The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, the Idaho Legislature’s powerful budget committee, meets daily during the legislative session. (Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
The Idaho Legislature will likely miss its goal of adjourning the 2025 legislative session March 21 because the powerful joint budget committee has yet to set more than a dozen budgets for different state agencies and departments.
As of Thursday, the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, or JFAC, had not set fiscal year 2026 budget enhancements for the state’s two largest budgets – the Medicaid budget and the K-12 public school budgets.
Those two budgets aren’t the only budgets awaiting action from JFAC, the budget committee that sets every budget for every state agency and department.
According to state documents provided to JFAC co-chairs Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, and Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, there are at least a dozen other remaining budgets for JFAC as of Thursday:
- Colleges and universities
- Idaho Transportation Department
- Idaho Department of Fish and Game
- Idaho State Tax Commission
- Idaho State Historical Society
- Idaho State Department of Education
- Vocational Rehabilitation
- Idaho Department of Environmental Quality
- Idaho State Police and Idaho Peace Officer Standards and Training
- Executive Office of the Governor
- Idaho Department of Water Resources
- Millennium Fund
- Office of the State Public Defender
Under new budget procedures JFAC implemented over the past two years or so, JFAC splits budgets into two parts. First, JFAC passed bare-bones maintenance of operations budgets that are simply intended to keep the lights on for state agencies. Those maintenance budgets are a stripped down version of the budget set last year that remove all the one-time spending and the new funding requests. JFAC set all the maintenance budgets on Jan. 17.
Under JFACs new budget procedures, new spending requests and other items are classified as budget enhancements and voted on separately. The fiscal year 2026 budget enhancements are what legislators are waiting on JFAC to set.
Idaho Legislature’s budget committee co-chair says more must be done to negotiate on enhancements
In addition to the list above, there may be other budget enhancements to consider as well. In recent days, the Idaho Senate killed the 2026 budget enhancements for the Idaho State Liquor Division, and the Idaho House of Representatives killed 2026 budget enhancements for the Idaho Department of Finance.
At the end of Thursday’s JFAC meeting, Grow waved a piece of paper around that contained a long list of many of the same unfinished budgets printed above.
“Here is a list,” Grow said to JFAC members. “You can’t see it, but you can see there’s a lot of bills here that need to be done. We’ve got a ton of work to do, and we can’t go home – nobody can go home – until we get these done. So the more we can do to negotiate and come to a consensus so we can move them along here in JFAC, the better off we will all be so we can get the bills to the House and the Senate, and everybody will be happy – happy – that someday we will sine die.”
Sine die is the Latin phrase legislative leaders use when they adjourn without scheduling a day to return, signaling the end of the annual legislative session.
JFAC is not scheduled to take up the Medicaid or K-12 public school budgets during its budget-setting meeting scheduled for Friday, meaning budget-setting will continue into next week at a minimum.
Republican legislative leaders set a nonbinding target date to adjourn the session March 21 – a week from Friday.
Some Republicans doubt Legislature can adjourn by March 21
But with the budget yet to be set, two prominent Republican legislators cast doubt on the March 21 goal.
“I don’t think we can make the 21st (of March), but I remain hopeful for the following Friday,” Horman said Thursday morning.
Other legislators were less optimistic.
House State Affairs Committee Chairman Brent Crane, R-Nampa, told the Sun on Thursday he expects the Idaho Legislature will adjourn for the year “sine die” in mid-April – or the end of April “if things get really bad.”
Crane said legislators are waiting on JFAC to set the budget.
“Once that’s done, you’re going to see things go move pretty quick,” Crane said.
A longstanding general rule of thumb in the Idaho State Capitol is that it takes about two weeks after JFAC finishes setting the budget to wrap up a legislative session. That time period accounts for the time it takes staffers to draft the budget bills and for both legislative chambers to consider and pass all the budgets.
However, once the budget bills are physically drafted and sent to the floor, legislative leaders can then work quickly to suspend rules and vote on bills.
In addition to setting the budget, there is at least one other consideration before adjourning for the year.
For the past several years, legislative leaders have taken a roughly five-day recess after the final budgets and bills pass in order to see if Gov. Brad Little vetoes any late session bills. Going at recess instead of immediately adjourning preserves the Idaho Legislature’s ability to return to session and attempt to override any potential vetoes.
Idaho state lawmakers continue to introduce new legislation
Meanwhile, with budget-setting still underway, legislators continue to introduce new bills daily. On Thursday, House committees had a combined total of six new bills up for introduction.
On Thursday, Grow gave JFAC members a pep talk. Grow began by telling JFAC members they have a lot of work to do and mentioned that Thursday’s agenda – which indicated it had been amended seven times – was light.
“As you notice, that’s a very lean agenda that we had for today for voting, and that is our challenge, that our work groups need time,” Grow said. “Work groups need to get us motions that we can vote on.”
Work groups are smaller sub groups of JFAC that are assigned to work on specific budgets and develop budget motions to bring to the full committee to vote on.
There are work groups assigned to budgets relating to health and human services, natural resources, education and so on.
Idaho Capital Sun reporter Kyle Pfannenstiel contributed to this story.
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