Idaho Budget committee fumbles with dueling proposals

BOISE — In a stop-and-go meeting, the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee adjourned Thursday before voting on a change in employee compensation.

There were dueling proposals on the table and significant debate, but questions about whether to add public school employees within the recommendation and how to properly compare numbers stalled motions.

One motion would have provided a $1.55 per hour pay bump for all state employees, as well as an 8% pay increase for Idaho State Police troopers, a 4.5% raise for IT/engineering, and a $1.55 or 3% increase, whichever is greater, for nursing/health care workers to be distributed based on merit.

The competing motion would provide either a $1.55 per hour raise or 4%, whichever is higher, distributed based on merit. The second motion’s increases for troopers, IT/engineering, and nursing/health care workers were the same as the first.

The House and Senate sides of the committee were divided in their support for the competing motions as well as on most issues presented before the committee Thursday.

Sen. Kevin Cook, R-Idaho Falls, made the competing motion and spoke at length about how he thought providing the $1.55 across-the-board raise was promoting “equity.”

“Equity breeds entitlement, that’s what equity does,” Cook said. “Merit breeds excellence, high standards and innovation.”

Several other senators spoke in support of Cook’s motion, while a number of House members supported the motion to do the $1.55 increase.

“I think it’s a little rich to say that what we’re doing is in any way comparable to a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiative or anything along those lines,” said Rep. James Petzke, R-Meridian. “I just think that’s an unfair comparison.”

He said the goal of the dollar amount raise across the board was to be a cost-of-living adjustment.

“I think that the cost of eggs has gone up the same for everybody,” Petzke said.

Sen. Janie Ward-Engelking, D-Boise, said that over the past decade, she’s seen the state positions get less competitive with jobs at the cities and counties as well as the private sector. She supported Cook’s motion to try and boost higher-paid workers’ salaries as well as lower-paid.

Rep. Josh Tanner, R-Eagle, argued that raising wages for state jobs would incentivize the private sector to increase its wages. He supported the $1.55 raise for everyone.

“Stop allowing government to go and compete in the private sector,” Tanner said. “If we’ve got good employees and the private sector actually wants those, let them have them. We will hire and build up better ones as we’ve proven we can actually do.”

During the meeting, the competing motions had typos or omissions that needed corrected. The first motion included public school employees and the second one did not, and a request to change the motions to include the dollar amount if public school employees were included delayed things further.

The committee adjourned before taking a vote on the motions.

Prior to the vote on employee compensation, the committee failed to agree on a revenue forecast for the upcoming fiscal year. The committee also failed to pass an amount to pay for employee health insurance.

JFAC is scheduled to take up maintenance budgets — which include no new spending — Friday, but the change in employee compensation part of those will not be included.

Guido covers Idaho politics for the Lewiston Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Idaho Press of Nampa. She may be contacted at lguido@idahopress.com and can be found on Twitter @EyeOnBoiseGuido.