Idaho
As Idaho budget debate rages, JFAC co-chair says ‘budget setting is in limbo’ – Idaho Capital Sun
As legislative leaders continue to debate voting procedures and rules, the Idaho Legislature’s budget committee has not yet taken the traditional step of voting on a revenue target that the entire state budget is based around.
The revenue target is important because the Idaho Constitution requires the Idaho Legislature to pass a balanced budget where expenses do not exceed revenues.
The revenue target is intended to show the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, other legislators and the public how much money is available to spend on budget requests.
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, or JFAC, faces other challenges aside from the lack of a revenue target. JFAC’s co-chairs, Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, and Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, are implementing a series of significant changes to the budget process this year, including breaking the budgets up into different parts and altering the committee’s daily public hearing procedures.
On Friday, 12 of JFAC’s 20 members rebelled against the new procedures to break up the budgets in different ways and went around Grow and Horman to write and craft their own standalone budgets that are in direct competition with Grow and Horman’s plans for separate maintenance of current operations budgets.
When asked if JFAC can continue setting budgets without knowing how much revenue is available to spend, Horman said she isn’t sure.
“I would say budget setting is in limbo,” Horman said in a telephone interview late Tuesday afternoon.
Why does the Idaho Legislature’s budget committee need a revenue target?
Normally, JFAC sets a revenue target and makes statewide budget decisions before it begins setting state budgets.
This year JFAC accepted a revenue report from the Economic Outlook and Revenue Assessment Committee on Jan. 12, but has not yet acted on that report by setting a revenue target, Horman said.
“Given some of the other issues we’ve been dealing with in JFAC, that was moved,” Horman said. “It was less of a priority than resolving some of the other problems we are dealing with.”
Although JFAC has not yet set a revenue target, JFAC passed 10 omnibus budget bills on Jan. 16 that spend more than $5.1 billion in general fund money.
Since then, on Friday, JFAC also passed 14 additional state agency budgets that include millions more in general fund spending. The Department of Agriculture budget, for example, includes more than $15 million in general fund spending for fiscal year 2025.
Those new budgets JFAC passed Friday are in direct competition with the 10 omnibus budgets JFAC passed Jan. 16.
Idaho budget showdown could intensify Wednesday at the Idaho State Capitol
The situation with competing budgets could force the full Idaho House of Representatives and Idaho Senate to pick one side or the other starting as soon as Wednesday. Nine of the 10 omnibus budgets are near the top of Wednesday’s floor agendas – five in the Idaho Senate and four in the Idaho House.
The earlier omnibus budgets passed Jan. 16 lump about 100 state agencies all together between new bare-bones budgets that Grow and Horman said do not include any new spending requests and are designed to simply keep the lights on for state agencies.
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By contrast, the 14 state agencies budgets JFAC passed Friday separate the agencies out from each other, but are intended to be full standalone maintenance budgets that include fuller raises for state employees, replacement items for state agencies and more, supporters of those budgets have said.
Because the Jan. 16 and the Feb. 2 budgets are in competition, both cannot pass, and legislators will need to make a choice at some point.
“That’s where we are at an impasse right now,” Sen. Janie Ward-Engelking, D-Boise, said in an interview Tuesday. “If that is the case, then we have to vote those down or our budgets (from Friday) could be ruled out of order.”
If the Jan. 16 omnibus budgets pass, the Feb. 2 standalone budgets could be thrown out. If that’s the case, JFAC may need to again return to those 14 budgets to consider state employee raises, new spending requests and replacement items that were not in the Jan. 16 budgets.
But if the Jan. 16 omnibus budgets fail, then those budgets will be thrown out.
How much revenue is going to be available for Idaho budgets?
The Economic Outlook and Revenue Assessment’s Committee’s report recommends that a little less than $5.6 billion in revenue be available for budgeting in fiscal year 2025.
Horman said JFAC members were supposed to vote on a revenue target earlier in the year, but delayed action while legislative leaders debate JFAC’s rules and voting procedures.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little says JFAC’s budget changes could have unintended consequences
Depending on what happens in the ongoing budget showdown, JFAC may have already spent $5.1 billion against a revenue recommendation of a little less than $5.6 billion. Meanwhile, JFAC hasn’t yet considered new spending for the state’s largest budgets, the public schools budgets and the Medicaid budget.
Horman said the Idaho Legislature is not at risk of overspending its revenue.
“But the maintenance budgets (from Jan. 16) are well under those revenue targets,” Horman said. “As soon as House and Senate leadership make some decisions about JFAC operations and we get a resolution on the maintenance budgets, we will immediately put that on the agenda for consideration of what we have in the report from the Economic Outlook and Revenue Assessment Committee.”
