Idaho
Luma challenges prevent Idaho from distributing $101 million in interest earnings – Idaho Capital Sun
The state of Idaho has been unable to distribute more than $100 million in interest payments to state agencies due to issues implementing the new Luma business system, State Treasurer Julie Ellsworth said.
The interest is earned from state funds that are not yet being spent. Typically, the interest is distributed to agencies monthly. But the Idaho State Treasurer’s Office hasn’t distributed the interest payments since July 1 because staff have been unable to verify agencies’ fund balances through the Luma reports, Ellsworth said in an interview at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise.
Through the end of December, the withheld interest added up to $101.6 million, Ellsworth said. Once the interest from January is calculated, the total could exceed $120 million, she said.
“I can’t distribute it until I have complete confidence in the fund account amounts in every state agency,” Ellsworth said. “That was where the hiccup is.”
Ellsworth told the Sun the issue only affects state money, not local funds.
Idaho State Controller Brandon Woolf said his goal is to resolve the interest payment issue by the end of this month.
After errors hamper reports, Idaho State Controller’s Office says new Luma system works
Ellsworth told the Sun she was on the verge of “panic territory” in December over Luma, the lack of automation and the amount of reconciliation being done manually. But since then, Ellsworth said her confidence has increased as the different agencies’ staff have worked together and diagnosed challenges.
Ellsworth also emphasized that the state’s funding is secure and in safe keeping – it’s just a matter of verifying fund balances to calculate distributions. Once the fund balances are verified, the interest can be distributed, she said.
Ellsworth said Luma has great promise and can increase the security and resilience of the state’s finance and business systems. But for now, Ellsworth said Luma is not living up to its potential.
“It’s a shiny new spaceship that will take us to soaring heights, however this expensive spaceship is currently parked on a trailer and being hauled out daily just to get the basic tasks in state government completed,” Ellsworth said in an interview. “This is not flying to the moon.”
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What is the State of Idaho’s Luma system?
Ellsworth said her office is facing numerous challenges related to the implementation of Luma, a new statewide business system that all state employees and state agencies are tied into.
State officials launched Luma on July 1, replacing a pair of old state business systems that dated to 1987 and 1988. Those old systems had outlived their useful lifecycles and were more vulnerable to security threats, state officials have said.
Luma isn’t just a computer program or a piece of software. It is a massive, statewide business system that centralizes all of the state’s business, budget, procurement, payroll, financial management and human resources system.
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The Idaho Legislature authorized the creation of Luma in 2018 through House Bill 493, estimating the new system would cost $102 million spread over five years.
Luma is based in the Idaho State Controller’s Office. Woolf, the Idaho state controller, said Luma does work. On Feb. 6, Woolf told the Idaho Legislature’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee that Luma has processed more than 473,000 invoices worth more than $7.1 billion since July 1.
But when the state went live with Luma in July, fewer than 50% of the state’s employees had completed basic level training on Luma, the Sun previously reported.
Since July, there have been a series of challenges, procedural errors and data entry errors that hampered Luma’s launch.
Some of the challenges included:
There have been enough publicly disclosed errors that Speaker of the House Mike Moyle, R-Star, called Luma a joke during a November meeting of the Legislative Council. On Friday, Moyle and a bipartisan group of eight legislators submitted a letter asking the Office of Performance Evaluations undertake an evaluation of Luma and provide a report to the Idaho Legislature.
In his presentation to JFAC this month, Woolf stressed that Luma is operational, but still has yet to be optimized.
“A massive change like this does take time,” Woolf said. “And it does take time for the dust to settle and to continue to optimize and to make these improvements. Is it where we want it to be right now? I would say no, but I think we have made great progress.”
Rep. Wendy Horman, the Idaho Falls Republican who co-chairs JFAC, expressed her appreciation for Woolf and his team meeting with legislators to identify challenges and create timelines for addressing them. Horman said progress is being made. But she emphasized that setting the state’s budget hinges on accurate, reliable state data.
“As you know we can’t do our business unless we have accurate, verifiable data and I appreciate the work that your office has put in recently to making sure we are verifying the numbers that we are dealing with,” Horman told Woolf on Feb. 6.
What is the latest with Luma’s implementation?
Teams from the Idaho State Controller’s Office and Idaho State Treasurer’s Office have been meeting for weeks to diagnose challenges associated with Luma.
In a joint interview at the Idaho State Capitol on Feb. 8, Ellsworth and Woolf described several ongoing challenges when it comes to sharing data between the Idaho State Controller’s Office and Idaho State Treasurer’s Office using Luma.
