North Dakota
More Republicans back spending on child care, saying it’s an economic issue
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) – Like a lot of mothers, North Dakota state Rep. Emily O’Brien struggled to find infant care when her daughter Lennon was born in 2019. So O’Brien, a Republican who represents the Grand Forks region, brought Lennon along to meetings with local leaders and constituents.
O’Brien had her second daughter, Jolene, in 2022, not long before legislators were due to meet. Wanting more time to bond before returning to work, O’Brien brought the newborn with her to Bismarck, where she snoozed through Gov. Doug Burgum’s State of the State address on her mother’s desk.
Not long after, O’Brien persuaded her colleagues to back a plan to invest $66 million in child care, an unprecedented sum for a state that had, like others with Republican leadership, long resisted such spending. But O’Brien argued it could help the state’s workforce shortage by helping more parents go to work and attracting new families to the state.
“It was definitely not, you know, an easy sell, because this is probably somewhere where you don’t want the government to get involved,” O’Brien said. “But it’s a workforce solution. We have people that are willing and able to work, but finding child care was an obstacle.”
Republicans historically have been lukewarm about using taxpayer money for child care, even as they have embraced prekindergarten. But the pandemic, which left many child care providers in crisis, underscored how precarious the industry is and how many working parents rely on it.
In 2021, Congress passed $24 billion of pandemic aid for child care businesses, an unprecedented federal investment. Now, as that aid dries up, Republican state lawmakers across the country are embracing plans to support child care — and even making it central to their policy agendas.
To be sure, the largest investments in child care have come not from Republicans but from Democratic lawmakers. In New Mexico, the state is covering child care for most children under 5 using a trust funded by oil and natural gas production. In Vermont, Democratic state lawmakers overrode a Republican governor’s veto to pass a payroll tax hike to fund child care subsidies.
Red states are following suit with more modest — but nonetheless historic — investments in child care.
In Missouri, Republican Gov. Mike Parson has proposed spending nearly $130 million to help low-income families access child care once the pandemic relief money dries up and to create tax credits to support child care providers. The House passed the tax credit legislation Thursday with bipartisan support, sending it to the Senate.
Republican state Rep. Brenda Shields, who sponsored the tax credit bill, said she tells conservative colleagues that child care accessibility is vital to grow the state’s economy.
“Child care is a critical infrastructure, just like roads and bridges and ports and trains,” Shields said. “Businesses have been saying, ‘What are you doing about child care?’ So I’m trying to be part of the solution.”
Missouri’s number of child-care facilities is down 14%, and the 167,000 slots for children is about 6,000 fewer than before the coronavirus pandemic in December 2019, according to data from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Elsewhere, Louisiana last year approved an unprecedented $52 million for child care subsidies for low-income families. Alabama provided $17 million worth of incentives for child care providers to get licensed. And Texas voters approved a property tax cut for some day care centers.
More Republicans have pledged to tackle the child care crisis this year. In Missouri, Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Republican, said he hoped the Statehouse would focus less on culture war issues — like criminalizing drag shows and censoring library books — and more on expanding access to child care and school choice. Nebraska and Indiana have both pitched programs to make child care free for child care workers. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who ran on a conservative education agenda, pitched boosting the state’s child care and education spending by $180 million.
Child care advocates say the investments are not enough and called on Congress to authorize a new round of money to keep the child care industry afloat. Already, day care centers report they are raising tuition and losing workers because they are no longer receiving federal subsidies. Some have folded.
GOP resistance to child care spending dates to the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon vetoed a bill to establish a national child care system, invoking fears of communism and saying it had “family-weakening implications.” Many of those arguments persist. Some conservative lawmakers have panned child care funding as ” socialist,” arguing that people who can’t afford day care should not have children. Two years ago, an Idaho state lawmaker apologized after he opposed federal early childhood money because it encouraged women to ” come out of the home and let others raise their children.”
The new and expanded funding reflects a growing sentiment that the nation’s broken child care system will not be fixed without public support. Families have long faced issues finding affordable, reliable child care. But during the pandemic, many child care workers left the industry for better-paying jobs, and some child care centers closed for good, exacerbating the problem.
Child care is a labor-heavy enterprise — in some states, one person may only care for four infants at once. Even before the pandemic, child care providers often had razor-thin margins. When families kept their children home during the pandemic, many day cares were barely hanging on.
Many parts of the country do not have enough child care providers to offer slots for all children. Even when slots are available, the cost is out of reach for many families. It’s a problem that disproportionately affects women, who are typically the primary caregivers for children.
But a lack of child care access is also keeping people from the workforce, contributing to a labor shortage in many states. Many industries have started lobbying for states to invest more in child care. One of the strongest proponents is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, which surveyed a dozen states and estimated they lost billions of dollars in economic activity because of child care gaps.
Resistance persists in many parts of the country. While North Dakota passed ground-breaking measures to support child care, Republican Gov. Kristi Noem in South Dakota said she opposed proposals to spend state dollars helping families pay for child care.
