POLICY WATCH – November 2024
In This Issue
NBLC Gives Thanks!
NBLC Wins in Local and State Ballot Measures
Help Shape SMART’s Future - Comment of Draft Strategic Plan
Child Care Costs Impacting Working Mothers’ Gains
Upcoming Events
Child Care Means Business in Marin, hosted by First5Marin and NBLC, January 31, 2025
Welcome New Member- Soiland Company Inc. and Sonoma Clean Power
Members in the News
Happy Thanksgiving! North Bay Leadership Council gives thanks to our membership and readers of this newsletter for their support. Together, we are making an impact. Our members represent a wide variety of businesses, non-profits, and educational institutions, with a workforce in excess of 100,000. As business and civic leaders, our goal is to promote sound public policy, innovation and sustainability to make our region a better place to live and work. With your support this year, NBLC stood up for more workforce housing and co-sponsored the Housing Solutions Summit. We stood up for improving student outcomes by supporting educational legislation at the State, by challenging the Governor’s budget and advocating for child care slots in the region. We stood up for commuters in the North Bay stuck in gridlock, and for the local workforce by advocating for Bay Area jobs catalyst funds to support career pathways in construction for women and in High Road Clean Transportation careers. NBLC fought for your tax dollars, for keeping downtowns thriving and for permitting policy reforms in Sacramento.
As I complete my first year as CEO at NBLC, I reflect back and have much gratitude for the support of you, our Board of Directors, and our membership. Our membership is a vibrant community of leading employers who serve this organization, who invest in the region and who demonstrate leadership in making the North Bay prosperous, sustainable and resilient for all.
Thank you! Have a Happy thanksgiving for your family and friends.
Best regards,
Joanne Webster
NBLC WINS in Local Ballot Measures and State Propositions
The business and civic leaders of the North Bay Leadership Council make it their goal to promote sound public policy and endorse candidates with a business-friendly platform to make the north bay a better place to live and work. We provide a strong voice for leading employers to drive public policy in our region, demonstrate and grow leadership within the region, and collectively work for a more resilient, prosperous and equitable future.
Please find NBLC wins in local ballot measures and State propositions and candidate races below:
Of the 11 state and local ballot measures on which the NBLC took positions, voters agreed with us on 9. And eight of 10 local candidates the NBLC supported won their races.
NBLC WINS in Local Ballot Measures and State Propositions:
Sonoma County:
i. √ Measure J -defeated
ii. √Measure I – passed
iii. √Santa Rosa, Measure EE- passed
iv. √Napa, Measure U- passed
State Propositions:
i. √Prop 2, passed
ii. √Prop 4, passed
iii. √Prop 33, defeated
iv. √Prop 35, passed
v. √Prop 36, passed
NBLC Candidates WIN:
CA Assembly District 2- Chris Rogers
CA Assembly District 4- Cecilia Aguiar-Curry
CA Assembly District 12- Damon Connolly
Marin County Supervisors District 2- Brian Colbert
Santa Rosa City Council- District 3- Dianna MacDonald
Petaluma City Council- District 5- Alexander DeCarli
San Rafael City Council- Mayor- Kate Colin
San Rafael City Council- District 4- Rachel Kertz
SMART’s Draft Strategic Plan
SMART is committed to fostering a sustainable and connected future for the North Bay. You're invited to review the draft plan, share your feedback, and play an active role in shaping the future of sustainable transportation in our region. Click here to review the draft plan.
Your participation is crucial in shaping the future of SMART. We encourage you to share your ideas and comments by emailing Planning@sonomamarintrain.org by November 30, 2024.
Child Care Costs Impacting Working Mothers’ Gains
NBLC will be co-hosting a child care forum in late January with First5Marin. As employers we know that reliable child care means employee retention, and business growth. We seek to make child care work for employers and employees. Harvard economist and Nobel laureate Claudia Goldin has concluded, from decades of research on the topic, that helping pay for child care is the single most impactful thing governments can do to help working women. “Every country that has highly subsidized child care has pretty high levels” of women in the workforce, she says. “That’s clear.” Goldin cites Sweden, France and Canada as countries that have seen the number of mothers in the workforce rise as child care costs have come down through government subsidies.
Currently, the cost of day care in the US is soaring, and it’s become a drag in the number of women in the workforce, Stacey Vanek Smith writes in Bloomberg newsletter, November 19th.
“First comes the baby, then comes the bill. And right now, the bills are growing almost as fast as the babies. The cost of day care and preschool in the US has jumped more than 25% since 2019, leaving many working parents to make an impossible calculation.
“The costs are unreal,” says Amber Lord, 39, who gave birth to her son, Henry, last year. Lord loved her job in marketing and planned to continue working after her son was born. As she visited day cares near her home in Virginia Beach, she began to panic: They were all charging around $25,000 a year for four-days-a-week care that didn’t fully cover working hours. Lord’s husband had a good job and was the family’s biggest earner. As the couple ran the numbers, it became clear that if Lord was going to also work full time, it was going to cost a small fortune.
“We were like, ‘We can’t make this make sense,’” she recalls. “It was going to cost like 80% of my monthly pay.” Lord’s husband offered to take a second job, but Lord says that didn’t feel right to her. She asked her boss if she could go part time, but her boss refused. Lord realized she was going to have to leave a job she loved, in a career she’d spent almost two decades building. “I came home from work and just sat there in my empty house, crying and pregnant, thinking, ‘There’s no village. There is no village. I live in a country where they don’t care.’”
Lord’s experience seems to be emerging as a national trend: As child care costs have soared, federal help for parents has tapered off. Last year, tens of billions of dollars in child care subsidies put in place during the pandemic expired.
That one-two punch appears to be pushing some mothers out of the workforce. Lauren Bauer, an economist and fellow at the Brookings Institution, has been tracking the data and found that the share of mothers with children under 5 who are working has fallen from 70% to 68% in the past 18 months. That’s tens of thousands of mothers who’ve dropped out of the workforce in just the past year and a half. “There are women who would like to participate in the workforce, who now no longer have as much of a choice,” Bauer says.
There could be other causes of this decline, she says, but it does mark the reversal of a trend that had seen women and mothers coming into the workforce in record numbers. Bauer credits a mix of factors for that increase: schools reopening after Covid-19-related restrictions, federal subsidies rolling in, the job market taking off and employers becoming more flexible about work arrangements. “And right now we are seeing all of those things dissipate.”
A study out this year from LendingTree found that having two children in day care was significantly more expensive than rent in cities across the US, averaging almost $15,000 per year, per child. “You’re asking young families to spend a college tuition to have their child taken care of,” Bauer says.
Even for couples who have savings, like Lord and her husband, it often isn’t enough. After Lord left her job, she tried to build a marketing business from home as she cared for her newborn. She also began posting on social media about her experience and was shocked at the thousands of responses that poured in from mothers across the country.
“Most of them said they had to leave their job because they couldn’t afford day care any longer,” Lord says. Other women told her they left their children with caregivers they didn’t entirely trust. “It was moms from every economic background,” she says.
Lord says, in spite of her mixed emotions, she’s truly loved staying home with her son. She’s also managed to build a thriving marketing business from home. After hearing so many stories from mothers across the country, she encourages all stay-at-home moms to find some way to keep working. “I’m like, ‘I don’t care how much you trust someone or love someone. People change and situations change.’ I want women to be more prepared and more secure, and just feel safer, not only as women, but as mothers.”
Lord does sometimes think about how her life might look different in a world with more affordable child care. “We just spend every waking moment together, face-to-face. And it’s great. I love him to pieces. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she says. “But yeah, if we could put him in day care for a little bit, I would absolutely do that.”
Upcoming Events: Save the Date
Child Care Means Business in Marin- Affordable, High-Quality Care is a Key Part of Important Benefits for Working Families, January 31st, Embassy Suites
Please save the date for upcoming events. Child Care Means Business in Marin, January 31st, Embassy Suites. This forum is in partnership with First5Marin and NBLC. Watch for registration details soon.
Welcome New Members
North Bay Leadership Council provides a strong voice for leading employers to drive public policy in our region. Our membership consists of private businesses, public institutions, hospitals and members in the health care sector, government agencies, as well as nonprofits. They represent over 100,000 employees, across 27 different industry sectors. This diversity in membership brings the vision needed to our work to address complex issues and improve the community as a whole. The challenges we face require regional leadership, to work collaboratively in finding regional solutions.