The $101 million in withheld interest payments to state agencies was one of the challenges.
According to documents Ellsworth and Woolf provided to the Sun, other challenges include:
- The need for state employees to take extra steps to manually reconcile bank activity that should be automated under Luma.
- The need to manually provide partial payroll transaction data that should be automated to the Idaho State Treasurer’s Office.
- Historical payment details were missing in Luma reports provided to the Idaho State Treasurer’s Office. The Idaho State Controller’s Office has now manually provided the missing information, and a review for missing information is still in progress.
- The need to reconcile historical transaction data. Additional monthly reconciliations cannot be started until the reconciliation process is automated and the historical transaction reconciliation is complete.
In addition to those challenges, Ellsworth told the Sun that the Luma system often “times out” or glitches during lengthy transactions and shuts down.
Idaho
Idaho Lottery results: See winning numbers for Pick 3, Pick 4 on April 19, 2026
The results are in for the Idaho Lottery’s draw games on Sunday, April 19, 2026.
Here’s a look at winning numbers for each game on April 19.
Winning Pick 3 numbers from April 19 drawing
Day: 9-5-1
Night: 8-0-6
Check Pick 3 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Pick 4 numbers from April 19 drawing
Day: 2-7-0-3
Night: 4-3-3-3
Check Pick 4 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Idaho Cash numbers from April 19 drawing
15-28-31-38-45
Check Idaho Cash payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from April 19 drawing
32-42-52-53-55, Bonus: 05
Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Idaho Lottery drawings held ?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Pick 3: 1:59 p.m. (Day) and 7:59 p.m. (Night) MT daily.
- Pick 4: 1:59 p.m. (Day) and 7:59 p.m. (Night) MT daily.
- Lucky For Life: 8:35 p.m. MT Monday and Thursday.
- Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- 5 Star Draw: 8 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Idaho Cash: 8 p.m. MT daily.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a USA Today editor. You can send feedback using this form.
Idaho
‘Unrelenting’: Statehouse reporters recap 2026 legislative session in Idaho Falls – East Idaho News
IDAHO FALLS — Two prominent Idaho Statehouse reporters say this past legislative session was “unrelenting,” chaotic, largely driven by budget cuts, and they see the Legislature getting more powerful.
Kevin Richert and Clark Corbin recapped this past legislative session at a forum on the ISU Idaho Falls Campus on Thursday.
Richert is a senior reporter at Idaho Education News, with more than 30 years of experience covering education policy and politics. Corbin is a senior reporter at the Idaho Capital Sun who has covered every Idaho legislative session, gavel to gavel, since 2011.
The event was hosted by the City Club of Idaho Falls, which “exists to sponsor and promote civil dialogue and discourse on all matters of public interest” and strives to be “nonpartisan and nonsectarian,” according to its website.
Budget cuts
Both Richert and Corbin said this session was driven by budget cuts. Corbin said this was due to a lack of revenue stemming from past income tax and the adoption of new federal tax cuts.
“Cuts for almost every state agency and state department dominated the legislative session,” Corbin said. “We’re talking about 4% budget cuts for most state agencies and departments in the current fiscal year, and we’re talking about an additional 5% budget cuts for almost all state agencies and departments starting next year — fiscal year ’27 — and continuing permanently.”
RELATED | Gov. Little signs so-called ‘crappy bill’ to cut state budget
Richert said he thought higher education was taking the brunt of budget cuts. “It’s not a question of whether tuition fees are going to go up at the universities; it’s a question of how much,” he said.
When asked what the future would hold, Corbin said the budget cuts aren’t likely to go away, and their effects will be felt over time.
“There could always be a change of leadership in the House, but they do expect the budget crunch to continue in the next year’s legislative session,” Corbin said.
‘Radiator capping’
Richert said he has one word to describe this year’s legislative session: “unrelenting.”
One thing that made it feel that way was that some bills were recycled over and over, he said. For example, Richert said the Legislature saw five different versions of a bill that proposed cuts to the Idaho Digital Learning Alliance.
“We had multiple bills that came from the dead,” he said.
The journalists said this is partly due to a tactic called “radiator capping.” The term means to replace the entire car — the bill’s text, in political terms — while only keeping the radiator cap: the bill number. By rewriting a bill on the House or Senate floor while maintaining its number, failed bills can effectively bypass the committee process.
“Those are the changes they tried to make on immigration bills, on union bills this year,” Corbin said. “It made it extremely difficult for the public to have any idea what was going on, to have any opportunity to participate in the legislative process and share their opinions.
