OREGON
Tuesday, May 4, 2021
East Oregonian
A9
State, congressional leaders push for child care overhaul
By ROB MANNING
Oregon Public Broadcasting
SALEM — Members of
Oregon’s congressional dele-
gation and its Legislature are
working to improve support
for families with young chil-
dren.
Megan McMillan has
known for a while how
important quality child care
is, and how difficult it can be
to find in the Portland area.
The pandemic also taught
moms like her how hard it is
to go without it.
“After enduring attempts
to work from home full time,
with two kids under 5, I can
tell you with no doubt that
child care is the work that
makes all other work possi-
ble,” she said.
The growing consensus
that child care is a necessary
part of a functioning econ-
omy — and that Oregon’s
patchwork of providers isn’t
up to the job — has pressed
elected leaders from Salem
to Washington, D.C., to
pursue major changes.
Oregon leaders at the state
and national level are push-
ing for major investments
and structural changes to
child care, pointing to ineq-
uities and gaps in support for
young children — problems
that were made deeper by the
yearlong pandemic.
At a state level, Oregon
legislators have advanced a
major overhaul of how the
state supervises programs
for the state’s youngest chil-
dren, through the creation of
a new early learning agency,
with the backing of the
governor’s office and chil-
dren’s advocacy groups.
At the same time in
Congress, Oregon Demo-
crats Sen. Ron Wyden and
Reps. Suzanne Bonamici and
Earl Blumenauer are touting
plans to make huge invest-
ments in ramping up support
for child care nationwide.
The congressional members
said at a press conference
Friday, April 30, outside a
Portland child care center
that they’re working with
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian, File
Instructor Tammy Hillmick watches as a group of students test aluminum foil boats during a science experiment in the af-
ter-school program at Sherwood Heights Elementary School on Nov. 19, 2019.
the Biden administration to
expand the supply of child
care while also increasing
the earnings of the histori-
cally low-paid provider
workforce.
Economics, equity and
infrastructure
Advocates and elected
officials are presenting the
push for child care in terms
of equity, economic devel-
opment and as part of an
expanding definition of what
“infrastructure” means.
“It matters to families and
it also matters to our econ-
omy,” Bonamici said. “Child
care is infrastructure.”
In economic terms, child
care took a beating during
the pandemic. But advocates
in Oregon and elsewhere say
the difficulties of the last year
highlighted problems that
have affected centers and
preschools for years.
“This is an issue that is
finally getting the atten-
tion it deserves,” Blume-
nauer said at the April 30
press conference.
Child care in Oregon has
been in short supply every-
where, with every county
categorized as a “child care
desert” according to a 2019
analysis by Oregon State
University. And that was
before the pandemic closed
more than half the providers
in the state, at least tempo-
rarily. The result is child care
is difficult to find and even
harder to afford.
“The cost of child care
for two children under 5 is
almost double what I pay
for housing,” parent Megan
McMillan said, adding that
looking for quality child care
she can afford can be a “full-
time job on top of my already
full-time job.”
The massive spending
proposal follows a more
modest, but still significant
federal investment of $40
billion from the American
Rescue Plan. Federal recog-
nition of child care also
showed up as $3.5 billion
in block grants to child care
providers, as part of the
CARES Act, passed under
the Trump administration.
At the same time that
child care can be in short
supply and overly expen-
sive, its employees — teach-
ers, caregivers — tend to
be underpaid. Bonamici,
who calls herself the only
“congressmom” in the dele-
gation, tied the need for
living wages in the child care
sector to efforts to support
communities of color.
Bonamici called for pass-
ing President Biden’s Amer-
ican Families Plan, which the
president highlighted in his
first address to a joint session
of Congress last week.
Among the spending provi-
sions of Biden’s $1.8 tril-
lion proposal is a cap on the
amount middle and low-in-
come families pay toward
child care.
Oregon proposes new
child care agency
At the state level, Oregon
officials have learned that
funding is only part of the
problem. The state’s child
care system is a patchwork
of private-pay centers,
Head Start programs and
school-based pre-kinder-
gartens, along with infor-
mal networks of nannies,
relatives and friends. State
management of child care is
also a mosaic with different
agencies handling regulation
and spending.
Oregon House Bill 3073,
aims to consolidate early
childhood programs under
one roof, called the Depart-
ment of Early Learning
and Care, or DELC. Right
now, much of the policy
and regulation of programs
for preschool-aged kids are
within the Early Learning
Division, established eight
years ago within the Oregon
Depar tment of Educa-
tion. But the state’s largest
child care subsidy — the
Employment-Related Day
Care program — is within
the Department of Human
Services.
Elected officials say a
previous round of signifi-
cant federal spending, high-
lighted shortcomings in the
current structure and the
f ledgling Early Learning
Division.
In spring 2020, child care
centers were struggling to
stay afloat as the pandemic
wreaked havoc on Oregon’s
economy and raised ques-
tions about how to care for
children safely, and in a way
that the businesses could
manage financially. Millions
of dollars came to Oregon to
help child care centers stay
open, but providers say the
money seemed to be drib-
bling out, slowly, with too
many rules and not enough
support and guidance.
“We saw during the
pandemic that there was the
$70 million that we’d allo-
cated for child care and we
had real trouble trying to
get that out,” said Rep. Jack
Zika, R-Redmond at a public
hearing on HB 3073 in front
of the House Rules Commit-
tee.
“And we found that the
need was really within the
department.”
HB 3073 is a lengthy
bill, but its main aim is to
create the DELC, as a stand-
alone agency with its own
top administrator reporting
directly to the governor.
Rep. Karin Power, D-Mil-
waukie, said the idea of the
restructuring is ultimately
to affect children and to help
families “both recover from
the pandemic and thrive.”
