Early Intervention Funding
The D-News has an article on my bill to increase early intervention funding $2.5 million. Initially, I proposed to fund the increase with a penny-per-beer tax increase. Now it would be funded by creating a restricted account to capture revenue that already is being generated by the existing tax and is simply falling into the general fund.
The article says, "The bill's sponsor, Rep. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, said he got rid of the tax increase when he discovered the already existing surplus." We can run with that; however, it might be more accurate to say that I decided to go with the restricted account when I realized the increased tax was dead in the water.
The article says, "The bill's sponsor, Rep. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, said he got rid of the tax increase when he discovered the already existing surplus." We can run with that; however, it might be more accurate to say that I decided to go with the restricted account when I realized the increased tax was dead in the water.
posted by steve u. at 1/28/2007
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5 Comments:
Now see Steve, not a bad thing here.
I do have a little concern with "sin" taxes going towards things like this, but I guess this is not bad, especially for your own situation.
Two things I will never support are mandated preschool and mandated all-day kindergarten. Imagine having to take diaper breaks at school. Yick!
I streamed the Health and Human Services session yesterday and am alarmed that the Health Department’s request for an increase in funding for the Baby Watch program was hacked into two separate issues: an increase in Providers’ Rate and Case Load Growth. Increasing the provider rate would be terrific if the programs received funding per child. However, contracts for Baby Watch Early Intervention Programs are divided up from whatever funds are available in any given year. Due to the huge population growth in Utah over the last few years, the early intervention contracts have actually worked out to be less per child every year.
Funding just the provider rate increase will not even begin to help with the huge increase in numbers of children served in our state. As so succinctly stated by James J. Heckman, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, in his Wall Street Journal piece Catch ‘em Young “The best way to improve schools is to improve the students sent to them.” The full text of his cost benefit analysis of early intervention programs is available at http://www.unitedwayncfl.org/SB6/Catch-em-Young.pdf I recommend reading Dr. Heckman’s entire article to get an idea of how early intervention with high risk children has life-long benefits.
I'm actually happy with early intervention's place(s) on the list. The program did well, and I'm very optimistic it will be well funded.
It is utterly amazing to me how little the State of Utah values education, let alone special education and early intervention. The research clearly shows that emphasizing early intervention decreases the financial obligations to society as our disabled children get older. Serve these children now, provide comprehensive appropriate services now and reap the rewards of having productive members of society later. Early intervention services in Utah are mediocre at best. Do we really value our children here or is that just an illusion?
Early intervention is so vitally important for families and children with special needs! The brain is still developing during the first three years of life and so much can be done to help children have better lives! The support that the Early Intervention program gives to families is incredible. It helps families understand the needs of their young children and gives them ways to help encourage their children's development. Parenting is hard enough, but when you face the stress and challenges associated with having a young child who is not developing "typically", it can be overwhelming. The Early Intervention offers hope and support to families and children. I am concerned by the comments above, about the population growth and the actual decrease in funding per child over time. These children need and deserve quality support, which ultimately comes down to funding. Are we really doing enough to ensure that the funding is adequate to make sure that each child gets the support they need?
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