Without a guiding script, Idaho Legislature's budget committee strays from voting procedures

Yahoo

20-03-2025

Idaho Legislature Budget and Policy Analyst France Lippett gives a presentation to the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee at the State Capitol building on Jan. 23, 2024. JFAC co-chairs Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, (center) and Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls (right) are leading the meeting. (Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun)
The Idaho Legislature's powerful budget committee appeared to deviate again from the new voting procedures that have already created confusion and division in their wake.
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, or JFAC, on Wednesday attempted to send a failed motion to the Idaho House of Representatives – one week after committee leaders said there is no mechanism to send failed motions or bills to the Idaho House.
The committee co-chairs told the Idaho Capital Sun they rely on a written script to guide them when there is confusion, and they both forgot to bring the script Wednesday.
JFAC is a powerful legislative committee that sets every budget for every state agency and department. In that regard, JFAC is arguably the most important committee in the entire Idaho Legislature.
Whether it's funding for public schools, money to maintain state parks, funding to pay Idaho State Police troopers or money to fight wildfires on state lands, JFAC must sign off.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
For decades, JFAC voted together as a 20-member committee made up of both representatives and senators, and it was clear that motions and budgets required a simple majority of the full committee to pass and advance.
But over the course of the past several years JFAC's two co-chairs, Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, and Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, have implemented a series of major changes to JFAC's daily schedule, budget-setting procedures and voting procedures.
Idaho Legislature's budget committee openly feuds over new budget procedures
Grow and Horman said the changes increase transparency and accountability and ensure there is more budget buy-in at the committee level before budgets advance to the full Idaho House of Representatives and Idaho Senate.
But during the 2025 legislative session, JFAC members and House Speaker Mike Moyle, a Star Republican who is not a member of JFAC, have publicly feuded over JFAC's voting and budget procedures.
Some JFAC members and legislators – and former legislators and other community members – have criticized JFAC for passing major tax cuts and budgets before setting a revenue projection to build the fiscal year 2026 budget around.
Now, JFAC has fallen behind, and the unfinished 2026 fiscal year budget is delaying legislators from adjourning this week like Republican legislative leaders hoped.
JFAC is not operating under formal, published rules this year after the Idaho House did not adopt joint rules of the Idaho Legislature during the 2025 organizational session in December. The joint rules provide definitions of things like bills and cover how joint committees, like JFAC, operate and lay out the rules for committee minutes, debate and press credentials.
While the Idaho Senate adopted joint rules during the organizational session, the House did not.
Moyle has said that was deliberate because House members disagree with Joint Rule 11, which states that the Senate chairman shall serve as the chair of committees meeting jointly, like JFAC. Moyle said the Idaho House doesn't want to give up the ability to set agendas and share chairmanship of the committee with the Idaho Senate.
In the absence of written joint legislative rules, Horman said JFAC is operating based on precedent from the past couple of years and operating under the terms of a February 2023 letter that she and Grow signed.
The February 2023 letter states that JFAC will use the joint voting procedure used in the past while also announcing the votes of the 10 JFAC House members separately from the 10 JFAC Senate members.
'If a bill receives majority support from the joint committee and does not receive majority support from the House or Senate committee, the bill will be sent to the house from which the majority of members did not vote in the affirmative,' the letter states.
Horman and Grow have both told the Sun they agree that it takes six votes from the House members and six votes from the Senate members to constitute a majority in JFAC, regardless of how many JFAC members are physically present. That means that if only seven JFAC House members are present, a vote of 5-2 would not be considered a majority because they did not reach the required six votes, even though a majority of House JFAC members voted to support it.
No other committee in the Idaho Legislature operates that way, which creates confusion in itself.
Adding to the confusion, on March 12, Horman and Grow said they have two different interpretations of the February 2023 letter, which leads to two different standards for how votes are handled in the same committee.
On March 12, Horman said that if a motion or budget does not achieve the required six votes among House members on JFAC, the motion or budget is dead and does not advance. Horman said the House clerk told her there is no mechanism to bring a motion or bill forward and assign it a bill number if it does not achieve a majority in committee.
