Hamilton County's working poor received good news in their fight for child-care funding Monday.
Local business leaders appealed to Gov. George Voinovich on their behalf, and the governor said he was exploring ways to help them.
Gov. Voinovich |
The news comes 11 days before 1,454 families with 2,290 children are to lose their child-care subsidies. The subsidies are to be cut because the county is facing a $5 million deficit in the state-supported program that finances child care for welfare recipients, those who have left the welfare system in the past year and the working poor.
The county was forced to cut off assistance to families at the higher end of that economic scale. The state, which spent $133 million more this year on child care than last, had been adamant it would spend no more money on child care this year.
Mr. Voinovich was apparently swayed by a letter from Hamilton County Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus, in which Mr. Bedinghaus said welfare reform was not possible without spending money on child care.
''The governor felt the commissioner made some good points, and asked Arnold Tompkins (director of the Ohio Department of Human Services) and Jacqui Sensky (the governor's deputy chief of staff) to look into whether or not the state might be helpful,'' said Mike Dawson, a spokesman for Mr. Voinovich, who is in Michigan attending a summit of Republican governors.
Mr. Dawson would not say where the money would come from, or whether it would come at all. He cautioned that the state would have to come up with much more than $5 million, because other counties are facing the same problem.
Many counties closed their programs to those with higher incomes months ago. Best estimates are that the state would need between $30 million and $50 million to meet all counties' needs.
The state contends Hamilton County mismanaged the program by setting a higher-than-average income limit for eligibility - most counties set an income limit of 135 percent of the federal poverty level; Hamilton County set a limit of 185 percent - and by continuing to take on new clients after projections showed the state allocation for the program would not keep pace.
P&G letter to governor
The poverty level is considered $12,980 for a single parent of two - the typical Hamilton County case. Most of the families that will lose their funding Dec. 6 are earning less than 135 percent of the poverty level, and, in conjunction with the cuts, the county has said it will serve only new families who earn poverty-level wages or less.
Representatives of both Procter & Gamble and Downtown Cincinnati Inc. said Monday that funding child care for people who are working for low wages was the ''right thing to do morally,'' the ''smart thing to do'' and the ''economically necessary thing to do."
Robert Wehling, senior vice president of P&G, wrote a personal letter to Mr. Voinovich on behalf of himself, his company and P&G chairman and chief executive, John Pepper.
''We believe Hamilton County's efforts to move people off welfare are a model which deserves support,'' he wrote. ''Jeopardizing the ability of the working poor to continue working because of the lack of day care help would be a major step in the wrong direction... We hope you will direct the Ohio Department of Human Services to remedy the situation."
Big-time losses
Liane Phillips, speaking on behalf of Downtown Cincinnati Inc. and Cincinnati Works, a welfare-to-work program, said child-care subsidies are necessary to provide a work force that will attract new businesses to the area.
''If we don't supply our employers with the entry-level folks they need, we're going to be losing out big time,'' she said.
Several operators of day-care centers said Monday the cuts in funding could be devastating.
Jim Rees, director of Discovery World in Queensgate, said he could lose 55 of the 170 children enrolled in his center. He is meeting with parents today to give them addresses and phone numbers of political representatives they can contact.
Published Nov. 26, 1996.
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