‘We gotta get them done': 2025 Idaho legislative session to continue next week due to budgets
Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Moyle, R-Star, leads the discussion on the House floor at the State Capitol building on Jan. 23, 2024. (Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun)
With major fiscal year 2026 budgets still unfinalized, the Idaho Legislature was unable to wrap up its annual legislative session this week at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise.
Republican legislative leaders originally hoped to adjourn the 2025 legislative session on March 21.
But once again, the unfinished 2026 budget is preventing legislators from adjourning.
One of the only requirements of legislators in the Idaho Constitution is to set a balanced budget where expenses do not exceed revenue.
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When a reporter with the Idaho Capital Sun asked House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, early Friday afternoon for his best guess when the legislative session will end, Moyle said he has no guess and it just depends.
'I would have liked to stay and finish Saturday – I'm not going to lie – push it through and be done,' Moyle told the Sun. 'But now it makes it harder, because when you come (back in session) on Monday, they're going to want to stay the whole week and I don't want to stay the whole week.'
Moyle said his hopes of working into the weekend were dashed when the Idaho Senate wrapped up its daily floor session before noon on Friday and Senate leaders announced their intention to adjourn until Monday while the Idaho House of Representatives was still in session.
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Before adjourning for the weekend on Friday, the Idaho Senate showed signs of disagreement and dysfunction, including members of the Senate limiting debate, some senators refusing to answer each other's questions and, finally, a freshman senator forcing a clerk to read a bill aloud on the floor. For nearly every single bill that comes before the Idaho Legislature, legislators almost always skip the formal full reading of a bill to save time.
'No, guess (when we will finish) because we could have been done today or tomorrow, so it just depends on what happens,' Moyle said.
Moyle said he expects the Idaho House to continue taking up budgets on Monday when legislators reconvene.
'We'll wait for (the budgets to reach the floor) in here,' Moyle said. 'They'll have them ready for us by Monday, the staff will keep working (drafting the budget bills). They'll be ready to go… It's just, we gotta get them done, right? We gotta get them passed. If they don't pass, some of them have to come back (and be reconsidered). Some of them don't.'
Major budgets that could reach the floors next week include the colleges and university budgets that seek to reduce funding for Boise State University and the University of Idaho by $2 million each and the budget for Gov. Brad Little's office.
The Idaho Senate is scheduled to reconvene at 9:30 a.m. Monday, while the Idaho House of Representatives will reconvene at 10:30 a.m. Monday.
Monday will be the 85th day of the 2025 legislative session. There is no requirement to adjourn legislative sessions by a certain date. However, most sessions run for about 80 to 95 days.
The 2024 legislative session lasted 94 days, and adjourned for the year April 10.
The 2021 legislative session, which was marked by an extended recess, was the longest in state history. It ran for 311 days and did not adjourn officially until Nov. 15 – just eight weeks before the start of the 2022 legislative session.
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