BOISE, ID – Idaho legislators serving on the state’s budget committee took their first look Tuesday at a new online budget tool they say will help them drill deeper into budgets for all state agencies and departments.
During a meeting Tuesday at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise, Idaho Legislative Services Office staffers demonstrated the new budget “base builder tool” for members of the Idaho Legislature’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, or JFAC.
JFAC is a powerful legislative committee that sets all the budgets each year for every state agency and department.
During legislative sessions each year, JFAC members and the Idaho Legislature routinely debate and scrutinize new spending requests that state agencies put forward each year.
This new budget base builder tool will allow legislators and the public to drill down into the existing and ongoing elements of each agency’s “base,” budget, which traditionally aren’t as heavily scrutinized as the new spending requests.
“Today is a big day,” said Rep. Wendy Horman, an Idaho Falls Republican who serves as the co-chair of JFAC along with Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle. “This is something that I know Sen. Grow and I have been working for for two years in our quest to increase the transparency and accountability of budgeting in the state.”
The new budget base builder tool is the latest in a series of changes that Horman and Grow have introduced to JFAC over the past few sessions. Other changes include dividing up how the budgets are set and voted on and changing voting procedures within JFAC.
Idaho Democrats express some concerns with new budgeting tool
The new budget base builder tool is free and available to legislators and the public by clicking on the “base budget dashboards” header on the Idaho Legislature’s website.
Horman said performance-based budgeting is another term for the process.
Base budgets include all ongoing for state agencies, and account for about 90% of the statewide budget, state officials said Tuesday. Base budgets are cumulative and are built with ongoing funding actions taken during each legislative session, said Casey Hartwig, principal research analyst for the Idaho Legislative Services Office’s impact review team.
In an era of revenue shortfalls and new budget holdbacks ordered by Gov. Brad Little, Democrats in the minority party serving on JFAC expressed concern Monday that the budget tool highlights only spending without providing additional information about inflation and population growth in Idaho.
“I’m concerned … that our (legislative) colleagues will look at this (and) all they will see is growth in these budgets but they won’t understand the real reasons,” said Sen. Janie Ward-Engelking, D-Boise.
State staffers told Ward-Engelking that they presented the budget information the way they did to match historic state budget documents, which were not adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, Horman said JFAC members will receive a briefing on state spending that is adjusted for inflation during an upcoming meeting in November.
Although the Idaho Legislature is not in session right now, Tuesday’s meeting was billed as a way to get acquainted with the new budget tool in preparation for the 2026 legislative session that begins Jan. 12 in Boise.
As part of their efforts to gear up for the session, JFAC members will also participate in interim meetings Nov. 4 through Nov. 6. During the interim meetings, JFAC members are scheduled to receive a briefing on the general fund budget, study agencies’ budget requests for fiscal year 2026 and fiscal year 2027, review state expenditures and analyze per capita spending adjusted for inflation.
JFAC members did not vote on any budgets or take any other action during Tuesday’s meeting.
This story first appeared on Idaho Capital Sun.
