Local News in Brief : Newport Beach : Ferguson to Seek Less Regulation in Child Care

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) said Friday he will introduce legislation in the 1988 Legislature to reduce what he called “overregulation” of the child-care industry.

He said fewer state regulations would “make it less difficult for parent cooperatives and religious-based groups to help solve the child-care crisis.”

The legislator did not specify which regulations he thinks need changing. But a report on child care that Ferguson issued Friday was critical of “stultifying regulations that discourage potential child-care providers.” The report also said that staffing requirements (number of adults to children) and collective bargaining agreements “raise the cost of child care” in the state.

Ferguson said he is not suggesting that state government withdraw its safety checks that guard against abuse of children in day-care facilities: “What I want to see is a decrease in the detrimental intrusion of government into the child-care industry, and replace it with an attitude and policies that facilitate individual, private and family-oriented day care for our children.”

Ferguson said that as a result of his public hearings on the subject, he is convinced that “government has become more of the problem than the solution in child care.”

He added, “The predominant thrust of child-care reform should be to seek private solutions to what is, in the final analysis, a family problem.”