House narrowly passes first of 10 omnibus budgets

A divided Idaho House of Representatives voted 38-31 on Wednesday to pass the first of 10 omnibus budget bills that are at the center of a budget showdown in the Idaho Legislature. 

The vote to pass House Bill 457, the omnibus fiscal year 2025 budget for the judicial branch, appears to represent a narrow political victory for Republican House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, who supported the budget, as well as Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, one of the co-chairs of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee.

The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee sets each element of the state budget and is often simply referred to as JFAC. JFAC is widely considered one of the most important and powerful committees in the Idaho Legislature because of the influence and control it has over money and state budgets.

This legislative session, Horman and her co-chair, Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, are implementing several significant changes to how JFAC hears, divides and sets the state budgets. Horman and Grow say the changes are designed to increase transparency and accountability. One of those changes calls for breaking budgets up into different ways than before.

On Jan. 16, under Grow and Horman’s leadership, JFAC passed 10 bare-bones omnibus budgets that lump nearly all state agencies together and are intended just to keep the lights on for those departments. Grow and Horman’s plans were to come back and consider new spending requests, replacement items and fuller raises for state employees at a later time in separate budgets.

But on Feb. 2, 12 members of JFAC rebelled against that style of budgeting and passed 14 different standalone budgets that included the bare-bones nuts and bolts elements of the budget combined with full raises for state employees, replacement items and some line items. Those Feb. 2 budgets were in direct competition with the Jan. 16 omnibus budgets.

The Jan. 16 omnibus budgets got to the House floor first on Wednesday, with the fiscal year omnibus budget for the state of Idaho’s judicial branch being the first and only one taken up Wednesday. 

The judicial branch budget reduces general fund state spending by 2.9%, or $1.8 million, compared to the original budget legislators passed a year ago. 

Judicial branch budget is the first of the budgets under JFAC’s new system

Horman urged members of the Idaho House to support the changes to budget procedures and vote to pass the judicial branch omnibus budget.

“The purpose of doing the budgets this way, which is new this year — I understand we have a lot of questions and have been happy to answer those — is to increase transparency and accountability for growth in spending and growth in government,” Horman said on the House floor.

The new process allows legislators to provide deeper scrutiny of new state spending requests, Horman said, and is coupled with other budgetary changes that will allow legislators to drill down even deeper into the base that makes up the budgets.

“One of the flaws of the current process is that during the legislative session the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee reviews only approximately 19% of the spending of agencies,” Horman said. 

Rep. Britt Raybould, R-Rexburg, who backed the competing Feb. 2 standalone budgets from JFAC, asked the House to vote against the judicial branch budget and return to JFAC’s traditional practice of considering separate budgets for separate state agencies and not separating out the bare-bones budget from new spending requests.

“What we’re debating today is a process that creates a cookie-cutter approach to budgeting that doesn’t take into account the differences that exist amongst the different state agencies, driven in large part by the laws passed within this body,” Raybould said while debating the bill Wednesday. 

Raybould also compared the omnibus budgets to the budgeting process Congress uses, where multiple budgets are combined in a larger bill.

“We decry, frequently, how budgeting happens in Washington, D.C. — that it is not transparent, that it allows things to be slipped in under the cover of ‘well, everything is in the bill and it has all got to go,’” Raybould said.

Finally, Raybould said the omnibus judicial branch budget wasn’t adequate because it didn’t include replacement items, despite the fact that agencies have policies in place that establish how items get replaced.

“The budget you have before you today is representative of a portion of the services when it comes to funding our court system, but I would argue it does not represent a maintenance of services in our court system,” Raybould said.  

After an hourlong debate, the Idaho House voted 38-31 to pass the omnibus budget for the judicial branch of government. Twenty Republicans and all 11 Democrats voted against the bill.

Budget hearings and budget votes to continue at Idaho State Capitol

It wasn’t exactly clear what legislators’ next steps will be. Immediately after passing the budget for the judicial branch on Wednesday, House Republicans entered a series of lengthy, closed-door caucus meetings. 

The passage of the omnibus budget for the judicial branch signals trouble for 14 standalone agency budgets that JFAC members passed Feb. 2. Those budgets were in competition with the omnibus budgets. 

Raybould previously told the Sun that both budgets cannot pass.

Sen. Janie Ward-Engelking, D-Boise, also said the 14 standalone budgets that JFAC passed — and she supported — could be dead if all of the omnibus budgets pass.

On Tuesday, Ward-Engelking told the Sun that if legislators don’t vote down the omnibus budgets then the Feb. 2 standalone budgets may be ruled out of order. 

The Idaho House still has four more of the omnibus budgets on its calendar that it did not take up Wednesday. 

The Idaho Senate has not yet acted on any of the omnibus budgets. Five of the 10 omnibus budgets were on the Idaho Senate’s calendar Wednesday, but senators did not take any of them up.

In order to become law, all budgets need to pass both the Idaho House and Idaho Senate – and avoid being vetoed by Gov. Brad Little. 

JFAC is scheduled to continue budget hearings at 8 a.m. Thursday and the nine remaining omnibus budgets are on Thursday’s calendar in the Idaho House and Idaho Senate. 

This story was originally published by the Idaho Capital Sun online on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024.