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. 

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.”