Health and Welfare outlines reorganization, fleet and IT requests in budget overview

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare on Monday detailed an internal reorganization and multiple budget requests — including vehicle replacements, IT upgrades and a request to allow personnel-to-operating transfers for licensing work — as the department began its multiweek budget hearings before the Joint Finance and Appropriation Committee.

"How you structure that organization matters," Alex Adams, director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, told the committee. "I have a budget first mentality. I have the radical belief that budgets are laws, not suggestions." Adams said he accepted organizational recommendations from the prior interim director and moved to align reporting lines and accountability with where work is performed.

Alex Williamson, a Legislative Services Office budget and policy analyst, walked members through the proposed changes in the department's budget book. The reorganization proposes renaming and regrouping several divisions: family and community services (FACS) will be split out; Medicaid and behavioral health divisions will report under a promoted Medicaid administrator who retains Medicaid duties; support services and licensing will be renamed Division of Operations; public health and self-reliance would be grouped as Health and Human Services; and a new division titled Child, Youth and Family Services would house child welfare (to be named Youth Safety and Permanency), service integration (Family and Community Partnerships) and developmental disability services (Early Learning and Development).

Williamson said the department seeks to move several budgeted programs consistent with where…