The sun was shining Monday afternoon as kids at YWCA Central Maine’s childcare programs made their way outside, enjoying face-painting and crafts set up for a “Day Without Child Care.” A nationwide effort, the day aims to emphasize the systemic issues in the child care industry, and the need for federal support.

Carrie Jadud is a community organizer with the Maine People’s Alliance.

“Child care should be basic infrastructure —you are able to get to work because we have roads and bridges, so you don’t really think about it, you just go on them, right? And we can do the same thing with child care, that is just a basic economic infrastructure,” she said.

Jadud said child care should be funded like other infrastructure- instead of placing the cost entirely on parents, which leaves families struggling to afford care and providers struggling to afford wages for staff.

The goal of Monday’s event was to show parents who are struggling to find and afford care that they are not alone, Jadud said. It’s not a personal failing, but a nationwide issue.

She said child care is a public issue, and should be treated as such.

“It’s something affects all of us, even if people don’t have young children themselves at this moment,” Jadud said. “This affects our whole economy when people can’t participate or can’t participate in the ways that they really are called to do.”

She said that while expansions to childcare worker stipends and family child care scholarships are a step in the right direction, the industry needs ongoing federal support.

Amanda Hatch, chief program and impact officer at the YWCA, said their child care programs are all full, with waitlists. And they often hear from families struggling to find an affordable option, especially as more providers have closed since the pandemic.

But Hatch said even though the YWCA is a larger, more established child care program, funding is always a concern. And supporting infrastructure for the industry would make that a lot easier.

“Just so that we weren’t always searching for the next dollar, or worried about how that was gonna impact the families who are already paying a lot for care and really would struggle to pay more for care,” Hatch said.

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As a former Dewey’s bartender for a few years, this bar holds a very special place in my own heart. Beyond the wild amount of history it holds, I’ve also met some of my very best friends working at this bar and I’d love to see my former co-workers be able to find some closure.

Maine’s highest court has denied the state’s attempt to halt an upcoming trial that will focus on Maine’s inability to find enough attorneys to represent hundreds of low-income criminal defendants.

The Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services, which has been renamed to the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services, has been battling a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine over this crisis for more than two years.

The ACLU’s original complaint in March 2022 alleged the state was violating the constitution by failing to provide poor Mainers with effective court-appointed legal counsel. The lawsuit focused on the commission, the state agency tasked with overseeing private attorneys doing indigent defense. It argued the commission was failing to ensure lawyers were spending enough time with their clients.

But in the years since, the question has expanded beyond effective representation to any representation at all – there are hundreds of Mainers for whom the court and the commission have not been able to find attorneys for.

Superior Justice Michaela Murphy denied several proposed settlement agreements between the parties, arguing they were turning a blind eye to a growing crisis. In February, she ordered that they prepare for a trial in June and the ACLU asked to add the governor and the attorney general as defendants. A trial date has not yet been set.

An attorney for the state appealed Murphy’s order to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court shortly afterward.

Assistant Attorney General Sean Magenis argued Murphy had “abused (her) discretion in determining that the parties proposed settlement agreement was not a ‘fair, reasonable, and adequate’ resolution of the claims” in the ACLU’s original lawsuit.

In a May 1 order, Associate Justice Andrew Horton said the appeal did not merit the high court’s consideration because there has been no final judgment. He said even if the court vacated Murphy’s order, it wouldn’t force their latest settlement to be approved.

Horton also said the order doesn’t deprive the state agency of any rights or present a “major or unsettled question of law” that would warrant the high court’s consideration.

This story will be updated. 

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