August 18, 2017

To the Honorable Members of

The Illinois House of Representatives,

100th General Assembly:

Today I veto House Bill 3167, which requires the Department of Human Services to conduct costly and duplicative surveys regarding the early childhood education workforce without allowing other ongoing support initiatives to come to fruition.

Making sure that our children have high-quality childcare in the early years of their development is a core commitment of this administration. Transformative efforts are underway at agencies and the Children’s Cabinet to address the needs of the early childhood workforce, and I applaud the work they are doing

The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014 requires States who receive federal Child Care and Development Funds (CCDF) to conduct a Market Rate Survey every two years. They require states to take into consideration payment rates to providers that are based on the most recent market rate survey or an alternative methodology and are at a level to meet the health and safety standards implicit in a quality child care setting. In addition, the Department of Human Services is mandated by legislative rule 20 ILCS 505/5.15, to conduct the Illinois Salary and Staffing Survey of Licensed Child Care Facilities every two years. This survey reports the compensation of current child care workers. Many of the principles proposed in HB 3167 exist in these two mandated surveys.

Furthermore, specific strategies to improve the early childhood workforce are being addressed through the Children’s Cabinet’s Early Childhood Workforce Development project. The project is led by a working team consisting of representatives from eight major agencies including the Department of Human Services, the Illinois State Board of Education, and the Governor’s Office of Early Childhood Development as well as several external partners and advocates.

The goal of this Children’s Cabinet project is to ensure Illinois children with high needs have access to quality early care and education services provided by an educated, qualified, and diverse workforce. To achieve this, the project is focused on building a pipeline to attract and retain educators, providing pathways for career opportunity and movement, and enhancing cross-system data collection, usage, and analytic capability.

So while the motivation to provide reliable information is good, this legislation would create more bureaucracy than benefit. The Department of Human Services should be utilizing the resources that would be directed to this survey toward initiatives and services that will have a meaningful impact on children’s lives as opposed to collecting similar information in multiple places.

We should allow the efforts already underway with the Children’s Cabinet to come to fruition and inform what gaps in information need to be corrected for instead of creating duplicative and unnecessary mandates for the Department of Human Services.

Therefore, pursuant to Section 9(b) of Article IV of the Illinois Constitution of 1970, I hereby return House Bill 3167, entitled “AN ACT concerning public aid”, with the foregoing objections, vetoed in its entirety.

Sincerely,

Bruce Rauner

GOVERNOR