Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee approves technical corrections and program maintenance budgets, lists vote outcomes

The Joint Finance‑Appropriations Committee voted on a package of technical corrections and program maintenance budgets for Fiscal Year 2026 during a Jan. 17, 2025 session in Boise, approving reappropriation and transfer changes and adopting maintenance budgets for most state agencies while postponing decisions on cost‑of‑living (CEC) and some health‑insurance numbers.

The committee’s work addressed three immediate technical corrections early in the meeting — moving previously reappropriated broadband funds into the new Broadband Office inside the Department of Commerce, correcting a Department of Environmental Quality appropriation that should have been a general‑fund transfer, and reclassifying two Health and Welfare expenditures into operating categories — and then progressed through program maintenance budgets for branches of government, public safety, education, natural resources and other functional areas.

Why it matters: these votes set the baseline spending levels that the Legislature will use when it considers enhancements, replacements and policy changes during the 2025 session. Several of the decisions are transfers or reappropriations that are described by staff as net zero within the affected agency’s base but are intended to improve tracking and compliance with account and reporting rules.

Janet Jessup, a budget and policy analyst with the Legislative Services Office, told the committee the broadband correction was needed because last year’s reappropriation went into the Commerce program instead of the newly created broadband office. “The monies were reappropriated into the commerce program, not the broadband office,” she said, and added that “you can see from the tables that are on page 1 of your handout that these actions net to 0.” Mr. Bybee, a Legislative Services analyst, reviewed the program‑maintenance concept and said, “A base budget is really your ongoing operations for the entire state government, right, as authorized by previous legislatures.”

Most motions were procedural and passed by roll call. The committee approved the Commerce broadband fund corrections in two sequential motions (one to remove funds from Commerce’s Commerce Program and one to add the same amount to the Broadband Program), each carrying a 20‑0 recorded vote. The committee also approved a $2,000,000 correction for the Department of Environmental Quality (to change a line from a general‑fund appropriation into a transfer), and two Health and Welfare reclassifications: a $160,000 reclassification in the Substance Abuse Treatment and Prevention Program and a $240,000 reclassification in the Physical Health Services Program, all by unanimous roll calls.

After the technical fixes, the committee set program maintenance budgets (base plus statewide cost allocation and selected decision units) across most functional areas. Among the votes recorded were: legislative branch maintenance, judicial branch maintenance, constitutional officers, public safety, general government, economic development, natural resources, the State Board of Education and public schools. In each of those cases the committee approved the maintenance budgets and related clear language or reappropriation authority by roll call; most passed unanimously. Health and Human Services budget realignment and its maintenance totals were also adopted, but those votes recorded a small number of nays on the…