VOTE: NO – Signed into law by Gov. Brown
Status (overview) of bill: https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2019R1/Measures/Overview/HB2262
This bill extends duties of the Early Learning Council to ensure “Families are healthy, stable and attached” and modifies duties and membership.
Personal Choice and Responsibility
Adds a requirement ensuring “Families are healthy, stable and attached” that overlaps with the Health Authority and opens the door to infringing on personal rights. What does it mean if the council finds the family is dysfunctional? Is the family unhealthy if they don’t vaccinate their children?
Fiscal Responsibility
The changes can be reason to need more staff.
Limited Government
Modifies from “oversees” to “coordinates” changing the delivery of early learning services to more hands-on and adding family health and stability will need more staff. Is it a reason to grow the program and give more cause to regulate family development? Removes connection to the federal Head Start Act, is that so they can go into any home and not be restricted to Head Start families?. Modifies council membership to include nonvoting members representing relevant agencies and tribes.
OVERREACH! What are they going to do about families who aren’t attached, require them to take forced marriage counseling? What if they’re not stable, force them to take welfare? This is Big Brother mass surveillance invading our private lives. Are we now living in communist China where they regulate how many children a couple can have, is that next on their agenda?
Testimony: https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2019R1/Downloads/CommitteeMeetingDocument/154872
Wow. The most dysfunctional part of our system is going to judge me, I laugh in your face. I can just see some mindless bureaucrat who is not elected by anyone pushing their new age morals and thinking processes on the rest of us.