Article written by SBAM’s Advocacy Team
Cutting regulatory “red tape” has been an ongoing conversation in the House Rules committee this year, and the conversation continued last week, where SBAM’s Advocacy & Policy Manager, Jacob Manning, testified in support of House Bill 5127, alongside the bill’s sponsor, Representative Bill G. Schuette. This bill would clarify that Michigan’s Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential (MILEAP) can only regulate a licensed childcare space itself – not unrelated tenants of a multi-use building or unrelated area of a childcare center.
Currently, Michigan’s statute contains no guarantees in this space, meaning that childcare providers – whether they be family or community-based providers or centers – can face inspection risks for parts of their facility where children are not present, or even parts of their building that are completely outside of their control.
For an industry with brutally thin margins, time spent on compliance requirements take away from the care providers are able to deliver. Every provider agrees that the most important part of their work is ensuring the health and safety of their kids, and a safe environment is a central piece of providing stellar care. Regulators play a vital role in ensuring safety conditions are met. HB 5127 does not take away any relevant safety requirements but focuses providers’ efforts on the aspects of their center where kids are actually present.
Michigan’s childcare shortage is a multi-faceted dilemma, and the consequences of these shortages affect not only providers, but employers across the state, as childcare remains one of the leading reasons for workforce shortages. There is no silver-bullet fix that will automatically solve our state’s challenges overnight, but unclear and unhelpful regulations are consistently cited as a key inhibitor for growth, success, and expansion opportunities for providers. Providers should not and cannot reasonably be responsible for all aspects of the building they inhabit, especially if they inhabit a multi-use building and only utilize a part of it for care. HB 5127 helps ensure that the main thing stays the main thing, and providers have more bandwidth for the most important aspects of their work.
Background:
The House’s red tape conversation on childcare began in March this year, when SBAM testified alongside Lindsey Potter, owner of Bright Light Early Care & Education, on why the childcare industry was especially impacted by overregulation. Given their important role in keeping children safe, providers are subject to a high regulatory standard and must respond to multiple regulatory bodies. In her testimony, Lindsey stated that she must interface with six different organizations to meet these regulatory requirements. With so many rules from different places, there are duplicative requirements and overlap, which creates a burden for providers.
Representative Schuette released a Red Tape Report earlier this year, and dozens of bills have been introduced in the House to address shortcomings in the state’s regulatory code. House Bill 5127 is a piece of this broader effort as the state aims to make Michigan more friendly to providers.
Read HB 5127 here: https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Bills/Bill?ObjectName=2025-HB-5127
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