August
18, 2017
To
the Honorable Members of
The
Illinois House of Representatives,
100th
General Assembly:
Today I veto
House Bill 3167, which requires the Department of Human Services to conduct
costly and duplicative surveys regarding the early childhood education
workforce without allowing other ongoing support initiatives to come to
fruition.
Making
sure that our children have high-quality childcare in the early years of their
development is a core commitment of this administration. Transformative efforts
are underway at agencies and the Children’s Cabinet to address the needs of the
early childhood workforce, and I applaud the work they are doing
The
Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014 requires States who
receive federal Child Care and Development Funds (CCDF) to conduct a Market
Rate Survey every two years. They require states to take into consideration
payment rates to providers that are based on the most recent market rate survey
or an alternative methodology and are at a level to meet the health and safety
standards implicit in a quality child care setting. In addition, the Department
of Human Services is mandated by legislative rule 20 ILCS 505/5.15, to conduct
the Illinois Salary and Staffing Survey of Licensed Child Care Facilities every
two years. This survey reports the compensation of current child care workers.
Many of the principles proposed in HB 3167 exist in these two mandated surveys.
Furthermore, specific strategies to improve the early
childhood workforce are being addressed through the Children’s Cabinet’s Early
Childhood Workforce Development project. The project is led by a working team consisting
of representatives from eight major agencies including the Department of Human
Services, the Illinois State Board of Education, and the Governor’s Office of
Early Childhood Development as well as several external partners and advocates.
The goal of this Children’s Cabinet project is to ensure
Illinois children with high needs have access to quality early care and
education services provided by an educated, qualified, and diverse workforce.
To achieve this, the project is focused on building a pipeline to attract and
retain educators, providing pathways for career opportunity and movement, and
enhancing cross-system data collection, usage, and analytic capability.
So while
the motivation to provide reliable information is good, this legislation would
create more bureaucracy than benefit. The Department of Human Services should
be utilizing the resources that would be directed to this survey toward
initiatives and services that will have a meaningful impact on children’s lives
as opposed to collecting similar information in multiple places.
We
should allow the efforts already underway with the Children’s Cabinet to come
to fruition and inform what gaps in information need to be corrected for
instead of creating duplicative and unnecessary mandates for the Department of
Human Services.
Therefore,
pursuant to Section 9(b) of Article IV of the Illinois Constitution of 1970, I
hereby return House Bill 3167, entitled “AN ACT concerning public aid”, with
the foregoing objections, vetoed in its entirety.
Sincerely,
Bruce
Rauner
GOVERNOR