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How Idaho builds a budget: JFAC staff outlines the six-benchmark decision model and program-maintenance process
Summary
Deputy budget manager Jared Tetrault told JFAC that Idaho builds its budget through a six-benchmark decision model that starts with last year’s original appropriations and moves through midyear adjustments, base resets, program maintenance, and enhancements to set next year’s base.
Jared Tetrault, deputy director and manager of budget and policy, Legislative Services Office, presented a primer on how Idaho builds budgets using a decision-unit model.
Tetrault explained the six benchmarks that are the building blocks of each fiscal-year budget cycle: benchmark 1 (the current fiscal year’s original appropriation), midyear adjustments (reappropriations, executive carry forward, transfers, deficiency warrants), estimated expenditures for the current year, base adjustments (removing one-time items and accounting for transfers/reorganizations), program-maintenance adjustments (benefit changes, contract inflation, statewide cost allocation, employee compensation), and benchmark 6 (the next year’s original appropriation). “In Idaho, the state builds budgets one piece at a time,” he said, describing the approach as a series of modular decision units designed to make changes traceable and auditable.
Tetrault reviewed the difference between agency requests and the governor’s recommendation and how those rows appear in the budget book. He described that most departments and many smaller agencies are grouped into the functional-area program-maintenance bills (education, health and human services, public safety, natural resources, economic development, and general government), while some agencies or initiatives can produce separate enhancement or supplemental appropriation bills depending on committee choices.
Why it matters: the decision-unit approach makes it easier for JFAC members and analysts to compare requests, the governor’s recommended adjustments, and the effect of one-time versus ongoing decisions. Tetrault urged members to use the front-end budget book pages and the glossary for definitions and to consult analysts early when they need details for working groups or the floor.
Ending: Tetrault said staff will keep the committee’s SharePoint updated with worksheet pages and the front-end reports; members asked for certain page images to be added to the shared folder for easier reference.
