Idaho's legislative budget committee is digging into nearly 20 years of the state's past budgets to better weed out unessential expenses.
Recently, legislators have operated off of what they call a "base budget," which includes the previous year's general costs for payroll, ongoing contracts and operations. They will then factor in inflation and population increases to create a "maintenance budget."
Additional requests, like for new programs, hiring new personnel or replacing old vehicles would be included in an "enhancement budget."
"Basically, this is a tool that helps us look into the past to help us look ahead to the future," said Rep. Wendy Horman (R-Idaho Falls), who co-chairs the budget writing Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee (JFAC).
Each agency, department or office's budget is included with the dashboard, along with any additions or subtractions from its full-time workforce.
That spending is then broken down by source – Idaho's general fund bankrolled by taxpayers, dedicated funds paid through agency fees or fines and federal funds.
"We need to make sure that we only have the size of government that is supported by the revenues we have and it was distorted during the pandemic because there was so much cash freely flowing," Horman said.
Sen. Janie Ward-Engelking (D-Boise) agrees but says it needs more context. The tool doesn't explicitly show a 30% jump in Idaho's population during that time period or that inflation rose 47% nationwide.
"So, I'm concerned that our colleagues will look at this [and] all they will see is the growth in these budgets but they won't understand the real reason for that," Ward-Engelking said.
Sen. Scott Grow (R-Eagle), the other JFAC co-chair, said he'd like to include that information as well, but that it took a significant amount of time to create this new dashboard already.
"We can't do everything at once. We're moving as fast as we can without killing off our staff," Grow said.
Legislative staff are planning a presentation on how inflation and population growth have affected Idaho's budget early next month.
Conservative lawmakers have been calling for further budget cuts as they approach the 2026 election cycle.
Gov. Brad Little ordered state agencies to permanently cut their budgets by 3% last month in the face of falling tax collections. Little and the Republican legislative super majority passed $450 million in tax cuts earlier this year, mostly related to personal and corporate income tax rates.
Copyright 2025 Boise State Public Radio
