Children watch popcorn pop at their child care program operated by the Dodge County YMCA. (Photo courtesy of the Dodge County YMCA)

For months child care providers and their allies campaigning for direct financial support from Wisconsin lawmakers have highlighted employers and the economy as central to their pitch.

Child care providers are “the workforce behind the workforce” in one of the rallying slogans of the provider-parent coalition Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN).

Employers and business owners themselves, however, have largely stayed in the background — from time to time offering testimonials about their employees’ need for child care, but rarely weighing in on policy alternatives.

Last week more than 75 business leaders broke that pattern, sending a letter to members of the Wisconsin Legislature.

“Wisconsin’s lingering child care crisis … cannot go unaddressed any longer by state legislators, because Wisconsin remains at a workforce crossroads that presents significant, pressing challenges for businesses and the economic vitality of the state,” the group wrote.

“We therefore ask you to advance a significant long-term state investment in child care in the 2025-27 state budget because inaction will further shutter child care programs and continue to hamper efforts to stabilize and grow Wisconsin’s workforce.”

The letter was distributed with the help of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association (WECA), which provides advocacy and professional services for child care providers and also conducts policy research.

Campaign continues for direct subsidy

The letter embraces what Gov. Tony Evers, child care providers and their allies have been seeking in the 2025-27 Wisconsin budget this year: A direct state subsidy for child care providers. Evers and providers have warned that without that kind of support there’s likely to be a drastic shutdown of child care centers across the state in the coming months.

“Child care programs operate on razor-thin margins with budgets balanced on parent fees, which, despite being costly for families, do not cover the full cost of programs providing high-quality care,” the letter states.

“As employers, we have explored and implemented different local initiatives to help grow access to care,” it adds. Nevertheless, “those solutions are limited and must be complemented with a long-term, significant investment of state revenue.”

Tracy Propst, the executive director of the Beaver Dam Chamber of Commerce, helped organize support for and signed the business letter.

“I really do believe child care is part of an economic strategy,” Propst told the Wisconsin Examiner. “If you don’t have access to abundant and economical child care, you are going to lose workforce.”

Mary Vogl-Rauscher, a human resources consultant in Beaver Dam, joined the letter along with businesses she works with.

Prospective fee hikes are “enough of an increase, if we don’t get the subsidies, to take people out of the workforce,” Vogl-Rauscher said. “From an employer perspective and a business perspective, if [the cost of care] goes up and we don’t continue with the state subsidies, it’s going to make an even bigger economic impact.”

Vogl-Rauscher is active in the local and state chapters of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and organized a community discussion of the issue this spring. 

Propst and Vogl-Rauscher both say they’ve sought to persuade their local Assembly member, state Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam), the Joint Finance Committee’s co-chair, that the lawmakers should add the subsidy program into the budget. 

“I’ve had conversations with Mark,” Propst said, adding that he told her that the committee was “doing something,” although not what she had asked for. “He will listen to his constituents,” she said. 

Middle-class squeeze

Both Propst and Vogl-Rauscher said their conversations with Dirk Langfoss, CEO of the Dodge County YMCA and a board member at the Beaver Dam chamber, were instrumental in clarifying the problem.

The Dodge County Y has the largest child care program in the county. Langfoss told the Wisconsin Examiner that competition for employees with other businesses has produced “upward pressures” on wages. The average weekly rate for infant and 1-year-old care is $253 — which adds up to $13,000 for all 52 weeks in the year. Rates are lower for older age groups.

“The middle-income families are the ones that are getting squeezed,” he said, with some telling him now that “they are strapped.”

If subsidies end entirely and the Y has to raise its rates, “those families are going to have to make some very hard decisions,” Langfoss added.

Propst views a direct investment now as a step toward something more comprehensive. “It’s really about child care stabilization,” she said, allowing providers to get their footing.

She also considers the immediate situation to be urgent, and fears the urgency hasn’t gotten through to many people.

“I just think this has snuck up on the businesses,” Propst said. “Like they weren’t aware this is happening, and here we are. And they don’t realize the ramifications of what’s going to happen — and that’s child care closures, child care price increases, and we’re not going to have enough providers.”

Direct investment divisions persist

While child care advocates have been arguing for a direct investment for years, the argument hasn’t fully caught on with the broader public or in the business community.

Among business leaders and the public, “there is a general recognition that child care is essential for workers, especially those that are taking care of young children,” said David Celata, vice president of policy and research for the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. But the true cost of care and why most working families can’t afford it is “an incredibly complex issue,” Celata told the Wisconsin Examiner.

“The numbers really don’t add up until we recognize that there is a social and economic good related to child care that we are failing collectively to truly maximize,” he said. “That then requires some sort of a public investment to strengthen the infrastructure of our child care sector.”

In Wisconsin the campaign for a state child care subsidy has been underway since the 2023-25 budget after monthly grants from federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funds helped child care providers raise wages without having to increase the fees families paid.

The Legislature’s Republican majority turned aside attempts to continue the subsidy program, Child Care Counts, with state money in the 2023-25 budget. Evers subsequently redirected other federal funds to extend the program at reduced rates through the middle of 2025.

The last of those funds will run out by early July. A survey that the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty released in April found that as many as one in four child care providers said they might shut down without the continued support. Anywhere from half to two-thirds of programs forecast fee increases.

Evers put a $480 million proposal for a state-funded Child Care Counts program in his 2025-27 budget. Republicans on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee removed it from the budget along with more than 600 other proposals Evers included before beginning work on their own version of the document.

After visiting a child care center in Waukesha County on Monday to highlight his subsidy proposal, Evers told reporters that he would not sign a budget this year without direct child care support. Evers said the provision was part of his ongoing budget negotiations with the Legislature’s GOP leaders.

Direct funding is still a sticking point, however.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) told reporters Tuesday that Republicans are open to working with Evers on child care but remain firmly opposed to “writing checks out to providers.”

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