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Legislative services unveils interactive base-budget tool to track appropriations and outcomes
Summary
Legislative Services demonstrated an interactive “Idaho base analysis” tool that pulls 25 years of appropriation data, links narrative LFR material and allows lawmakers to drill into base budgets, maintenance items and ongoing enhancements.
Legislative Services staff demonstrated a new web tool designed to help lawmakers and committee staff review agency base budgets, maintenance requests and historical enhancements.
Paul Headley and Casey Hartwig from the Legislative Services Office showed the “Idaho Budget Analysis Tool” (internal demo) that aggregates appropriations, full-time positions and narrative from the LFR and budget requests into a multi-year, filterable interface. The tool includes a landing page per agency, an interactive 25-year appropriations timeline, fund-source and expenditure breakdowns and a “budget builder” view that expands base, maintenance and ongoing enhancements.
In the demo the presenters drilled into the Idaho Lottery and Department of Correction examples to show year-over-year base changes and to expose the underlying maintenance adjustments, CEC steps and performance measures tied to each enhancement. Headley emphasized the tool’s goal: to bring historical appropriation data, justification narratives and performance measures together in a user-friendly interface so legislators can trace why base budgets look the way they do and evaluate return on investment.
Committee members praised the tool as a “one-stop” way to find details that previously existed in multiple documents. Staff said the initial rollout will include five agencies with a plan to expand to all agencies by fall and to automate updates over time. Members were told the tool can be used individually by lawmakers or with analysts for deeper dives during workgroups.
The demonstration closed with staff noting that the tool is intended to complement audits and agency outreach; it does not replace agency-level records, but it is meant to make it easier for lawmakers to ask pointed questions about ongoing enhancements, one-time projects and why a base may have grown or fallen in a given year.