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The Idaho State Police say that Robert Giesick, 40, from Billings is the man missing in a crash on State Highway 55 near Cascade, about 80 miles north of Boise.
A pick-up truck driven by Giesick ended up in the Payette River after a head-on crash with another pick-up truck.
Watch Idaho crash story here:
Idaho state troopers identify Billings man missing in traffic accident
“I was able to find some people that saw a male, an adult man, swimming for the shore from the truck,” said Idaho State Trooper Richard Knapp, who attempted to rescue Giesick. “Unfortunately he didn’t make it. He got swept downriver. Witnesses lost sight of him, and that was the last time anybody saw him.”
Knapp says search crews looked extensively for the 40-year-old, but after 24 hours, it became a recovery effort for the Idaho Mountain Search and Rescue Unit.
After that on Monday came the monumental task of removing the pickup truck from the raging water.
“It was an intensive a recovery, honestly, our operators were tested, their knowledge was tested,” said Mark Boisvert, Code Red Towing owner. “They said it was a very extreme recovery for them, more than usual.”
Idaho business owners have less than a month to decide how to comply with a new state law criminally banning trans people from using restrooms that align with their gender identity.
The law is set to take effect July 1, which would make it a misdemeanor for the first offense and a felony for subsequent offenses within five years.
It’s currently being challenged in federal court by the ACLU of Idaho.
On Tuesday, a panel sponsored by Idaho Employment Lawyers encouraged companies to prepare now as if the law will remain in effect as litigation continues.
Cody Earl, a lawyer for St. Luke’s Health System who spoke on the panel in his personal capacity, said there are several paths businesses can take.
Converting all bathrooms into single-use, gender-neutral facilities is one option, though it could be costly for larger businesses. Earl said companies could take other steps to make the transition more affordable.
“Even if it is a gender-specific restroom, [adding signage] that indicates where the closest gender-neutral restroom is so you could at least show that you’re giving employees an option or a choice,” he said.
Simply adding locks and only allowing one person at a time to a multi-stall bathroom is another choice, though panelists said that could be problematic for businesses with large amounts of customers, like restaurants and bars.
Idaho Employment Lawyers owner Pam Howland said companies also need to consider how this will affect their staff.
“This could definitely create some culture issues,” said Howland. “Do you have the policies you need to ensure your expectations as an employer of respect and civility are being followed? Possibly code of conduct provisions related to that? How about privacy?”
Those policies could include limiting or outright banning recording at the workplace.
Another legal wrinkle to complying with the law, the panel said, is that precedent in both the U.S. Supreme Court and 9th Circuit Court of Appeals prohibit discrimination based on someone’s gender identity.
Gender dysphoria, a mental health designation that causes severe distress to someone when their sex doesn’t align with their gender identity, has been considered a protected condition under the Americans with Disabilities Act in certain cases.
Republican state lawmakers argued earlier this year that Idaho needs to take this first-in-the-nation step to protect women and girls when they use the restroom in private businesses.
A 2025 study out of UCLA hasn’t found any increased risk to safety by allowing transgender people to use restrooms aligning with their gender identity.
A federal court in Boise will hear arguments over whether to approve or reject a preliminary injunction on June 5.
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Remember that 250 years ago, nobody had ever heard of Idaho, and the name was mostly made up by an entrepreneur who impressed the federal government with an exaggeration about his knowledge of indigenous culture. But a large number of people who live in the state can trace ancestry to the colonial era, and I believe most Americans still have a love of country, even if some polls give an indication they may not quite know how to express it.
I Was at the Heart of the Bicentennial
Looking back 50 years, I was in Washington, D.C. at the beginning of July. Washington also didn’t exist in 1776. My memory is that its reputation as a hot, sticky swamp was well earned. I traveled there with a history club from school. On a rattling old yellow bus. The city was packed, and many of the people on the streets were foreign tourists. It told me that despite the anti-Americanism common on streets elsewhere around the world, we were still fascinating others.
We’re Still One Nation
1976 was a unifying experience and followed a very turbulent previous 15 years. Some people fear the 250th jubilee won’t bring us together. Look, those rent-a-mobs you see on TV and online are actually a small fraction of America. Picnics in the park don’t make news. Riots and tear gas get the attention of newsrooms. There are still far more picnics.
The recent Memorial Day commemorations were reverential. Independence Day 2026 is going to be a party. The media focus will be on President Trump and a festival far away. Meanwhile, across Idaho, grills will be fired up, and we’ll be proud to be Americans.
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