AG opposes budget cuts

BOISE — Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador warned against cuts headed for his office Wednesday as the state's budget rescission legislation remains pending.

Labrador said he had no plans to testify prior to the Joint Finance-Appropriation Committee's vote earlier this month to enact cuts of 4% for this fiscal year and 5% for the next for most state agencies. With the Office of the Attorney General now poised to face furloughs or layoffs after previously being exempted, Labrador ended up testifying before the body, urging its members to relent on their prior decision.

“When the governor did not recommend a 3% holdback for our office, I did not expect our office would have a 3% holdback,” Labrador said. “However, when this committee took action on maintenance budgets, our office was hit with $1.6 million of an ongoing reduction for FY27. This was equal to the governor’s 3% ongoing reduction plus the additional 2%.”

While being able to absorb “minor reductions,” Labrador said the proposed cuts would leave his office “devastated” as 89% of the office’s budget goes toward personnel costs. 

Labrador said the $1.3 million reduction for this fiscal year would require the office’s employees to take 11 furlough days between now and the end of the fiscal year whereas the $1.6 million reduction for next fiscal year would require 14 furlough days impacting 227 employees. This would result in a nearly 5% reduction in their salary and likely result in staff leaving the office, Labrador said.

In an effort to guard against this, he requested $980,000 in funds be restored to the office’s budget.

To emphasize the need for his office's personnel remaining whole, Labrador touted the success of the office’s Consumer Protection Division, which, over the last three years, settled or recovered $242 million for Idaho taxpayers against a range of businesses for unfair or deceptive business practices.

He also highlighted the improvements within the Internet Crimes Against Children Unit, which has increased its arrests from 19 to 68 in the three years he has held the position. At the same time, a backlog in ICAC CyberTips to the office for child exploitation has been reduced from nearly 2,000 in 2023 to zero since January 2024 as the office shifted to address each tip within 24 hours, Labrador said.

Jeff Nye, chief of the criminal division for the office, said there has been a nationwide increase in crimes targeting children primarily due to the increasing ease of access in obtaining these illicit materials. At the same time access is increasing, however, law enforcement is becoming more successful and finding the individuals creating and distributing these materials in Idaho, bringing a “dramatic increase” in arrests.

Committee introduces “sextortion” bill 

In a separate effort addressing the rise in crimes against children, the House Judiciary, Rules & Administration Committee voted to send House Bill 727 to the House floor with a “do pass” recommendation. 

The bill — sponsored by Rep. Brooke Green, D-Boise, and Rep. Jaron Crane, R-Nampa — provides additional protections for minors by making threats to disclose either “real intimate images” as well as “A.I.-generated explicit images” a felony when the victim is a minor. According to the bill, the aim is to respond to the growing problem of “sextortion” seen nationally and in Idaho where perpetrators use both real and generated images to threaten, coerce or otherwise extort minors.

“It’s to address one of the fastest-growing forms of exploitation facing both our adults and unfortunately our children,” Green said, “and that’s sextortion.”

Green said the new law would allow victims to be protected even when private images were never disseminated, making the threat itself punishable before “irreversible harm” can be done. 

Crane said he has been made aware of a “pandemic happening across the country” where adults meet children through video games, begin communicating in chat rooms and then coerce the child to provide an explicit image or video and the victims are threatened with consequences if they cease to provide these images. To prevent children from feeling stuck in a place “where there is no out,” Crane said the bill will allow for earlier intervention before harm occurs. 

Nye was in attendance for the bill hearing Wednesday and though noting the office remained neutral on pending legislation, highlighted how the issue has grown across the state. From October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI reported there being over 12,000 victims of this method of extortion across the United States, and Nye said Idaho has similarly observed an increase in recent years. 

Nye said the growth led the attorney general’s office to track sextortion as an independent category within the state’s CyperTips for the first time in 2024. That year saw 107 such tips followed by 197 in 2025. With 25 of these tips received in January, the state is already on pace to surpass the previous years’ sextortion reports, he said.