Child care surveillance bills raise red flags

Analysis identifies unanswered questions

Join the hundreds of Ohioans who have signed our petition again HB 649.

A pair of proposals by Ohio lawmakers would increase state surveillance of children and child care providers. The bills raise serious concerns about privacy — allowing the state to collect and store videos of children and other sensitive data — and allow the state to cut funding for providers at will, without proof of wrongdoing or opportunity to respond. This could deprive kids of care and businesses of workers for potentially false, arbitrary, or politically motivated causes.

H.B. 649, sponsored by Rep. Josh Williams (R‑Sylvania Twp.) and Rep. D.J. Swearingen (R‑Sandusky) with support from Attorney General Dave Yost, would mandate the Department of Children and Youth (DCY) have access to real-time footage from all non-private classroom spaces inside and outside child care centers. Providers, who are already highly regulated and reimbursed at the lowest allowable rates in the country, will be required to purchase, install, and maintain cameras and other technology at their own expense, and provide DCY unrestricted access to 60 days’ worth of archived footage in addition to the live feed. There is no mechanism for parents to opt out of continuous surveillance and video recording of their child.

“This is a level of surveillance that does not exist in any other state, with no guardrails to ensure the security of sensitive content,” said Policy Matters Ohio’s Sr. Project Coordinator Ali Smith. “The bill allows hundreds of hours of footage to be sent, received, and saved using systems with cybersecurity levels determined by individual programs’ internet connections.”

Smith added, “Child care providers — who operate on razor-thin margins — will be required to foot the bill for this misguided law, even as legislators ignore their advocacy for simple, concrete policies that will lower costs for families and increase access to high-quality care statewide.”

H.B. 647, sponsored by Rep. Phil Plummer (R‑Dayton) and Rep. Tom Young (R‑Washington Twp.), would dramatically expand the state’s power to monitor, analyze, and penalize Publicly Funded Child Care (PFCC) programs. The bill uses money that was intended to make child care more affordable and instead dedicates it to “enhanced automated data analytics.” H.B. 647 would also expand the authority of the Attorney General to intervene in child care operations by suspending licenses or stopping payments based solely on suspected fraud, without normal due process. The bill goes even further, rolling back key policies that stabilize the child care sector and meet families’ needs: It halts the implementation of enrollment-based payments, and eliminates a policy that supports workers who need child care during nontraditional hours, such as nurses, construction workers, restaurant workers, and other second- and third-shift workers.

Smith added, “Instead of addressing real needs like affordable child care, adequate funding, and options for families who work nontraditional hours, lawmakers are pouring resources into untested surveillance systems that will further deepen the child care crisis.”