On November 5, voters not only went to the polls to determine their choice for president. Many also cast their votes on various policy issues, including whether and how to better fund their local child care systems. A number of measures in the field of childcare won.
What these successes prove, following other major victories for the issue in recent years, is that going directly to voters is a viable path for advocates seeking to secure more child care funding, especially if there is likely no action on the part of voters. federal level soon.
“One of the results of this election is that voters want action on health care,” said Melissa Boteach, vice president for child care/early learning at the National Women’s Law Center. “Voters want investments in child care and early education, and they are willing to increase revenues to support those investments,” she said, pointing to evidence from a poll her organization conducted in April 2024 that found more than three-quarters of population Respondents support spending on these priorities and financing them through taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
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The issue has become even more urgent as the significant funding the childcare sector has received to keep providers’ doors open during the pandemic has now largely disappeared. “That money is no longer there,” Boteach noted. So local governments “have to figure out what they can do until we win federal dollars.”
Boteach pointed out that measures are winning in states with very different political climates, such as California and Texas. “This is truly a bipartisan issue,” she said. “It can win in red states and blue states.”
What it took to win
In Travis County, Texas, voters passed Proposition A, a measure to increase property taxes by 2.5 cents on every $100 of property value to raise more than $75 million. The money will create about 2,000 new childcare places and nearly 4,000 places for older children in after-school care and summer camps, with childcare places reserved for families earning 85 percent or less of the local median household income. After state lawmakers failed to pass a $2.3 billion proposal in 2023 to help child care providers stay afloat as federal aid dried up, the Travis County Commissioners Court voted unanimously to put Proposition A on the post ballots from provincial voters. It received support from local businesses and community organizations, led by the United Way for Greater Austin, and voters ultimately approved it by 60 percent.
Voters in Sonoma County, California also chose to raise taxes to fund child care. They instituted a sales tax of 25 cents on every dollar spent, which is expected to raise $30 million a year. Sixty percent of that money will go to increasing access to child care and preschool for low-income families, increasing wages for providers and expanding or renovating child care facilities. The measure was in response to the loss of half of the area’s local childcare places during the pandemic and early childhood outcomes declining over the past six years. It had no formal opposition, numerous local endorsements and more than $1 million in campaign financing. Ultimately, it was adopted with 61 percent of the votes.
Meanwhile, voters in Washington state rebuffed an attempt to repeal a tax increase intended to support the child care system. Three years ago, state lawmakers passed a bill that imposed a new 7 percent tax on income from capital gains, or money earned from things like stocks and bonds, of $262,000 or more. The first $500 million raised was for child care subsidies for families and bonuses for child care providers who provide care during non-standard hours. What remained was intended for school construction. In 2023, the tax raised $848 million. Washington Initiative 2109, a measure funded by hedge fund manager Brian Heywood and put to the vote in November, would have repealed that tax, but 63 percent of voters ultimately rejected it.
That “shows that people don’t mind increasing income and especially asking the rich and large companies to pay their fair share so that we can invest in healthcare,” Boteach said.
There were also three measures passed in Colorado counties that either increased revenues or redirected them to things like child care.
Lessons learned from a failed measure
Not every childcare-related measure was successful this year. But there are important lessons to be learned from both those who failed and those who succeeded. An interesting measure to look at is one in St. Paul that would have increased property taxes by 0.006% each year for 10 years to raise an estimated $2 million in the first year and $20 million in the 10th year. That money would have made child care costs free for low-income families and, if there were additional money, would have helped cover costs for higher-income families.
Councilwoman Rebecca Noecker, who spearheaded the ballot measure, had a 2-year-old and a 1-year-old when she took office in 2015. After researching local child care issues, she came up with the idea of a city fund to help families afford care. The childcare system “is just broken and money needs to be injected into the system,” she explained.
But, she noted, given how expensive childcare is, “If you want to make a meaningful contribution to this problem, you need to raise a significant amount of money.” Ultimately, she and other lawmakers came up with the idea of gradually raising property taxes to secure the significant amount of money needed to address the problem. The City Council could vote to raise taxes to create the fund, but Noecker wanted “some form of voter mandate” so the effort wouldn’t be derailed by politics, but ultimately that’s exactly what happened.
St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter vocally opposed the idea. The council had to override his veto to put it on the ballot, and once they did, he said he wouldn’t implement the measure even if it passed, arguing the numbers didn’t add up. Noecker said that was not true and that “it was a fully funded mandate.”
Noecker thinks Carter’s opposition gave some voters who were hesitant about raising taxes “permission” to vote no, especially considering that urban voters may experience “tax fatigue” after they pass a sales tax increase in 2023 1 percent had approved paying for parks and parks. streets. Noecker also pointed out that the ballot measures passed this cycle were at the county level, entities that were more likely to provide social services, which may have worked to their advantage. “It was definitely an uphill battle to get people to see the possibility that a city could play a role in this,” she said.
But Noecker doesn’t think it’s impossible to win in the future. “Many cities are not successful with these ballot initiatives on the first go-around,” she said. “So it’s very disappointing, [but] it’s not super surprising.” Supporters are currently talking about what could happen next; it will be some time before voting resumes, if they decide to do so. But “it’s clear from the campaign engagement that people absolutely see this as a necessity,” Noecker said. “The question revolves around what the city, the county and the state should do.”
“There’s no way we’re going to leave because the problem isn’t going away,” she said.
This year’s successful measures come after other election victories for child care advocates in recent years. Voters in Multnomah County, Oregon, which includes Portland, voted in 2020 to raise taxes on wealthy families to raise $200 million to provide free preschool to all 3- and 4-year-olds, while raising wages for the providers went up. That same year, Colorado voters approved an increase in taxes on nicotine products to fund universal pre-K, which has since enrolled more than 40,000 children. In 2022, New Mexico voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that made their state the first to guarantee the right to early childhood education and also send a large, steady flow of money to it.
Even with these measures in place, there is still a need for significant federal investment in child care, Boteach said. Cities, counties and states are much more limited in the amount of money they can spend on the system. Still, she adds, ballot measures are “one tool in the toolbox to build momentum and get real dollars into communities that are ready to vote for them.”
