Las Vegas to end licensing, regulating of centers

By Sam Skolnik

Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Las Vegas has decided to give up its traditional role of licensing and regulating the city’s child care centers.

The move, in response to a growing budget crisis, will save about $700,000 annually, officials say.

It will also likely lead to fewer child care providers being licensed under the state’s oversight.

The cost-savings was recommended by the city’s recent Fundamental Service Review, which scoured the budget to mitigate a projected $150 million deficit over the next five years.

The state permits cities and counties to handle child care oversight — but it also cannot balk when it is asked to take the job back, as will happen in May, assuming an ordinance soon to go before the City Council passes.

The move means the state will incur the extra expense, which it has built into its Child and Family Services Division recommended budgets for the next two years, said Ben Kieckhefer, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department.

The state anticipates the general fund cost to be about $264,000 in fiscal year 2010 and $244,000 the following year. That includes a request to add four child care “surveyors” to handle child care licensing and regulation in the city, said Barbara Legier, a deputy administrator in the division.

Fewer child care providers are likely to need to be licensed after the switch because state law mandates that providers with five or more children need licenses.

The city required all providers be licensed and regulated.

The Child Care Regulation and Licensing Program, within the city’s Business Services Division, will cease to exist on May 7, if the ordinance passes. It will be up for a vote early next year and is expected to pass.

No one will lose jobs because of the shift, the city’s spokesman said. The program had employed two workers who handled child care matters full time, and three others who did the work part time. One full-timer recently retired and the other will be retiring soon, the spokesman said, but not because of the change. The three part-timers will gain new responsibilities.

The spokesman said advantages of the shift include the state’s mandate that child care regulators have training in child care or early childhood education, which the city does not require.

Also, the city notes that regulations in Southern Nevada will be more standardized, as Henderson and North Las Vegas rely on the state for the service.

But others question whether, in an understandable effort to streamline its budget, the city is allowing the regulation and licensing requirements of its child care centers to be weakened.

State law mandates that if a city or county wants to handle the responsibility, its licensing and oversight requirements need to be at least as tough as the state’s.

Fewer centers will be regulated by the state because of the minimum number of children requirement, but neither state nor city officials said they knew exactly how many centers care for the small numbers of children and would therefore be exempt.

Kieckhefer said the state is now looking at oversight of 208 facilities in Las Vegas, based on the current count.

“I know that the licensing standards for the city were more stringent than the state,” said Denise Tanata Ashby, executive director of the Nevada Institute for Children’s Research and Policy, which is affiliated with the UNLV School of Public Health.

The most important thing, Ashby said, is that child care providers “make sure kids are in the safest environment they can be in.”

That includes making sure the centers are properly staffed and that workers’ backgrounds are sufficiently checked.

Ashby and Bette Katz of the Children’s Cabinet, a Reno nonprofit group that provides resources for child care providers, said although the state isn’t known for poorly regulating child care providers, cities and counties typically better. Clark and Washoe counties handle their own services, for example.

Compared with other states, Nevada seems to fare well.

According to a 2007 study by the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies, Nevada placed 11th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The states were ranked by several factors, including how well they maintained staff/child ratios, whether center staffers were required to undergo criminal background checks, and whether teachers and center directors are adequately trained.