Idaho Legislature Budget and Policy Analyst France Lippett gives a presentation to the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee at the State Capitol building on Jan. 23, 2024. JFAC co-chairs Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, (center) and Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls (right) are leading the meeting. (Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun)
For a second time this year, the Idaho Legislature’s powerful budget-setting committee failed to reach consensus on raises for state government employees.
State lawmakers on the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, or JFAC, spent about an hour Friday morning sparring over committee voting rules — ultimately deciding to vote on the annual Change in Employee Compensation later in the legislative session.
JFAC is a legislative committee that meets daily during the session and sets all of the budgets for every state agency and department.
“We tried this once before. We were not successful,” JFAC co-chair Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, told the committee as it started to debate employee pay raises Friday. “If we are not successful today, we will postpone until a later day.”
On Friday, JFAC rejected four motions to raise state employee pay — ranging from merit-based proposals that would let managers give high-performing employees higher raises, to proposals that would instead issue broad raises across the state workforce.
But JFAC did approve a $48.4 million spending increase for employee health insurance benefits, Idaho Education News reported.
On Jan. 16, JFAC couldn’t reach an agreement on state employee raises and didn’t vote on competing pay proposals, the Idaho Capital Sun previously reported.
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JFAC delays agency budget presentations
Twice in the meeting, JFAC went at ease following rule disputes in debating employee pay raises.
During those pauses, some legislators left the committee meeting room or huddled at the chairmens’ desk. Then minutes later, the committee reconvened to attempt to advance state employee raise proposals.
Around 9:30 a.m., JFAC adjourned without budget discussions also planned in Friday’s meeting for three state government agencies: the Board of Tax Appeals, the Idaho State Tax Commission, and the Office of Energy and Mineral Resources.
As Horman adjourned the meeting, she apologized to the agencies for the delay and said the committee would reschedule those hearings as soon as possible.
What is the change in employee compensation?
It’s an annual budget area to set pay raises for Idaho state government employees.
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.
On Jan. 6, 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.
On Jan. 9, 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 spokesperson for Little previously told the Sun.
JFAC spars over voting rules
Three members of the 20-member committee were absent Friday. That sparked friction over voting rules in the committee, which includes 10 House representatives and 10 senators.
In 2023, the Idaho House and Senate GOP leaders agreed to a rule on how majority votes split between chambers work.
That rule specifies if a bill receives approval from a majority of JFAC — but is missing a majority among its House or Senate members — the resulting bill would go to the legislative chamber where the motion had the least support in JFAC.
Early in JFAC’s debate Friday over employee pay raise proposals, Horman said the committee was searching for a letter that outlined those rules to see if the rule applied to only lawmakers who are present for votes.
Later in the meeting, Horman said the committee found the letter, dated Feb. 10, 2023, and signed by Horman and JFAC co-chair Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle.
“It says members of the committee. It does not say members present,” Horman said at the meeting.
The committee soon went at ease.
When JFAC returned, Horman announced “we will proceed with six members of each committee voting,” Horman said, referencing the letter and precedent established over the past two years.
“We will take this up with our respective leadership teams to make sure that what they agreed to at the beginning of the session, to proceed by this letter, is still their position,” Horman said. “But that is the ruling for today.”
After the meeting, Horman told the Sun in an interview she’d work on a path forward to resolve the rules dispute.
“I think that’s what I’ll be working on late today and next week to figure out what is a path forward. We want to make sure our state employees receive increases in their salary,” she said. “And we will keep trying until we get to the right solution.”
But the rules “are not on the table,” she added.
What the letter “does say (is) members of the committee. (It) does not say committee members present. And that’s how we operated the past two years,” she told the Sun.
All committee members absent Friday had “bonafide reasons for not being here,” such as a funeral, illness or travel, she told the Sun.
“But you can see how that would work in the future, where you could start to game a vote by just not showing up. And that’s why we went with six last time, and we will continue with that for the rest of this session,” Horman told the Sun.
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