Co-chairwoman Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, conducts the proceedings of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee meeting on Jan. 7, 2025, at the State Capitol Building in Boise. (Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
After a rocky meeting Thursday where legislators couldn’t agree on employee pay levels, the Idaho Legislature’s budget committee got back on track Friday and approved bare-bones “maintenance of operations budgets” for all state agencies Friday.
Friday’s votes represent the first big budget votes of the new 2025 legislative session for the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, or JFAC, which sets budgets for all state agencies.
The 10 maintenance budgets for fiscal year 2026 include $12.6 billion in total funding – including general funds, federal funds and dedicated funds, which are all other funds.
The $12.6 billion in total funding represents a 0.1% increase from the current fiscal year’s budget, according to documents provided Friday by the Idaho Legislative Services Office.
Idaho runs on a fiscal year calendar that begins July 1 and ends June 30.
The so-called maintenance budgets are part of the new budget procedures that JFAC first enacted in 2024.
JFAC co-chairs Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, and Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, define maintenance budgets as a bare-bones version of the current budget – with all the one-time funding and supplemental funding requests stripped out. The maintenance budgets are merely intended to keep the lights on for state agencies.
New spending requests and supplemental funding requests will be considered and voted on separately in the coming weeks and months.
JFAC will also have to consider pay and benefits for 25,000 state employees at a later date after JFAC members couldn’t agree on salary and benefits proposals on Thursday.
Maintenance budgets include funding that touches nearly all state agencies, departments
For the maintenance budgets, JFAC voted almost unanimously to approve 10 different budgets that nearly all state agencies and departments were combined into.
The 10 different maintenance budgets include:
- The legislative branch
- The judicial branch
- Constitutional officers
- Public safety
- General government
- Economic development
- Natural resources
- Idaho State Board of Education
- Idaho public schools
- Health and human services
Working together, JFAC members voted to approve the first nine budgets unanimously Friday. Rep. James Petzke, R-Meridian, and Sen. Glenneda Zuiderveld, R-Twin Falls, voted against the health and human services maintenance budgets, which were approved 17-2.
Passing the maintenance budgets means JFAC will now transition to considering and scrutinizing new funding requests and budget enhancements for the fiscal year 2026 budget next.
In order to be approved, each of the 10 maintenance budgets still must pass both the Idaho House of Representatives and Idaho Senate with at least a simple majority of the votes.
JFAC is scheduled to reconvene at 8 a.m. Monday at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise to hear funding requests for programs including mental health services and psychiatric hospitalization. The Idaho Legislature generally does not take holidays off when it is in session, and legislators will be in session Monday during Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
The public is invited to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday at the Idaho Capitol Building in Boise. The event will feature ceremonies from noon to 1 p.m. on the second floor of the Statehouse’s rotunda.
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