At a time when the oversight of child care facilities is being scrutinized, it is bewildering that lawmakers would consider scaling back critical regulations.
Senate Bill 70 seeks to lift licensing and other requirements for child care facilities that have 10 or fewer children. Current law requires licensing when facilities have five or more kids.
Sen Kevin Lundberg, R-Berth-oud, is the main sponsor of the bill that would clear away red tape in the name of affordability.
Colorado was recently ranked the second least-affordable state in the country behind New York for center-based infant care, according to Child Care Aware of America. The average annual cost of infant care in Colorado was $13,143 — 48 percent of the median income for a single mom.
There are probably many reasons for this somewhat surprising ranking, but bureaucratic red tape doesn’t seem to be a major one. Indeed, Colorado is ranked 35 out of 50 states for rigor of licensing and regulations.
Nor should any attempted solution to the cost squeeze involve stripping away basic regulation and licensing requirements, which could make for unsafe facilities.
A recent investigation by The Denver Post’s Christopher N. Osher found that Colorado inspects licensed child-care providers far less frequently than most states — requiring inspections once every three years.
The legislature in 2014 approved $1.3 million to hire more inspectors, so that particular issue is gradually being taken care of. But the state also appears deficient in certain types of regulations, too.
At least 24 children died between 2006 and 2012 in licensed child care facilities, and more than two-thirds of those deaths were infants who had been sleeping.
The state thankfully is considering new rules around infant sleeping in licensed facilities, including not allowing soft bedding in cribs, requiring babies be placed on their backs to sleep and prohibiting separate sleep rooms in new construction.
These are important improvements that will save lives. It is difficult to reconcile how reducing the number of facilities that would be licensed would help protect anyone.
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