“The one thing … that I’m not wiling to do is to directly subsidize child care for families,” Noem recently told KWAT News in Watertown, South Dakota. “I just don’t think it’s the government’s job to pay or to raise people’s children for them.”
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Greg Power, fisheries division chief with the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, shares information about the new 2026-2028 Fishing Guide and a few new regulations starting April 1, 2026.
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SIOUX FALLS — Ali Stephens had 17 points and 13 rebounds and 8th-seeded Omaha defeated 9th-seeded North Dakota 49-39 in the first round of the Summit League women’s tournament.
The Fighting Hawks had a tough time putting the ball in the hoop all night long, scoring just three points in the first quarter and having only marginally better luck from there.
UND (7-24) shot just 23.5 percent from the floor (12-for-51) and made 1-of-20 shots from outside the arc. Walker Demers and Mackenzie Hughes had 10 points each to lead the Hawks, with Demers adding eight rebounds.
Matt Zimmer/Sioux Falls Live
Regan Juenemann had 10 points and five rebounds for the Mavericks while Avril Smith had seven points and 16 rebounds and Sarai Estupinan eight points, five assists and three rebounds. Omaha (6-26) shot the ball slightly better than the Hawks, going 16-of-53 from the field (30 percent) and 8-of-23 (35 percent) on 3-pointers.
With the win, the Mavs earn a date with top-seed North Dakota State on Thursday at 2:30 p.m.
The Bison won both regular season matchups by more than 50 points.
Matt Zimmer/Sioux Falls Live
Oral Roberts 84, Kansas City 62 — Don’t look now but the team that started the conference season 0-10 and at one point lost 15 of 16 games might be the hottest in the Summit League.
Oral Roberts picked up their fourth straight victory on Wednesday night in the conference tournament opener, routing Kansas City at the Premier Center in the 8/9 “play-in” game.
Ty Harper had 22 points to lead the Golden Eagles (10-22), who took a 44-21 lead by halftime and never looked back. ORU shot 50 percent from the floor and made 13-of-27 3-pointers while the Kangaroos shot just 34 percent and made 6-of-24 from deep. Martins Kilups had 17 points for the Eagles and Connor Dow added 14.
Jayson Petty had 14 points to lead the Kagaroos, who finish the season 4-27. It was their final game under coach Marvin Menzies, whom the school announced earlier this season would not return next year.
With the win ORU advances to face top-seed North Dakota State on Thursday at 6 p.m.
The Golden Eagles lost to NDSU 86-58 in Tulsa on Jan. 24 but they took the Bison to overtime in Fargo on Jan. 3 in a 79-77 loss.
Matt Zimmer is a Sioux Falls native and longtime sports writer. He graduated from Washington High School where he played football, legion baseball and developed his lifelong love of the Minnesota Twins and Vikings. After graduating from St. Cloud State University, he returned to Sioux Falls, and began a long career in amateur baseball and sports reporting. Email Matt at mzimmer@siouxfallslive.com.
North Dakota
The North Dakota Attorney General issued an opinion to the ND State Auditor – North Dakota Attorney General
04 Mar The North Dakota Attorney General issued an opinion to the ND State Auditor
in Opinions
March 4, 2026
Media Contact: Suzie Weigel, 701.328.2210
BISMARCK, ND – It is the opinion that federal law does not prevent the state from auditing P&A and even though P&A possesses confidential records, N.D.C.C. § 54-10-22.1 and 42 C.F.R. § 51.45(c) authorize the state auditor and the employees of the auditor’s office, to review the records without detriment to P &A.
Also, whether Rule 1.6 of the North Dakota Rules of Professional Conduct for licensed attorneys prohibits P&A from disclosing to the State Auditor the contents of a client file for the purpose of conducting a non-financial performance audit under N.D.C.C. ch. 54-10 when the requested file includes information about individuals and businesses in the private sector who chose to contact P &A.
This issue was already addressed in a 1995 opinion of this office regarding P&A. The 1995 opinion highlighted that P&A has authority to contract with private attorneys to represent private individuals. 17 During that performance audit, auditors asked to see billings from the contracted attorneys. 18 P&A redacted the names of the individuals represented by the contract attorneys under the rules for attorney-client privilege or attorney-client confidentiality. 19 The names of individuals seeking services of P&A are protected under N.D.C.C. § 25-01.3. The opinion stated:
Thus, P&A’s records which indicate to whom its services were provided are available to the State Auditor for performance audit purposes. The State Auditor has
been given access by P&A to its records other than the attorney’s billings. Therefore, the State Auditor already has access to the names of the persons to whom P&A
provides services. State law requires that the State Auditor and his employees must keep such information confidential.
Here, P&A has not identified a specific record. Given that, I rely on the past opinions declaring that records made confidential by N.D.C.C. § 25-01.3-10 are available under N.D.C.C. § 54-10-22 to the State Auditor and the Auditor’s employees for audit purposes.
Link to opinion 2026-L-01
###
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