NorthwestFebruary 3, 2024

Canceled meetings, disagreements complicate Idaho budget writers’ efforts

Laura Guido of the Tribune

The budget writers in the Idaho Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee kicked off its new budget-setting process today, but not without a couple hiccups.

The process of taking up new agency budget requests was originally scheduled to begin last week, but the meeting was canceled amid questions and disagreement over the process for reopening previously passed “maintenance budgets,” the Idaho Capital Sun reported.

The committee had already passed several basic maintenance budgets as part of a new process this year that would consider new line-item requests separately.

On Friday, there was some disagreement from members over how to handle these new requests. Most of the lawmakers opted to make motions to approve budgets with line item requests combined with what was already approved in the maintenance budgets, in a process that looked more similar to past budget bills that considered everything at once for each agency.

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This could create stand-alone budget bills that would be in competition with the maintenance budgets for the House and Senate to consider.

Another group of lawmakers made motions to pass bills that just included the difference between the maintenance and new requests, which would have left in place the maintenance budgets and created separate appropriations to be considered for approval by both chambers. These motions all failed.

The committee considered budgets Friday for 11 agencies including the Commission for Libraries, Department of Agriculture, State Tax Commission and others.

The committee also fixed a mistake from the maintenance budget setting, in which language was added to create a cap on full-time employees in the legislative branch but there should have been no cap. Committee members opened back up the budget by unanimous consent to fix the language.

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 X, formerly Twitter, @EyeOnBoiseGuido.

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