Idaho Legislature's budget committee openly feuds over new budget procedures

Yahoo

08-03-2025

House Speaker Mike Moyle, left, and Sen. Kevin Cook, right, argue during a March 7 meeting of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (Clark Corbin/ Idaho Capital Sun)
A dispute over changes to the Idaho Legislature's budget setting and voting procedures erupted publicly into a tense disagreement that played out during a committee meeting at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise on Friday.
The dispute reached a boiling point about 40 minutes into the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee's 8 a.m. meeting Friday.
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, or JFAC, is a powerful legislative committee made up of 10 members each from the Idaho House of Representatives and Idaho Senate.
JFAC generally meets daily during the legislative session and is responsible for setting every budget for every state agency and every department.
Whether it's funding for public schools, raises for state employees, improvements to state parks, funding for Idaho Department of Health and Welfare programs or pay for state wildland firefighters, JFAC takes the lead in deciding where the state's money is spent and who gets what.
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Tensions were already high during a 7:30 a.m. pre-JFAC meeting on Friday that a reporter with the Idaho Capital Sun attended.
That tension ratcheted up again after JFAC's regular meeting began at 8 a.m.
While debating a $2.5 million spending authority request for a multiyear federal grant the Idaho Commission on Libraries received, several JFAC members publicly disagreed over the committee's voting procedures.
For decades, JFAC voted as one committee.
But before the 2024 legislative session, committee co-chairs Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, and Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, announced major changes to JFAC's voting and budgeting procedures.
One of the changes, which was detailed in a February 2023 letter signed by Grow and Horman that was obtained by the Idaho Capital Sun, changed how JFAC votes are tallied and counted.
The letter states that members of the House and Senate Republican leadership determined JFAC would still use the joint voting procedures that had been used for decades, while also announcing the votes of House and Senate committee members separately.
'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 February 2023 letter states.
This exact scenario came up Friday.
Sen. Cindy Carlson, R-Riggins, made a motion to approve fiscal year 2026 budget enhancements for the Idaho Commission on Libraries that zeroed out all funding for the Digital Access for All Idahoans grant.
Last year, JFAC approved the spending authorization for the first year of the grant, and the Idaho Commission on Libraries sent out 'intent to award letters' to more than a dozen local and remote libraries in Idaho. The grant is intended to help improve digital access to Idahoans who face barriers to accessing the internet. Much of the funding would benefit seniors 60 and over, Idahoans who live in rural communities, veterans, people with a disability and people with low income.
The grant money was going to pay for laptop and desktop computers across the state, including at the Burley Public Library, Challis Public Library, Plummer Public Library, Payette Public Library, Middleton Public Library and Prairie River Public Library.
However, Carlson said she looked into the grant and opposed it because it contains elements of DEI, diversity equity and inclusion. Opponents of the grant said it could be used to benefit people whose first language is not English, or people who do not speak English.
The 10 House members serving on JFAC gridlocked in a tie 5-5 vote, while the 10 members of the Idaho Senate serving on JFAC voted 6-4 to approve Carlson's motion.
The overall vote among all JFAC members was 11-9 in favor of Carlson's motion.
Horman, the Idaho Falls Republican who serves as JFAC co-chair, announced the motion failed because it did not receive a majority of the votes from both the 10 House members serving on JFAC and the 10 Senate members serving on JFAC.
After Carlson's motion gridlocked JFAC House members 5-5, Horman announced the motion failed. Horman did not send the Idaho Commission on Libraries bill to the House, the chamber where it failed to receive a majority of the votes.
At that point, Sen. Kevin Cook, R-Idaho Falls, said he thought the bill did pass, noting the overall vote in JFAC was 11-9.
'The majority did pass this bill,' Cook told Horman. 'Eleven is the majority, so it did pass and it should go to the House (of Representatives) first, based on the letter on Feb. (10), 2023.' Horman disagreed.
'Senator, the motion has failed, therefore there is nothing to send to the House,' Horman told Cook. Almost immediately, Sen. Jim Woodard, R-Sagle, spoke up and started to address Horman.
'Madam Chair, we're going to have to shut this down,' Woodward said.
As Woodward was beginning to say, 'We're going to follow different rules…' Horman announced that she was putting the committee at ease, which brought the meeting to a halt.
Horman then banged her gavel once and indicated she wanted to discuss things in her office.
Horman told the Sun disagreements over budgets and procedures are part of the legislative and budget-setting processes. But she said some JFAC members were speaking out Friday without first being recognized by her as the committee's chairwoman.
'It is never in order for a committee member to speak without being recognized by the chair,' Horman told the Sun. 'I welcome a robust discussion, but speaking without being recognized by the chair is never in order.'
After Horman banged her gavel Friday, JFAC ground to a halt for eight minutes without any action.
During that time, the Idaho in Session service that was providing live streaming coverage of the meeting cut audio from the committee room and began piping in music over the feed. The feed can be controlled in the committee room, by legislators or student pages assisting legislators.
Meanwhile, the video feed shifted coverage from the dias where Horman and Grow sit to a shot of the seated audience that was watching the meeting in person.
For eight minutes, the public watching streaming video coverage had no idea legislators were arguing in the committee room.
However, a reporter from the Idaho Capital Sun and a reporter with Idaho Education News were in the room.
