Committee adopts amendment and re‑refers bill to Judiciary to require longer retention of daycare video and camera placement in infant/toddler rooms

Rep. West presented House File 19‑15 and moved the DE4 amendment; the committee adopted the amendment. The chair described the bill’s purpose as increasing accountability in childcare settings after several incidents where video evidence was critical to criminal charges but footage had been deleted within a short time.

Under the adopted amendment, the measure would require child‑care centers to retain video footage for 60 days and would extend retention to six months when an incident triggers a mandatory report (for example, death, fire or ambulance response). The amendment clarified camera placement (infant/toddler rooms and fenced outdoor play areas), refined parental access rules (parents may view but not obtain copies in specified circumstances), allowed recorded footage use for staff training with written consent from unredacted individuals, and included a limited "hold harmless" for providers for licensing violations based solely on video evidence that is not a separate health and safety violation.

Several parents and family members testified about abuse captured on daycare video that could not be used because the facility retained footage for only seven days. Megan West, whose daughter was a 3‑month‑old at the time of alleged abuse, said prosecutors told the family that without video proof the charges related to their child likely would not hold. "We only have pictures of Cybil's injuries from before and after the abuse. And the daycare only kept footage for 1 week. So there's no video of what happened to her and many other children," she said.

Multiple family members and other parents described cases from daycares in their community, and an affected father described recording his own child's mistreatment at a center on February 6. Testifiers and the chair discussed security, privacy and costs; the chair said she reduced the retention period from 90 to 60 days after evaluating available, lower‑cost storage options. Committee members asked about cybersecurity, closed‑circuit versus cloud cameras, parental opt‑out choices, enforcement and how to avoid creating undue burden on centers. Chair West said she was willing to work on technical issues and compromises and moved to re‑refer the bill; the committee voted to re‑refer House File 19‑15 as amended to the Judiciary, Finance and Civil Law Committee.