A more powerful, more chaotic Legislature
Richert said Idaho’s annual legislative sessions are trending longer, commonly going into the early part of April, and producing a record number of bills.
“There are rumblings that this Legislature, as a body, is wanting to expand its reach over more and have even more power over the other branches of government to the point of — are we trending towards more of a full-time professional legislature?” Richert said. “We’re a long way from there.”
“The legislative branch of government, particularly the Idaho House of Representatives, is the most powerful I’ve seen it in 16 years of covering state government,” Corbin said.
He added that this year’s legislative session was unlike any he’s experienced.
“The overall temperature in the building was bad,” Corbin said. “It was divisive. It was chaotic. People were not hiding their feelings of disgust for each other. These traditional ideas of decorum and respect very much fell by the wayside.”
Richert said Gov. Brad Little vetoed very few bills that came across his desk, and the ones he did weren’t high-profile.
RELATED | Idaho Gov. Brad Little issues 5 vetoes. Here are the bills affected
“I think the governor behaved like he was very concerned about the supermajority-controlled Legislature, and I think that that Legislature, in turn, asserted itself and took control of the agenda this year,” Corbin said.
Are legislators representing Idaho?
Corbin said some bills this year also focused on the LGBTQ+ community, such as a bathroom restriction for transgender individuals, and a bill that banned the City of Boise from waving a Pride flag.
RELATED | Idaho governor signs bill to criminalize trans people using bathrooms that align with their identity
RELATED | Boise removes LGBTQ+ pride flag as Idaho governor signs bill to fine city for its display
When asked if these were what Idahoans wanted, Corbin said it doesn’t necessarily appear so to him, based on his review of Boise State University’s annual public policy survey.
“For years and years, I’ve heard concerns about affordability of housing, access to housing, managing the growth of the state of Idaho, having quality public schools available for our young people — that also generates a workforce pipeline for some of our businesses,” Corbin said. “I’ve heard about paying for wildfires. I’ve heard about having good roads, supporting access to public lands, public recreation, those are the concerns I hear from Idahoans.”
“But the Legislature spent a significant amount of time over the last two, three, four years placing additional restrictions on LGBTQ communities, placing restrictions on what teachers can and cannot teach in their classrooms, what school boards can and cannot do,” Corbin continued. “They talked about requiring a moment of silence every day to begin the public school day, where children could pray or read the Bible.”
RELATED | Gov. Brad Little signs public school ‘moment of silence’ bill into law
Corbin said it may be his own opinion, but perhaps it is easier to “make a bunch of noise about what’s going wrong and (distract) people with social issues” rather than focus on harder issues that Idaho faces.
“I think what you saw on the policy space is a reflection of the fact that you had legislators thinking about reelection, and legislators with time on their hands — and that’s not always a good combination,” Richert said.
Accountability
When asked how people can keep legislators accountable, Corbin said it can be done by following the state Legislature through trusted news sources, going to community events and voting.
“This is a great year to practice accountability, because all 105 state legislators and all statewide elected officials are up for election this year,” he said.
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Idaho
Idaho Lottery results: See winning numbers for Powerball, Pick 3 on April 18, 2026
The results are in for the Idaho Lottery’s draw games on Saturday, April 18, 2026.
Here’s a look at winning numbers for each game on April 18.
Winning Powerball numbers from April 18 drawing
24-25-39-46-61, Powerball: 01, Power Play: 5
Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Pick 3 numbers from April 18 drawing
Day: 9-5-1
Night: 0-2-4
Check Pick 3 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Pick 4 numbers from April 18 drawing
Day: 4-6-0-4
Night: 9-9-8-2
Check Pick 4 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Lotto America numbers from April 18 drawing
18-21-22-32-42, Star Ball: 10, ASB: 03
Check Lotto America payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Idaho Cash numbers from April 18 drawing
08-19-22-31-44
Check Idaho Cash payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from April 18 drawing
17-19-47-48-55, Bonus: 04
Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Idaho Lottery drawings held ?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Pick 3: 1:59 p.m. (Day) and 7:59 p.m. (Night) MT daily.
- Pick 4: 1:59 p.m. (Day) and 7:59 p.m. (Night) MT daily.
- Lucky For Life: 8:35 p.m. MT Monday and Thursday.
- Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- 5 Star Draw: 8 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Idaho Cash: 8 p.m. MT daily.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a USA Today editor. You can send feedback using this form.
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Idaho Lottery results: See winning numbers for Pick 3, Pick 4 on April 19, 2026