Tulsa city councilors are worried about working parents in the wake of drastic childcare funding cuts, stricter regulations and rising costs.
At this week’s Urban and Economic Development Committee meeting, councilors felt they should work out a plan to get ahead of the possible fallout from the loss of nearly 1,400 childcare slots in Tulsa County.
The cuts are related to the loss of pandemic-era subsidies and the drastic slashing of state funds.
District 7 Councilor Lori Decter Wright believes the added family stress to be a community and workforce issue, not just a concern for women. She fears that in a country where single income households struggle, parents without childcare can’t work.
“Very concern(ed) about downward repercussions of those choices,” said Wright, who learned about the loss of 1,384 childcare spaces from Tulsa Rep. Suzanne Schreiber (D). “And we're going to find ourselves trying to catch it all, and we know we can't.”
Her main suggestion is to bring Tulsa employers into the conversation and create a sort of “hybrid model” to allow childcare into their operations.
Councilor Carol Bush agreed with Wright and said business owners could not operate without available childcare.
She blames the state Senate for halting any solutions to the issue. To Bush, the House did what they could, but the Oklahoma Senate stopped everything – she doesn’t see it changing before the end of the current session.
“The economic – the trickledown effect is astronomical while they play politics at the state level,” said Bush.
Public Radio Tulsa reached out to Senate Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton (R-Tuttle), who’s been the target of criticism after an abrupt adjournment this week, but received no response.
Instead, Paxton held a press conference on Friday morning. He did not speak to the specific topic raised by Public Radio Tulsa but used the time to address criticism regarding the Senate’s workload and what has been done this session. Or what hasn’t.
“We worked hard, we got our hours in, we got the bills done that we wanted to take care of, and we were able to leave early this week,” said Paxton. “And even though we did not have session on Wednesday, there were a lot of Senators in the building still working on legislation, still working with House members, still working on conference committee reports to make sure that the bills we’re working on are in a way that we can send to the governor’s desk, accurately.”
