[Vision2020] Idaho Cuts Budget by $80 Million

[Tom Hansen]

The newest of "dark clouds" (the $80 million budget cut) may have a silver 
lining (thin as it may be) with some of the stimulus funds destined for 
Idaho going toward education.

Courtesy of today's (February 14, 2009) Spokesman Review.

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Idaho cuts budget by $80 million
Federal stimulus may spare schools
Betsy Z. Russell / Staff writer  
 
BOISE – Idaho lawmakers slashed another $80 million from the current 
year’s state budget Friday and adopted a budget for next year that will 
force $101 million in cuts beyond those already recommended by Gov. Butch 
Otter.

“The news is grim,” said Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint.

But hours after the cuts were approved, word came that Idaho’s share of 
federal stimulus funds would be enough to head off proposed cuts for 
public schools. That news capped an eventful day at the Idaho Legislature, 
which received dismal tax revenue reports early Friday. 

The plan lawmakers adopted for next year includes a 5 percent cut in 
personnel funding statewide, for all agencies, colleges and universities, 
and public schools – and could mean an across-the-board pay cut for state 
workers. The governor would have to issue an executive order, likely in 
June, to impose that.

“If we’re going to dig ourselves out of this, we’ve got to keep people 
working, and a 5 percent cut in pay is much preferable to being laid off,” 
said Sen. Jim Hammond, R-Post Falls.

The plan also anticipates $110 million in cuts to Idaho’s public schools 
next year. But officials were rethinking that in light of millions in 
federal money targeted for Idaho schools.

House Education Chairman Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d’Alene, said that his bills 
to change the laws governing school funding and teacher contracts may not 
be needed, and that the state could avoid public school cuts entirely next 
year. 

State Superintendent Tom Luna agreed. 

“It appears we’re going to receive a considerable amount of money,” Luna 
said Friday, “to the tune of $346 million over the next two years, and 
some of that money could be here as soon as next week.”

Of that $346 million, $243 million is for “budget stabilization,” Luna 
said, “to resolve the financial crisis that we were trying to deal with in 
the Legislature to cut public education.”

Nonini said some of the federal money is intended to prevent teacher pay 
cuts and layoffs as well as program cuts. Luna postponed three days of 
hearings scheduled to start Monday on his education bills, which were 
widely panned by teachers and Democrats in the Legislature.

The stimulus money is “good news,” Nonini said.

The Legislature’s joint budget committee voted unanimously Friday morning 
in favor of the new current-year cuts and the cuts planned for next year, 
although lawmakers still must set each agency’s budget for next year. The 
cuts will be built into those decisions.

For this year, schools will get $28.4 million from the state’s public 
school stabilization fund to offset the latest cuts, keeping their budget 
even. But that will deplete the fund by more than half. 

“When we set up the public education stabilization fund, we did so for 
this purpose,” Keough said. “We were hoping we would never come to this 
day, but we are here.”

As lawmakers met, Otter imposed a statewide hiring freeze, a ban on all 
bonuses and pay increases, a ban on overtime pay without prior approval 
from his Division of Financial Management, and limits on all purchasing.

“I understand that implementing these instructions may be difficult, but I 
assure you they are necessary,” the governor wrote in a letter sent Friday 
morning to all agency directors.

Final state tax revenue figures for January showed a $33.1 million drop 
below projections, putting the state $43.6 million below projections for 
the fiscal year to date. The new cuts take another 2 percent out of this 
year’s state budget, which Otter had already cut by 4 percent before 
lawmakers arrived in town last month.

The 5 percent cut proposed for personnel funding calls for the governor 
and agency directors to use across-the-board pay cuts, furloughs or 
layoffs or to keep positions vacant.

Wayne Hammon, the governor’s budget chief, said that flexibility will 
allow the state to “do the least amount of harm to our employees.”

Idaho state-employee pay lags 15 percent behind market rates, and Otter 
spent the last two years trying to persuade lawmakers to raise state 
worker pay but cut benefits.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"For a lapsed Lutheran born-again Buddhist pan-Humanist Universalist 
Unitarian Wiccan Agnostic like myself there's really no reason ever to go 
to work."

- Roy Zimmerman


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