The old double standard, still at work

The question of whether tax money should go to support child care centers continues to be an issue for Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature.

They have managed to be on both sides, depending upon whose ox is being gored, or whose program is being funded.

When the budget for Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) was approved Tuesday, Rep. Suzanne Jeskewitz, a Menomonee Falls Republican, blasted the budget, which raises the tax levy more than 6%. But she zeroed in on a $1.24 million allocation to subsidize child care centers on each of the MATC campuses, challenging it as a misuse of tax dollars, the Journal Sentinel reported.

It's been an issue since the Legislative Audit Bureau took a look at MATC in 2003 and its audit mentioned, almost in passing, the child care centers operated by MATC. Costs were increasing (no surprise) and $1-million was budgeted for 2002-03.

When the audit was discussed at a legislative committee hearing, some of the Republican lawmakers like Jeskewitz and State Sen. Carol Roessler, who co-chaired the audit committee, questioned why MATC would be spending money from the property tax levy for child care. State Sen. Alberta Darling chimed in, too.

Why spend tax money to subsidize child care? asked the GOP.

After it was explained that the award-winning centers both provide child care for children of students and serve as learning labs for people in MATC's early childhood program, things settled down a bit.

But the MATC administration has used those comments from GOP lawmakers to go after the program and seek to cut budgets for child care. A $300,000 cut was proposed last year but eventually restored. But the struggle on the issue is ongoing.

So imagine the surprise of MATC students and faculty members when the Republican-run Joint Finance Committee, in one of its middle of the night sessions, put $1-million in the budget to operate a private, non-profit child care center in Milwaukee.

The money will go to the Next Door Foundation, which apparently had raised enough money to build its new Educare center, but not enough to operate it.

The Joint Finance Republicans, of course, were in no mood to increase spending, so that million dollars had to come from somewhere. So they cut $1 million dollars for at risk children from the Milwaukee Public Schools budget and gave it to the Next Door Foundation to run its center. (This was an extra million taken from MPS, in addition to the $40 million cut they had already imposed.)

The Next Door Foundation has a good reputation for providing needed services to children in the central city. That's not the question.

But the decision left some MATC faculty and staff members scratching their heads. Why isn't it an issue to give tax money for a child care center in this case?

Could it be the Republican connections of the Next Door Foundation board? Some conspiracy theorists at MATC certainly think so. The board is made up of some well-connected people, to be sure, many of who give to GOP candidates. But I will leave it to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign or Common Cause to use the pejorative words. They see BRIBE written on every dollar that goes to a candidate, and there are plenty of them in this case.

Whatever the reason, it is a total about-face for the Republicans. It should take some of the heat off the programs at MATC, but judging from Jeskewitz's comments Tuesday night, the GOP hasn't gotten the word out that it is now for tax-subsidized child care.