That same day, Horman and Grow said the Idaho Senate has a different interpretation. Under the Senate interpretation, if a budget or motion does not achieve the required six votes among Senate JFAC members that motion or budget would be sent to the Idaho Senate for consideration because that is the chamber where it failed to achieve a majority of support.
'We've agreed to disagree,' Horman told the Sun on March 12.
Fast forward to Wednesday's meeting at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise, and JFAC appeared to deviate from the procedures the committee outlined on March 12.
On Wednesday, Sen. Kevin Cook, R-Idaho Falls, and Rep. Josh Tanner, R-Eagle, made an attempt to pass budget intent language requiring the Idaho Department of Labor to produce a report studying the impact of unauthorized immigration on the state's labor market and requiring a cost-benefit analysis of employers using the E-Verify system.
After some debate, Idaho Senate members voted 8-2 to pass the language requiring the report, but the Idaho House members on JFAC voted 4-5, failing to reach six votes and falling short of a majority among House members present.
Seconds later, Grow noted that among the entire committee, the majority voted 12-7 to approve the budget intent language. But Grow announced he was sending the intent language to the Idaho House because it failed to reach a majority among House JFAC members.
'Well, the majority votes yes, 12 yes – ayes – (and) seven nays, one absent and excused. However, the House, having failed to vote in the affirmative on this motion, it will be sent to the House and you can deal with it,' Sen. Grow said during the meeting Wednesday.
However, under the voting procedures Horman and Grow announced March 12, there is no mechanism to send a failed motion or budget to the House.
When a reporter with the Idaho Capital Sun asked Horman and Grow about the voting procedures after Wednesday's meeting adjourned, Horman and Grow said they forgot to bring their written script that describes how to proceed to Wednesday's meeting to read from.
'We both forgot to put our script up here today,' Horman said.
After the meeting, Grow said he would like to apologize if he misspoke during the meeting. In the absence of a written script, Grow told the Sun he was thinking back to the February 2023 letter.
'I'm just referring to the letter. It was (from) a few years ago, which said, if it fails on one side, it goes to that side; if it fails on the other side it goes to that side for consideration,' Grow said. '(Horman) can consider it. She can do what she wants to do with it. If she wants nothing to do with it, then nothing happens.'
Grow and Horman alternate serving as the chairperson of JFAC each day. Grow was serving as JFAC chairman Wednesday.
After the meeting, Horman told the Sun she would have handled the budget intent language differently if she was serving as JFAC chairwoman Wednesday.
'I wouldn't have said it will be sent to the House,' Horman said. 'I would have said it will be considered at a later date.' At any rate, after the meeting, Horman clarified the budget intent language requiring the report on immigration's impacts on the state labor force is dead for now, but it could be brought up again.
The issue over the intent language does not affect the Idaho Department of Labor's budget, which passed without controversy under a separate motion.
Horman said House members have not changed their interpretation of the February 2023 letter since clarifying voting procedures March 12.
'If it fails (on) my side (among House members) it fails, therefore there is nothing to send,' Horman told the Sun Wednesday. 'They're handling it a little differently (in the Senate).'
In an interview Wednesday with the Idaho Capital Sun, Horman referred to Mason's Manual of Legislative Procedure. Horman flagged a section of the manual that states:
'Rules of legislative procedure are derived from several sources and take precedence in the order listed below:
a) Constitutional provisions and judicial decisions thereon.
b) Adopted rules.
c) Custom, usage and precedents.
d) Adopted parliamentary authority.
e) Parliamentary law.'
Citing Mason's, Horman told the Sun it is unfair and inaccurate to suggest JFAC is not operating under any rules. Horman shared a passage from the manual that says historically members vote individually – not by houses – when voting in joint committees. Under more modern practices, the manual says 'members vote by houses, a quorum being present, and such vote carries only upon favorable vote of the committee members of each house.'
Horman said House members adhere to the more modern practice outlined in the manual.
Horman also disagreed that there is confusion over JFAC's voting procedures. She said the 2023 letter and modern guidance in Mason's Manual of Legislative Procedure provide that certainty.
'We have tried to create certainty; this is what this is. It's certainty, right?' Horman told the Sun. 'So for people who are stuck in how JFAC used to operate, like some members of the committee? Sure, they think it's dysfunction, because we're not doing it how we did in the past. But for three years, this is the new way. And so there's certainty. We have certainty. Now maybe you just didn't have the script and didn't say it this way today. But this is our agreement. So we have certainty and agreements that we're going to handle it differently.'
Grow said he and Horman are trying to build consensus to pass budgets as they navigate a difference of opinion.
'We're just trying to thread a needle here because they (in the House) are interpreting it different than our folks,' Grow told the Sun.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE