The Committee on Children heard testimony on Thursday from parks and recreation directors, the Office of the Child Advocate and others on a controversial bill that would ensure that municipal programs for children conduct background checks on employees, among other requirements.
The bill was proposed in the wake of a sex abuse case in Bethany last year, where an employee of a municipal camp and after school program was arrested and accused of abusing several children. In the aftermath, questions emerged about the way the programs where he worked had been managed. The case also highlighted a loophole that allows camps run by municipalities to operate without the licensure requirements of private camps.
“We all know we had a horrible time in one town this past summer and that is the origin of this legislation,” Sen Ceci Maher, D-Wilton, the co-chair of the Committee on Children, said during the hearing on Thursday. “The ultimate goal we all have is making sure our children are safe and there’s oversight and we have same requirements across the board for camps and child care.”
House Bill 6952 would require people applying to work at a municipal program to undergo a comprehensive background check if they are 18 years old or older. The bill would also require anyone 21 years or older who works in such a program to be a mandated reporter. It would require a ratio of one staff member who is over 18 years old to every 12 children, and it would require a staff member who is CPR certified to be present during the program’s hours of operation.
The bill would also limit the use of the word “camp” in advertising materials to programs that are licensed by the Office of Early Childhood. But given that municipal programs are not licensed, programs currently called “camps” run by towns across the state would no longer be able to use this term.
Rep. Patrick Boyd, D-Pomfret, a member of the Committee on Children, said that the prohibition on municipal programs using the word “camp” in their advertising is intended to help consumers distinguish licensed from unlicensed programs.
“Does the word ‘camp’ imply something? Does it imply there is some accreditation, some kind of licensure?” Boyd said.
The bill was met with a mixture of support and opposition during a public hearing on Thursday.
Municipal parks and recreation directors from towns like Avon, Glastonbury and Newington forcefully opposed the bill. Hannah Lemek, advocacy manager for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, went as far as to say that the bill, in its current form, would cause more drownings of children because of the way it would impact access to swimming lessons.
Lemek and others took particular issue with a section of the bill that defines recreational and educational children’s programs as, in part, “any regularly scheduled program or organized group activity operated only during school vacations or on weekends…” Lemek said that this would create onerous requirements even for short programs offered by municipalities.
“For instance, if a municipal recreation department offers a simple one hour tennis clinic three times a week, or a 30 minute swim lesson three times a week, it must comply with all the provisions in H.B. 6592,” Lemek said.
The legislature has previously attempted to regulate municipal camps, an effort that has been met with intense opposition from municipal parks and recreation departments, which argue that adding new requirements would incur costs that would ultimately force many to close their doors, depriving families of affordable child care options and enriching activities for youth.
But the sex abuse case in Bethany has prompted a renewed attempt to look for a middle road between full licensure and no regulation. The proposed bill would not require licensure, but does seek to ensure that all staff members over 18 receive background checks, something many camps say they already do, but which is not currently required.
Previous opposition to such regulatory bills included written testimony from Paula Cofrancesco, the first selectman of Bethany who has been under intense scrutiny for her role in the oversight of Bethany’s Parks and Recreation programs where the abuse allegedly occurred.
Lemek said that the type of background checks required under the bill could prove costly for municipalities.
Rep. Mary Welander, D-Orange, a member of the Committee on Children, responded to Lemek by saying she thought a small price increase — if the cost of the background checks ends up being passed on to parents — would be worth it.
“I’m not saying this is not an ask to do more, I recognize that,” she said. “But I think that if I was in a position as a parent and I was expecting my kids to be safe and then I found out that a program didn’t want to do a basic check or was opposing it over and over again because there would be a slight increase of cost, that would be really disheartening as a parent to think I’m paying for my kids to be there.”
John Cattelan, representing the Connecticut Alliance of YMCAs, testified in support of the bill. “There is no price tag on the safety and well-being of Connecticut’s children. I find the testimony against this bill dishonest and misleading, to say the least,” he said. “They state that the bill only applies to municipalities and doesn’t apply to other camps. That’s because our camps are licensed and we are already required by the state to undertake these procedures and we do so willingly because we want to protect children. And the fact that Y’s were singled out in testimony I find particularly offensive.”
Members of the Committee on Children said they were open to making changes to the legislation to ensure child safety while removing some of the requirements that might be especially difficult for municipalities. These include specifying the length of programs that would be impacted and allowing counselors under 18 to count toward staff-child ratios.
Boyd said that he hoped municipal programs would recognize that this year’s bill is different from a previous attempt to require licensure, a far more complex and potentially costly requirement that parks and recreation departments vocally opposed. “This was an attempt to meet in the middle and acknowledge those previous conversations that have happened,” Boyd said.
Acting Child Advocate Christina Ghio also testified about the bill on Thursday, asking lawmakers to give the legislation further reach and expand its background check requirement. Ghio said that there are other license-exempt programs that should also be required to do background checks on employees.
“Our view is that background checks serve as a floor to ensure that people with a known history that indicates a safety risk to children are not working with children in child care settings,” she said. “We would encourage there to be legislation that covers most of the license-exempt settings.”
She also asked lawmakers to add another layer to the background check requirements, so that the Department of Children and Families’ child abuse registry is also included.
“It’s not unusual for someone to be on the registry and not have a co-occurring criminal case,” she said. Ghio noted that it is free to check the child abuse registry and the sex offender registry.
“We are happy to work with the committee and the stakeholders to find a path forward because we think it’s critically important to the safety of children,” Ghio said.