“Long-term, (it) will posi-
tion Oregon and our agency
that oversees policy, but
currently doesn’t oversee
the bulk of funding expen-
ditures, to align these func-
tions so that under one roof
we have an agency that both
sets policy for the state and
spends dollars to effect that
policy,” Power told the Rules
Committee this week.
The bill passed out of the
Rules Committee to Ways
and Means, but not with-
out drawing questions from
Republican lawmakers.
Andrew Selsky/Associated Press, File
Pro-Trump and anti-mask demonstrators hold a rally outside the Oregon Capitol on Dec. 21,
2020, as legislators meet for an emergency session in Salem. Prosecutors leveled two crimi-
nal charges on Friday, April 30, 2021, against a Republican member of the Oregon House of
Representatives who let far-right rioters into the Capitol that day. Rep. Mike Nearman was
charged with official misconduct in the first degree and criminal trespass in the second de-
gree.
Oregon lawmaker charged for breach
Short was out of his office
on April 30 and not available
for comment. Nearman did
SALEM — Prosecutors not immediately respond to
leveled two criminal charges phone and email messages
on Friday, April 30, against seeking comment.
a Republican member of the
Nearman had been seen
Oregon House of Represen- on security cameras letting
tatives who let far-right riot- violent protesters into the
ers into the Oregon Capitol Capitol. They attacked
in December 2020.
authorities with bear spray.
Rep. Mike Near-
Outside the building,
man, R-Indepen-
some of the protest-
dence, was charged
ers assaulted report-
with official miscon-
ers and broke glass
duct in the first
doors on the marble-
sheathed Capitol.
degree and crimi-
nal trespass in the
State police investi-
gated the case.
second deg ree.
Oregon State Police
Nearman
In January, after
struggled to force
Ne a r m a n’s r ole
the rioters back out of the became clear from the secu-
Capitol, which was closed to rity footage, House Speaker
the public, on Dec. 21, 2020, Tina Kotek called for his
as lawmakers met in emer- resignation and stripped
gency session to deal with him of his committee assign-
economic fallout from the ments.
coronavirus pandemic.
“Rep. Nearman put every
Marion County Deputy person in the Capitol in seri-
District Attorney Matthew ous danger,” Kotek said on
Kemmy told Nearman’s Jan. 11.
She referred to the deadly
attorney, Jason Short, in a
letter on April 30 his client storming of the U.S. Capi-
must appear in court on May tol that had occurred just
11 or face arrest.
days before, on Jan. 6, by
BY ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
supporters of then-President
Donald Trump: “As we trag-
ically saw last week during
the insurrection at the United
States Capitol, the conse-
quences (here) could have
been much worse had law
enforcement not stepped in
so quickly,” Kotek said.
According to cou r t
records, the misconduct
charge alleges Nearman,
who is from the town of
Independence west of Salem,
“did unlawfully and know-
ingly perform an act ... with
intent to obtain a benefit or to
harm another.”
The charge is a Class A
misdemeanor, punishable
by a maximum 364 days in
prison and a $6,250 fine.
The trespass charge
accused him of unlawfully
letting others into the Capi-
tol. It is a Class C misde-
meanor, punishable by a
maximum of 30 days in jail
and a $1,250 fine.
Oregon Public Broadcast-
ing was first to report Near-
man being charged, later
announced by the office
of Marion County District
Attorney Paige Clarkson.
Gillian Flaccus/Associated Press, File
Birds take off from a marsh in the Tulelake National Wildlife Refuge in the Klamath Ba-
sin along the Oregon-California border on March 2, 2020. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has
declared a drought emergency in Klamath County and the U.S. Interior Department has
promised “an all-hands-on-deck approach” to mitigating effects of drought in the region.
Almost all of Oregon is poised
for drought to start the summer
By BRADLEY W.
PARKS
Oregon Public
Broadcasting
SALEM — More than
three-fourths of Oregon is
in some stage of drought
entering May — and fore-
casters expect it to stay that
way into the summer.
The National Weather
Service’s Climate Predic-
tion Center projects drought
will persist across South-
ern, Central and Eastern
Oregon and even the Willa-
mette Valley throughout the
summer. The center’s latest
monthly drought outlook
released Friday, April 30,
also shows drought is likely
to develop in the northeast
corner of the state.
“Drought varies from
year to year in its cover-
age and severity,” said Brad
Pugh, a meteorologist with
the Climate Prediction
Center. “But during the past
decade, across the Western
U.S., drought has become
more common and more
intense as well.”
Oregon saw little precip-
itation through March
and April of this year, and
once-promising snowpack
levels have plummeted
during an unseasonably
warm, dry start to spring.
All but one watershed
in the state had below-nor-
mal snowpack by the end of
April. Many had about half
the snowpack typical for this
time of year.
Snowpack in the Malheur
Basin in Eastern Oregon
ended the month at just 12%
of normal, the lowest in the
state.
Drought results from
prolonged periods of insuf-
ficient precipitation, lead-
ing to water shortages. That
has implications for fish
and wildlife, wildfire, irri-
gation, drinking water and
recreation. It will force diffi-
cult decisions about how to
ration water to make it
through the dry season.
Those
problems
compound the longer
drought persists, which is
the issue currently facing the
Klamath Basin. Year after
year of drought has set the
conditions for what could be
one of the driest years there
in the past century.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown
has declared a drought
emergency in Klamath
County and the U.S. Inte-
rior Department has prom-
ised “an all-hands-on-deck
approach” to mitigating
effects of drought in the
region.
The National Resources
Conservation Service is
set to release Oregon’s next
water supply outlook report
the first week of May.
More than 97% of
Oregon is abnormally dry
or worse, according to the
U.S. Drought Monitor.