Sunday, October 4, 2009

Worst state law nominee: Michigan

This lady in Michigan lives in front of the school bus stop. Neighborhood kids come inside her living room to wait for the bus on winter mornings (and probably fall and spring mornings, too), so their parents can go to work. Michigan Department of Social Services says that means she's running an unlicensed child care center, even though no money changed hands, and she must get licensed or cease and desist, and nobody seems to think DSS is misapplying the law. The governor and legislators realize the law they wrote  had unexpected stupid consequences are working quickly to change it.

I wonder what California licensing would think about this situation. My guess is it would technically be the same as Michigan. Money doesn't have to change hands to make it child care, and she was "caring for" kids of more than one family. It wasn't a coop, because other moms weren't sharing the caring.

CCL would probably say they don't have enough staff to investigate piddly crap like that. In my area, CCL is mostly pretty reasonable.

Update: The governor of Michigan has told the head of DSS to back off prosecution and work with legislators to change the law.

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