Legislation making changes in Idaho's day-care licensing law has passed the House on a straight party-line vote of 56-13, with all House Democrats voting against it. The measure, HB 129, sponsored by Reps. Lynn Luker, R-Boise, and Janice McGeachin, R-Idaho Falls, makes a series of changes in the law, the most significant of which changes the required minimum child-staff ratios in licensed day cares. Under the bill, children of the day-care operator wouldn't be counted into the ratio. Also, current limits are replaced by a point system, which results in a maximum ratio of one adult for every six infants, one adult for every 12 children aged 18 months to 5 years, and one adult for every 24 children age 5 or above. That replaces a more complex series of requirements that included a 1-8 ratio for children aged 24 months to 3 years and a 1-10 ratio for children aged 3 to 4 years.

"This bill does seriously increase the number of children that can be supervised by one adult," House Minority Leader John Rusche, D-Lewiston, told the House. He related two cases he handled as a pediatrician in which young children died in day-care centers, one of drowning and one of asphyxiation. Both, he said, were due to "inadequate adult supervision."

The bill doesn't change the threshhold for state licensing of seven or more children unrelated to the operator.

Luker said there's been controversy over the existing day-care licensing law, with the House repeatedly rejecting the rules proposed by the state Department of Health & Welfare to implement it. Rep. Sharon Block, R-Twin Falls, said, "The reason it failed so many times was because the regulations were so strict ... it wasn't reasonable for persons to meet it." Rep. JoAn Wood, R-Rigby, said, "When you have three children of your own and you're going to take care of four other children ... you don't get paid for seven children, you get paid for four." Said Luker, "We need to be cognizant of the costs that are imposed in the licensing." The bill now moves to the Senate.