Legislative Services Office Division Manager Keith Bybee (center) takes a break in proceedings to pass out printed materials for the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee on Jan. 7, 2025, at the State Capitol Building in Boise. (Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
The Idaho Legislature’s powerful budget committee did not vote on proposed raises for state employees as planned Thursday at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise.
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, which sets the budgets for every state department and state agency, did consider proposals for pay increases for state employees. But the committee members couldn’t reach an agreement and didn’t vote on competing pay proposals.
After gaveling in Thursday, the committee voted down a pair of revenue projections for the fiscal year 2026, ultimately deciding to approve a revenue forecast at a later, unspecified, date.
A bit later, the committee couldn’t reach an agreement on benefits packages for state employees.
By the time proposals for state employee pay came up, the committee looked ready to implode. A series of motions were made, misstated, amended, corrected, withdrawn and ultimately abandoned as the committee alternated between a series of unscheduled breaks while legislative staffers furiously calculated the financial impact of various decisions.
Some proposals included pay increases for teachers, others left teacher pay out completely, setting it aside for a separate decision at a later date.
Some proposals included targeted pay increases for all IT and engineering staffers and others only included it for some IT and engineering staffers.
At one point, Sen. Kevin Cook, R-Idaho Falls, alluded to voting commitments some legislators apparently made Wednesday night over dinner or early Thursday – at times when JFAC was not in an open, public meeting.
Pay raises for state employees have been discussed by various officials for weeks
The issue of state employee pay has been teed up for weeks, even before the 2025 legislative session began.
On Dec. 20, the Idaho Division of Human Resources recommended raises of 4% for state employees – saying turnover is an issue for the state and that state employees are so underpaid they all could go do the same job virtually anywhere else and be paid better.
In conjunction with his State of the State address, Gov. Brad Little recommended raises of 5% or $1.55 per hour for all state employees.
Last week, the Idaho Legislature’s Change in Employee Compensation Committee recommended raises of $1.55 per hour for all state employees. The Change in Employee Compensation Committee also recommended additional, targeted raises totaling 8% for Idaho State Police troopers, a 4.5% increase for IT and engineering staff and increases of $1.55 per hour or 3%, whichever is greater, for health care and nursing professionals.
Idaho has approximately 25,000 state employees, and the $1.55 per hour recommendation would have included all full-time and part-time employees, but not temporary employees, a spokeswoman for Little said.
The state has 157 Idaho State Police troopers and 803 IT or engineering staff members who would have been affected by the targeted increases, Little’s office said.
The state also has 157 employees in nursing and health care and 32 of them would be affected by the targeted increase because they would have received less than a 3% raise if they only received the $1.55 per hour raises, Little’s office said.
One of the big debates over the salary increases was whether to award the raises to every single state employee as a cost-of-living increase, or whether to award them based on merit to reward and incentivize performance.
The leaders of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee did not set a new date to consider state employee pay, saying instead they will take it up later once more numbers have been crunched.
Maintenance budgets expected to be set by Idaho Legislature’s budget committee on Friday
Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, and Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, who are the two co-chairs of JFAC, said they will take action on the 2026 maintenance budgets Friday morning. Under new JFAC rules hammered out last year, Grow and Horman define maintenance budgets as bare bones versions of the current budget, with all the one-time money and new spending requests stripped out, that are there just to keep the lights on for state agencies.
New spending requests – and at this point pay for 25,000 state employees – will be considered at a later date.
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