Childcare at Risk as AZ Bureaucrats Push Burdensome New Regulation

Countless working parents in Arizona face endless waiting lists and exorbitant costs for quality childcare, yet state bureaucrats want to force childcare providers to kick children out of their facilities and turn away new families—even when they are fully equipped to care for them.

The Arizona Department of Health Services, which regulates childcare facilities including preschools, daycares, some day camps, and other children’s programs, has proposed a new rule that would impose an across-the-board cap on “group size.” This, in turn, would severely limit the number of children allowed in childcare spaces. It’s also illegal, as the Goldwater Institute explained in a letter to the department last week, urging officials not to adopt the rule.

The department’s restrictive regulation couldn’t come at a worse time. Like much of the United States, Arizona is facing an unprecedented childcare shortage. Parents looking for childcare or educational opportunities for their young children must deal with annual costs that often exceed $10,000 per child per year—not to mention long waitlists to even enroll their children in preschool or daycare. A recent report estimates this crisis-level shortage costs Arizona’s economy approximately $4.7 billion per year. But instead of helping parents and removing obstacles to high-quality childcare, the department is further limiting childcare options with a mass of nonsensical red tape.

In fact, the department has plenty of common-sense options at its disposal to ensure facilities are safe and appropriate places for children. Indeed, the agency has regulated factors like staffing levels, sanitation, ventilation, and fire safety for many years. But its current proposal is illegal, as the Goldwater Institute pointed out Friday in a letter urging the agency to jettison the counterproductive new rule. The statute allowing the state agency to regulate childcare facilities does not authorize the sort of across-the-board “group size” regulation the department is trying to push through. And as Goldwater has argued in many other cases, unelected bureaucrats can only impose regulations that are clearly and specifically authorized by the people’s elected representatives in the Arizona legislature.

Imposing an arbitrary cap on the number of children allowed in a space—regardless of the size of the space, nature of the activity, or number of adults supervising—makes no sense. It’s especially pernicious during a childcare shortage, as it will force good preschools and childcare facilities to turn away families they’re perfectly equipped to serve for no other reason than an irrational bureaucratic requirement.

This is just the latest example of the kind of ill-informed, heavy-handed bureaucratic regulation that governments at all levels impose across the country. Fortunately, the Goldwater Institute is committed to calling out these abuses and fighting back when government red tape gets in the way of Americans’ ability to freely live, work, and raise their families.

You can read Goldwater’s letter here.

John Thorpe is a Staff Attorney at the Goldwater Institute.