House gives go-ahead for additional 1% budget cuts

BOISE — The House voted 48-22 on Friday to approve deeper spending cuts for this fiscal year, sending a bill to the governor’s desk that will cut most state agencies' budgets by 4%.

The vote comes after the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (JFAC) voted in early February to approve a bill that includes across-the-board 1% cuts, with limited exceptions for K-12 public schools, the Idaho Department of Correction, and the Idaho State Police. For each agency that is subject to JFAC’s approved cuts for the fiscal year, it represents a deeper reduction beyond the 3% holdbacks ordered by Gov. Brad Little in the fall of last year.  

When incorporating the total 4% reductions, the funding reduction amounts to $192.7 million, including $131.3 million in general funds and $52.2 million in federal funds, as well as the elimination of 110 full-time positions. The added 1% portion approved by JFAC totals $15.1 million in funding cuts and just under 14 full-time positions. 

Rep. Brandon Mitchell, R-Moscow, who serves on JFAC and sponsored the committee’s rescission bill, described the cuts as a matter of responsible budgeting. “Idaho families tighten their belts when they start having times of uncertainty,” Mitchell said. “The state should do the same.”

Rep. Lori McCann, R-Lewiston, highlighted that, when adjusting for population growth and inflation, state spending has remained relatively flat over the past two decades. When accounting for these factors, state spending has grown from $2,509 per person in 2005 to $2,725 per person in 2026, effectively a 9% spending increase over the period.

She added that the bill, at 49 pages, lacks "transparency" for legislators and constituents who have questions about where the cuts are coming.

Rep. Joe Alfieri, R-Coeur d’Alene, framed the state’s rescission bill as akin to a business innovating in private industry. Voting for the bill, Alfieri said, was a matter of “making government more efficient and less expensive.”

Though the bill was passed in the House by a voting margin far wider than the one-vote difference achieved in the Senate, House members repeatedly appeared confused about the implications of what they were voting on during the floor debate, believing that pending maintenance and enhancement budget requests, which apply only to fiscal year 2027, could be used to restore the cuts they were voting to approve on Friday. 

The rescission bill, however, applies excessively to state agency budgets for the current fiscal year, and both the House and the Senate will need to take up votes on the maintenance, or baseline budgets, for the coming fiscal year. 

Rep. Ben Fuhriman, R-Shelley, noted the disconnect.

“There is no consensus in anything that’s actually being done here,” he said.

While JFAC has fully or partially restored several cuts previously slated for this fiscal year, others remain subject to the 1% cuts. That's the case for the Idaho Department of Lands’ forest and range fire protection program, which requested $125,000 to mostly restore the $131,800 JFAC voted to cut from the agency. JFAC took up this request on Wednesday and, in a 7-12 vote, failed to restore these fire preparedness funds.  

To avoid these cuts and others, several members urged that the $1.3 billion in the state’s budget stabilization fund, often referred to as the state’s “rainy day fund,” should be withdrawn to keep state agencies whole. 

Rep. Jack Nelsen, R-Jerome, said in hindsight, the state “cut a little too much” in taxes in recent years and should be using the budget stabilization fund to avoid the roughly $15 million in agency cuts for this fiscal year. While still believing them to be valuable as a method of stimulating local economies in the state, Nelsen said tax breaks should not come at the cost of reversing decades of improvements to state programs. 

“To just slice a bunch of them off because, frankly, we made a mistake in this body, I’m not into doing that,” Nelsen said.

Rep. Jason Monks, R-Meridian, said these stabilization funds ought to be reserved for times of economic downturn and noted, as Idaho was in the throes of the 2008 recession, the “rainy day fund was instrumental in being able to keep the state running.” 

As for the broader cuts in the bill, Monks said it was akin to tackling the difficult task of pruning an overgrown garden.

“I’m not going to say this is a good bill,” Monks said. “It should pass. It’s a crappy bill that we have to vote on, but it’s a necessary bill.”