CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Feinstein Touts Ways to Expand Day Care

Dianne Feinstein on Friday took aim at the concerns of working parents, proposing that major developers be required to construct or fund day care centers and that companies with child care programs be favored in bidding for state contracts.

Using day care centers--and photogenic toddlers--in La Canada Flintridge and San Diego as backdrops, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate also vowed to lobby hard for passage of a congressional child care bill that could result in $123 million for California centers. Feinstein also promised she would resurrect key legislative proposals vetoed by Gov. George Deukmejian, whom she hopes to succeed.

“The time has come in the state of California that the governor really give priority to families and to children,” said the former San Francisco mayor.

Feinstein’s child care program was light on new state funding commitments to expand day care, and heavily dependent on new federal dollars and on arm-twisting of corporations to provide voluntary contributions.

The subject of child care--an expensive topic in a state where money is difficult to come by--did provide a rare moment of unanimity between Feinstein and her opponent, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp.

“These measures are all tried and true ideas which have been proposed elsewhere,” Van de Kamp spokesman Duane Peterson said of Feinstein’s proposals. “And there is no reason why they shouldn’t be implemented in California.”

Van de Kamp’s child care program is in the planning stages, Peterson said.

Feinstein essentially would extend statewide a 5-year-old San Francisco ordinance that requires developers of commercial office buildings of more than 50,000 square feet to either put a day care center in the development or pay into a standing fund. Money collected in the fund would be used to initiate and maintain child care centers.

“I’m talking about creating incentives . . . to encourage employer participation in child care,” Feinstein said.

In San Francisco, however, officials said the city law on which Feinstein’s proposal was modeled has proven troublesome.

“The concept is good, the spirit of it is good, but the actual document is in legalese that the lawyers don’t even understand,” said Lyn Knox, a project planner in the San Francisco mayor’s office who handles child care concerns.

“To use this as a model for the state? I don’t know,” she said.

Among the problems, she said, was that city officials have yet to figure out how to spend the money that developers can give in lieu of building day care facilities. And the plan covers only those buildings developed after the requirement went into effect. The first building covered by the requirements is due to open later this month and will likely decide to pay into the fund rather than provide child care, Knox said.

Feinstein also proposed that companies bidding for state contracts be given a boost if they have a child care program. Under state law, the company bidding lowest gets the contract. In the case of a tie, the company with the most preference points wins. Points are given for small businesses, disadvantaged businesses and businesses which use recycled paper.

“It certainly seems to me that a preference given for child care policy is certainly equal to a recycled paper preference,” Feinstein said.