Idaho Legislature’s JFAC calls for new $533,700 ‘legislative impact review team’

Idaho budget writers are calling for the creation of a new $533,700 legislative impact review team as the next step in new budget procedures that have been rolled out this year.

On Thursday, members of the Idaho Legislature’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, or JFAC, voted 17-1 to create four new positions and increase funding for the Idaho Legislative Services Office by a total of $533,700 to create a new legislative impact review team within the office.

Rep. Wendy Horman, an Idaho Falls Republican who serves as a co-chairperson of JFAC, said the new legislative impact review team represents the next step in a series of significant changes to budget procedures that Horman and fellow JFAC co-chair Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, have unveiled this year.

Horman said the new team’s roles could include reviewing contracts to determine if there are financial risks to the state, studying the effectiveness of agency consolidations, analyzing how specific state agencies have implemented funding for change in employee compensation pay increases, examining how funding for new budget line items has been implemented or analyzing whether technology investments have been coordinated and come in on budget.

Horman said the four new positions are necessary because the Legislative Services Office is already stretched thin.

“In short, this is why this work hasn’t been done,” Horman said during Thursday’s JFAC meeting. “We haven’t had the staff bandwidth. They are stretched so thin already. We run one of the most lean legislative services offices in the nation. They work hard, and they are good at what they do. But we all have bandwidth limitations, and we have hit ours. If we want this kind of data on how taxpayer money is being used, this is the price. This committee has worked hard to trim (full-time positions)in many other budgets as well.”

Grow said it is important the new team be housed within the Legislative Services Office and be independent from the other state agencies the team will be reviewing.

“When we make these appropriations, we want to make sure the money is spent appropriately, that’s one thing,” Grow said during Thursday’s meeting. “But also that we’re actually achieving what was designed to be achieved.”

Sen. Julie VanOrden, R-Pingree, supported the new team and the funding request.

“I truly appreciate this because I think it will help us in doing our work much better and efficiently, and I think it will help our analysts to take some of that burden off of them too to have to go back and forth between us and the agencies as we work through the budgets,” VanOrden said.

The funding was not included in the legislative branch’s budget request that was submitted to Gov. Brad Little’s office in November and was not included in Little’s fiscal year 2025 budget recommendation. In order to take effect, the increased funding for the Idaho Legislative Services Office must still be passed by the Idaho House of Representatives and Idaho Senate and avoid being vetoed by Little.