Senate committee sends bill limiting off-session agency budget-driven rule changes to the floor

Senator Brian Linney presented House Bill 90 to the Senate Health and Welfare Committee and said the bill would bar the Department of Health and Welfare from making policy decisions with budget implications outside of the legislative session without legislative input.

Linney cited the Idaho childcare program as an example. He said agency rule changes and State Plan Amendments (SPAs) had altered eligibility, canceled copays and increased local market rates, and that the program’s budget shortfall required a pause of operations last year. “The end result … is, there’s two things that did. A, the legislature was not involved in that, and the end result department not noticed that, it would have kept going. So that it got so bad they had to pause the program last year,” Linney said; in one turn of remarks he said those actions “resulted in $50,000,000 in the hole,” and later referred to a figure of $15,000,000.

Senator Melissa Wintrow, who said she served on the committee when the department presented the rule, pushed back on a characterization that the department acted without legislative involvement. She noted the department presented estimates to the committee and that lawmakers approved the rule to expand services because they thought it would help more people. Wintrow warned the legislature could lose flexibility if too many decisions are codified in statute and said she had mixed views about moving rules into law.

Senator Keiser moved and Senator Shippey seconded that House Bill 90 be sent to the Senate floor with a do-pass recommendation. The motion passed by voice vote; a later comment in the transcript notes the clerk was asked to change Senator Wintrow’s vote to an "A" on the record.