OPINION: Free universal child care will keep and attract skilled workers

When I first moved to Santa Fe almost five years ago, I was introduced to another D.C. ex-pat, Ian Koons. We both knew many of the same folks in D.C. and we both ran the only venture-backed health care startups in New Mexico at the time. Ian had followed his wife Rosie, whose family hailed from Farmington, to the Land of Entrapment, as he called it. 

In the four years since, Ian has been looking for a way out of New Mexico. And Rosie and I have been trying to convince him to stay. He tried to raise here but was turned off by the parochial so-called health venture funds and so he has raised more than $8 million mostly from Chicago and California funds. As Karoo Health, Ian's value-based cardiac care company, expanded operations to 25,000 patients in 11 states and more than 40 employees across the country, he thought about opening an office here and working with New Mexico cardiologists, but again that fell through. And he was really turned off when the Legislature passed a bill requiring their sign-off on any acquisition or merger of any health care companies — nothing limits innovation like regulation. 

But the one arrow in Rosie’s quiver that has kept them and their three kids — 8, 6 and 2 — in New Mexico turned out to be universal child care. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in September announced New Mexico would become the first state in the union to provide universal child care, but some of her colleagues in the state Legislature have pooh-poohed the idea, and the money to fund it is now in doubt. 

“I do think it’ll help attract folks like Ian — entrepreneurs — to the state,” Rosie says. “It saves us almost $2,000 a month, which is a huge benefit. Ian and I have discussed moving, but because of this program, we decided to stay for the next year. If we move, our bills go up substantially, not just because of our youngest, who is 2, but because this program also pays for after school programs for our two older kids and will until they’re at least 10.”

Ian is still looking at Austin or Denver, but he’s begrudgingly here right now for the universal child care. If that goes away with a means test, as some in the Legislature are proposing, so too will Ian, and any lure for young entrepreneurs looking to start something big in a place they can afford to raise a family.

And entrepreneurs aren’t the only white-collar workers who could disappear if the program isn’t fully funded. When Lujan Grisham first announced the program in September, she cited a young family of teachers in Santa Fe, Nathan Herzog and Hannah Mierley. Without help, it made more financial sense for Hannah to give up her job and take care of their young kids — or, more likely, the couple would just leave the state to be closer to family support systems. 

Many in the Legislature have complained that people who make more than 400% of the poverty level — the previous means test for state-funded child care — don’t need help paying for care. But the truth is, it’s often more cost-effective for one parent to stay home with the kids, especially if couples have more than one child. 

Most often this takes professional women out of the workforce. A wrenching choice with which the majority-female state Legislature should be familiar. New Mexico shouldn’t just aim to eke by helping the poorest — indeed with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits, the federal government already does that — the state should aim high and look to enable young entrepreneurs like Ian and young teachers like Hannah to not only remain in our workforce, but help transform it.

Jay Newton-Small is the editor-in-chief and executive vice president of the Albuquerque Journal.