An expected cut of child care subsidies to hundreds of Fairfax County children was delayed Monday as supervisors again look to the commonwealth to bridge a multimillion-dollar funding gap.
County staff had planned to drop 1,700 children by Oct. 15 and lose another 200 through attrition as a result of cuts in federal child care funds that the state General Assembly refused to supplement. But the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has scrubbed that deadline in the hopes Virginia officials still can find money to address the shortfall.
The decision followed a procession of child care providers and advocates who spoke at the first county board meeting since July, some of them urging the board to use funds carried over from the last fiscal year to keep children on the subsidy. The supervisors did not, however, include money for child care in that fund.
“The disenrollment of 1,900 children is unprecedented and unconscionable,” said Elizabeth Egan of the Main Street Child Development Center.
Local political leaders are hoping state officials can find new funding sources. Fairfax County, however, has already seen one refusal by the Republican-led Virginia General Assembly to supplement the loss of federal dollars. In June, the legislature shot down a bundle of budget amendments that included $6 million in child care subsidies, the majority of which would have gone to Fairfax County. The General Assembly’s vote sparked a harsh response from Board Chairman Gerald Connolly, aDemocrat, who charged local Republican delegates of working against the interest of their own county. GOP assemblymen fired back that the budget amendments were introduced too late, and that Fairfax County had failed to address the childcare problem in time.
County Executive Anthony Griffin had advised that families be randomly taken off the subsidy in October. That may still be a possibility if no new dollars are forthcoming from the state.
