wage and career ladder to the state.
That mandate, specifically to report staff members’ roles and levels under the framework, would ensure it is implemented and enforced, supporters say.
“The state can’t control how much a private entity pays their employees, right? We can bake it into the rates and all that stuff,” said Senate Finance Committee chief of staff Adrian Avila. “So in Senate Bill 241, for the first time, the agency is actually going to be able to see which providers … are good actors, acting in good faith based on the rates and paying their people what they’re supposed to and which ones are bad actors and not paying.”
Lujan Grisham also struck a paragraph obligating the Early Childhood Department to prioritize the enrollment of children from families that are making less than 200% of the federal poverty level, qualify for the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, are homeless or are facing other challenges.
That obligation, like the language related to the wage and career ladder, would have interfered with the state’s timely implementation of the child care assistance program, Lujan Grisham wrote in a veto message.
But SB 241 also contains language addressing that issue, requiring the state to prioritize at-risk children, those with developmental delays and children from less wealthy households if the state is forced to implement a waitlist for the program.
Bencomo said SB 241 contains specific requirements addressing when and how certain children are prioritized, which the language in the budget conflicted with. For example, SB 241 requires children ages 3 and younger of families under 400% of the federal poverty level be prioritized, while HB 2 would have set a threshold at 200%.
Lawmakers and advocates widely cited SB 241 as a source of confidence that Lujan Grisham’s vetoes of the budget bill’s language would not interfere with lawmakers’ intent to ensure fair compensation of workers and fair access for families.
“Because we put these guardrails and the parameters in the legislation, in Senate Bill 241, I don’t think the vetoes are … as impactful,” Dixon said.
Advocates have expressed cautious optimism over the vetoes, lauding the strength of the language of SB 241 while emphasizing that they and lawmakers need to keep a watchful eye over how the Early Childhood Department spends money.
“Both we, early educators, and the Legislature are really going to be intent on holding the administration accountable for how they use these funds, and making sure that it really is being used to raise wages,” said Matthew Henderson, executive director of advocacy organization OLÉ’s education fund.
Though she considered SB 241 a win, Teresa Madrid, executive director of early childhood advocacy organization Partnership for Community Action, said she still had concerns over the plan to rely on the reimbursement rates. She said she would have preferred funding to flow directly to the ladder.
“We think a wage and career ladder model would give those educators … that wage that’s more directly related to their skills, experience and work that they’re doing,” she said.
Capacity issues
Throughout the session, Republicans in both the House and Senate battled efforts to bolster the state’s universal child care program, expressing concerns over heavily investing in providing the benefit to families with the means to pay for child care.
On Thursday, Sen. Steve Lanier, R-Aztec, said he was pleased lawmakers were able to agree to conditional co-payments for such families, though he had some lingering concerns that children of families with less means could be crowded out of the system.
“Especially here in the beginning, there’s only going to be so many slots,” he said. “And so who [is] going to get those slots? Is it going to be the most needy, or is it going to be those people that could afford child care themselves?”
Bencomo, though, noted that 4,095, or 32%, of families newly enrolled in the program were at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. The state is in the process of issuing contracts for up to 1,500 more children.
“Universal programs remove stigma and promote access for all families,” Bencomo wrote.