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Committee introduces RS 31,820 to update code references and remove outdated Department roles
Summary
Jared Larson, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Chief at the Department of Health and Welfare, presented RS 31,820 to the House Health and Welfare Committee as a comprehensive Idaho Code cleanup that would remove outdated department roles and reassign some functions to other agencies.
Jared Larson, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Chief at the Department of Health and Welfare, presented RS 31,820 to the House Health and Welfare Committee as a comprehensive review to update Idaho Code references and remove obsolete Department responsibilities.
Larson said the bill is largely a "stop doing list" that cleans up vestigial references to the Department of Health and Welfare that should now belong to the Department of Environmental Quality or the Department of Juvenile Corrections because those functions were spun off in 1995 and February of a later year. He said roughly one-third of the bill concerns those reassignments and that other sections remove antiquated references to the State Board of Health (now the State Board of Health and Welfare) and provisions in Title 22 (agriculture) that require Health and Welfare sign-off on Department of Agriculture processes.
Larson told the committee that section 4 contains a 1950s provision requiring the Board of Health and Welfare to hold hearings relating to the corrections compact; he said that with the creation of the Office of Administrative Hearings, it makes no sense to retain that requirement. He said section 16 removes the department's required sign-off on appointments to the State Board of Dentistry to align Health and Welfare with other health boards, and section 18 would remove department involvement in direct pool regulation, transferring authority to district health boards under existing memoranda of understanding.
Larson also described sections that move provisions out of Title 19 (criminal procedure) into the state affairs code because they "cross jurisdiction," and he said sections 1, 2 and 21 concern a data oversight council created in 2021 on which Health and Welfare serves in leadership. Larson said two FTE were added at the state controller's office when the data oversight council was created and no other state agency added FTE for that function.
Representative McCain moved to introduce RS 31,820. Representative Wheeler asked about potential fiscal savings; Larson said much of the bill updates "dead text" and that the largest fiscal note, if any, would likely arise from the pool regulation changes. The committee approved the introduction by voice vote and the chair announced the motion carried. Larson said the department's director had discussed a "stop doing" list and this RS reflects that approach.
