In her campaign for governor, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez announced a child care plan Tuesday that includes capping families’ child care costs, raising wages for child care workers and investing to support child care services where they’re hard to come by.
“I’ve been to all 72 counties almost four times now, and everywhere I go, parents tell me the same thing: Child care costs more than their rent, more than their mortgage, more than groceries and utilities combined,” Rodriguez said at a news conference in her Madison campaign headquarters. “I’ve met parents paying $2,000 a month for child care, for one child. They’re being forced to make an impossible choice — Do I keep working or does it make more financial sense to stay at home?”
Her proposal includes establishing “reliable, long-term funding for child care,” Rodriguez said, with possible tax changes as well as partnerships with private businesses. “Investing in affordable, accessible child care is one of the smartest economic development strategies we can pursue,” Rodriguez said.
Every Democrat vying for the party’s nomination has included child care as a policy priority, and they all mention the subject on their campaign websites. Several have toured child care centers to emphasize their commitment to addressing child care access and affordability.
Missy Hughes, the former CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., was the first of the seven Democratic hopefuls to spell out details of her campaign’s child care proposal.
Hughes’ plan, released Feb. 26, frames child care affordability as part of a broader policy theme focusing on the Wisconsin economy. It includes provisions to expand child care subsidies to more families and raise child care wages as well.
“Making childcare affordable will not only help families, but it will unlock parts of the economy that are stalled because of workforce shortages,” Hughes said in announcing her proposal.
The Hughes plan includes expanding the Wisconsin Shares child care subsidy program so that all families up to Wisconsin’s median household income would be eligible in the first year, and to include households with up to twice the median income in the second year. (Wisconsin’s median household income in 2024 was $82,560, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.)
The plan outlines a series of child care workforce proposals including raising wages and instituting training programs, as well as ideas to lower providers’ overhead costs.
Support widespread; details to come
Others in the race have painted in broader brushstrokes, with details yet to come. At a forum in January convened by Main Street Alliance, a small business organizing group that backs stronger government support for child care, all seven Democrats participating endorsed the concept.
In his December visit to a Waunakee child care center, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes said child care and preschool should be universally available, likening them to public school for children age 6 and older. Barnes hasn’t yet fully rolled out his policy, according to his campaign.
On March 26 Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley announced his agenda for his first 30 days if he’s elected governor, which includes passing “universal Pre-K and childcare utilizing the existing providers already serving Wisconsin families.” Neither the agenda nor the campaign website laid out the details or the game plan for reaching that objective.
A feature in The Guardian published in January led off with a short anecdote about Rep. Francesca Hong, who has embraced universal child care as part of her platform. Hong’s campaign website cites plans in New Mexico and Vermont — both of which have enacted universal child care programs. She says her plan is for families “to access affordable, high-quality childcare with either no out-of-pocket costs, subsidies, or strictly capped prices.”
At a meeting with voters in Madison March 24, Joel Brennan listed child care costs, as well as housing costs and health care costs, as among top concerns for voters and his campaign, but didn’t go into details. State Sen. Kelda Roys has also endorsed child care support and headlined legislative proposals to boost Wisconsin’s investment in child care.
None of the Democratic hopefuls have outlined specifics of how their versions of state support for child care would be funded.
Rodriguez’s plan
Rodriguez said her plan calls for holding child care costs to 7% of a family’s income for all families with incomes up to $500,000 a year. The state would cover the rest through “child care affordability grants,” Rodriguez said.
According to calculations from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, fewer than 5% of Wisconsin households have incomes of more than $500,000.
In outlining her proposal for reporters Tuesday, Rodriguez enumerated its features but declined to offer an overall price tag.
“Right now we know that if we invest $1 in child care, we will get $7 to $13 back in economic return,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said her plan calls for letting families choose the child care setting of their preference — center, home-based providers and private and faith-based providers would all be eligible.
The plan also calls for child care providers that receive state support to pay their workers at least $18 an hour, “with clear pathways to higher wages and professional development,” she said. “When we treat early educators like the professionals that they are, we retain workers, stabilize programs, and open more slots for families.”
To bring child care services to areas of the state where they aren’t available, especially in rural communities, the plan includes a low-interest loan and grant program to expand, renovate and build new child care facilities.
Two child care providers, Heather Murray of Waunakee and Brooke Legler of New Glarus, joined Rodriguez’s press conference Tuesday and offered their endorsement of the plan.
“When I think about being able to pay my teachers what they actually deserve, enough that they can build careers here, not just work until something better comes along, that changes everything,” Murray said. “When I think about families being able to afford care without sacrificing everything else, that’s transformative.”
