Into the early morning hours on June 27, the legislature passed the Fiscal Year 2024-2025 budget. This was the final piece of their agenda before breaking for the summer and heading to their respective districts to campaign. Governor Whitmer signed the remainder of budget bills in the final days of July, marking the continued promise of an on-time delivery. This, in general, is good common practice so when our fiscal year rolls over in October, Michigan can keep operating without delay, which, as taxpayers, is what you expect them to do.
Unfortunately, during budget negotiations, many other items are used as leverage, and several pieces of legislation that SBAM has been watching and advocating on are impacted. As we head into the fall, we wanted to take this opportunity to share with you some wins and warnings that we have referenced in past issues of Focus.
There is a continued effort in Lansing to increase the unemployment insurance maximum benefit amount and weeks of eligibility. During budget negotiations, HB 5827 (Whitsett) was introduced in the House. The bill increases the maximum benefit from 20 to 26 weeks of eligibility. It was put up for a vote and passed on party lines (56 Democrats in favor and 54 Republicans opposed). This bill is now waiting in the Senate. We expect it would face very little resistance there, if and when they choose to act on it.
Other discussed changes seek to increase the maximum benefit amount from $362 per week to $602 per week, with an automatic annual increase. Those talks are centralized in the Senate, and while they have not officially been introduced yet, we anticipate their introduction upon the Legislature’s return.
These proposed changes would only further exacerbate ongoing workforce shortages in a time when Michigan’s workforce participation rate is low and employers struggle to fill essential positions (not to mention the Unemployment Insurance Agency Trust Fund has not been restored following it’s depletion during the pandemic).
SBAM will vehemently oppose any benefit amount or duration increase until concerns are resolved. Please help us by raising your voices and telling your legislators how misguided these actions and discussions are.
In good news, SBAM joined forces with other stakeholders at a press conference to call attention to two proposals that would have harmed private childcare providers. The House originally proposed stripping out a 30 percent allotment to com- munity-based organizations (CBOs) to deliver services through the Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP) – dollars that many private providers rely on to sustain their operations.
The dollars were to be allocated only to Intermediate School Districts (ISDs) that would then decide to keep the money them- selves or allocate out at their discretion. ISDs are not able to deliver these services alone due to building capacity limits and staff deficits. Many families also prefer to use CBOs. Given Governor Whitmer’s intense focus on ‘Pre-K for all’ and the need for a mixed delivery model to truly achieve every 4-year-old being able to access these services, this proposal did not make sense. Additionally, the Senate was proposing a pay parity mechanism that would require private providers to pay employees delivering GSRP services the same salary as teachers in their respective prosperity regions. Under this mandate, private providers would struggle to compete with teacher salaries, which are taxpayer funded. This proposal would essentially put private providers out of business because the revenue streams are vastly different.
On their own, each of these proposals would have created chaos in the childcare industry, but together would have the potential to devastate the entire sector, further compounding the stress on the childcare system.
These two proposals were removed from the budget language. We could not be more grateful to our partners and members who worked very hard alongside us to relay how detrimental these policy changes would have been. The SBAM Advocacy team counts this as a major win.
By Kelli Saunders; originally published in SBAM’s September/October 2024 issue of FOCUS magazine
Click here for more News & Resources.