Shortly after the meeting went at ease, a couple of JFAC members appeared to go to Horman's office to meet.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, who is not a member of JFAC, entered the JFAC committee room and began having a heated discussion with Cook and Rep. Dustin Manwaring, R-Pocatello, which lasted several minutes.
At one point Moyle and Cook were pointing at each other and arguing loudly as Rep. Soñia Galaviz, D-Boise, attempted to calm people down.
As for the Idaho Commission on Libraries budget enhancements, a separate motion intending to approve the grant funding also failed on a tie 5-5 vote, leaving the status of the budget in limbo.
Horman said JFAC will take the committee up at a later date.
Cook warned that if the budget doesn't advance some of last year's money that was already approved might have to be clawed back. He also expressed concerns about cybersecurity.
Potentially adding to the uncertainty over how JFAC operates, some voting procedures JFAC uses appear to have changed in the last few days.
The procedures utilized Friday over the tie vote appeared to be different from the procedures JFAC initially used just a week earlier, on Feb. 28. When multiple Idaho Department of Correction budgets failed to receive a majority among the 10 Senate members serving on JFAC on Feb. 28, staffers and Grow initially tried to send those budgets to the floor of the Idaho Senate – the chamber where the budgets failed to receive a majority.
However, JFAC did not end up sending those Department of Correction budgets to the Senate and instead took them up again and passed two of them on Wednesday, including a $1 million request for body-worn cameras for correction staffers.
It wasn't clear what Moyle and Cook said to each other Friday, but Moyle later told the Sun it involved disputes over budgets and voting.
'Remember, JFAC is actually two committees,' Moyle told the Sun. 'It's the Finance Committee from the Senate and the Appropriations Committee from the House. If (a bill) doesn't pass with the majority of the committee members on one body or the other, then it's a failed motion. There's really no bill to send (to the floor). Think about if a bill doesn't get the majority in the Senate State Affairs Committee, they can't send it to the floor. So the problem that we had with JFAC in the past, bills that have not passed that one committee or the other have been sent to the floor. That was the debate today because you saw a motion that passed one body, one committee, but not the other committee.'
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Moyle told the Sun he hopes to come up with rules and procedures everyone can agree to during the interim after the 2025 legislative session adjourns.
One of the issues with JFAC is the committee has not published the rules and procedures that govern JFAC. Instead, Horman said the committee is operating based on precedent.
During the Idaho Legislature's Dec. 5 organizational session leading up to the 2025 legislative session, the Idaho Senate and Idaho House took a different approach to rules.
Senate President Pro Tem Kelly Anthon, R-Rupert, made a motion to adopt the Senate rules and the joint rules of the Idaho Senate and Idaho House.
But House Majority Leader Jason Monks, R-Meridian, made a different motion. Monks only adopted the House rules, not the joint rules.
On Friday, Moyle told the Sun that was deliberate.
'The problem with the joint rules, and that's part of the problem in JFAC, is the way the rules are written,' Moyle told the Sun. 'It's Rule 11, which says that when joint committees meet like JFAC, that the chairman shall be (from) the Senate, and we're not going to give up the ability to set agendas and share the chair. Basically, and that's the problem.'
Moyle said he is interested in revisiting the rules.
When the Sun asked Moyle if there are discussions about completely breaking JFAC into two totally separate committees, Moyle said yes.
'There's been talk about that,' Moyle said. 'There's been talk about doing rules specifically for both those committees operating. But if you do that, you would have to have a rule change specifically for them, and it requires two-thirds of both bodies. So that's the problem. That's what we need to meet in the interim and see if we can come up with something everybody can agree to when it comes to rules because there are some who want that joint committee to operate differently than others.'
Since Tuesday, when the Idaho Senate passed a major income tax bill championed by Moyle, it's been clear that the Idaho House has picked up the pace and is conducting two floor sessions a day to work toward adjourning the legislative session by the unofficial target date of March 21, in just two weeks.
Meanwhile, JFAC has fallen behind. On Friday, legislative staffers announced JFAC will not meet Monday in order to give bill drafters more time to write up several of the remaining budget bills.
JFAC has passed bare-bones maintenance of operations budgets for nearly all state agencies and departments. But dozens of other budget enhancements and supplemental funding requests, including the Idaho Commission on Libraries budget enhancements, budgets for some Medicaid programs, foster care, public defenders and vocational rehabilitation have not been finalized or passed.
The Sun asked Moyle on Friday if legislators are applying pressure to adjourn the session without addressing all of the budget enhancements and supplemental funding requests.
'When the base budgets are done, we don't have to pass (the enhancements), that's what they're telling me,' Moyle said. 'I don't know if that's true. I think there's some important enhancements that we need and want, and I think that we need to look at those. But you know, there's some conflicts or differences in what those ought to be. You saw that today, you know, and that's why we have this process. You know, the Senate wants one thing, the House wants another. They need to work together to come up with a compromise. And that is what you saw happening today.'
Horman also said some legislators want to end the session without providing funding for all of the budget enhancements and new spending requests.
'That has never been our intent with changing processes, to prevent the enhancements from moving forward,' Horman told the Sun. 'Some members would like to see no additional spending beyond the maintenance budgets, but that was never the goal of this transition. Our commitment is to bring those forward to the extent we can get agreement on them.'
JFAC Feb 23 letter
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