Gubernatorial appointee Alex Adams tells Senate Health and Welfare he will prioritize child welfare, streamline agency rules

Alex Adams, the governor—s appointee to lead the Department of Health and Welfare, told the Idaho Senate Health and Welfare Committee he plans to narrow the agency—s mission to a small set of priorities led by child welfare and to reduce regulatory and statutory "clutter" that he said impedes the agency—s work.

Adams, introduced to the committee as the department—s director, said he took the role seven months earlier and has focused the senior leadership team on two themes: "quality over quantity" and "laser focused on child welfare." He described steps taken so far, including reorganizing finance leadership, launching a sign-off process for grants and procurements, creating an internal Office of Program Integrity and trimming agency regulations and statutes.

"The budget is a law, not a suggestion," Adams said, summarizing changes in oversight. He said the department has about 3,000 employees spread across 74 buildings in 37 locations and that he has moved the chief financial officer to report directly to him so budget issues are flagged earlier.

Adams said he and his leadership team have cut roughly 2,300 pages of internal regulations and are preparing a bill to remove about 150 statutory sections and eliminate "zombie" grant programs that have not been funded in years. He also said the agency will cut about 200 pages of rules this year.

On child welfare, Adams said the department is tracking a foster-family-to-child ratio as its primary success measure. "When I started, our ratio was 0.74. We're up to 0.94," he said, adding the goal is to "double the rate of foster homes relative to the number of children." He said the department is pursuing both recruitment of more foster homes and services that help keep children safely with biological parents when possible.

Adams described several operational steps aimed at improving foster-care communications and capacity: meeting with roughly 100 to 120 foster parents early in his tenure, creating 24/7 call centers to relieve caseworker after-hours demand, and proposing budget requests to reduce caseloads. He also said he has waived adoption fees and that "I'm over 160 adoptions since I started." He described adoption work as personally motivating.

Committee members questioned Adams about past audits and program missteps handled before his tenure. Senator Lenny summarized recent problems cited in legislative and internal reviews, including errors in the community partners grant, duplicate welfare payments, misallocated funds, and a June 2023 internal probe about reimbursements for harm-reduction materials. Lenny asked what Adams has done to prevent future problems.

Adams said he inherited corrective-action work begun by prior leadership and that his administration added measures including updated HR conflict-of-interest policies, federal-grants training for staff, a new transparency team to handle public records, and the internal Office of Program Integrity to surface problems earlier.

Other senators welcomed Adams— focus on child welfare and foster care. Senator Wintrow and Senator Shippy, both speaking from experience with child-welfare issues or foster parenting, praised the emphasis on reducing red tape for foster parents and called for continued attention to populations such as people with developmental disabilities. Adams said developmental-disability services (DD) are a priority and are part of the agency—s budget forecast adjustments, but that he wants to finish the foster-family initiative before shifting primary leadership attention.

The committee did not vote on Adams— confirmation during the hearing. The chair said, as with other gubernatorial appointments, the committee will vote at a later time (likely the following day).