ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 5, 1997 TAG: 9704070063
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
With help from the governor, child-care advocates won a little more than half the battle in the General Assembly's fight against lower day-care regulations.
LEGISLATIVE efforts to maintain state standards for licensed day-care centers finished only 1-1 in the General Assembly. Still, the struggle came out a little better than even for the children who will be affected.
Lawmakers had only to rubber-stamp technical amendments that Gov. George Allen made to a bill that will hold the line on staff-to-child ratios at licensed centers. But the legislators were unable to overcome his veto of a bill to maintain educational requirements for day-care providers.
Both bills were offered in response to plans by the Allen-appointed Child Day Care Council to loosen regulations, opening the field to greater competition, proponents argued, and increasing parents' choices.
Low quality should not be a choice in infant and child care.
In vetoing the education requirements, the governor noted that, after hearing public comment, the council already had raised the standards from those it had proposed initially for child-care supervisors and day-care program directors and leaders. This accomplished part of the bill's task - but only part.
The requirements still fall short of current standards, the bill's House patron, Del. Toddy Puller of Mount Vernon, says. For example, requirements for specific training for working with disabled children have disappeared.
In vetoing Puller's bill, the governor noted an irony: Codifying day-care regulations would prevent public comment, the process that had influenced the council to make some of the changes the legislation sought.
Yet he had no such problem signing into law the staffing-ratio requirements. In both cases, the voice of the people had been heard, when current day-care regulations went through the public-comment period.
Try as he might, the governor will have a hard time parading looser regulations under a populist banner when the regulations affect the well-being of people's children.
LENGTH: Short : 45 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1997by CNB