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Legislative counsel briefs committee on the constitutional basis and statutory rules for appropriations and JFAC authority
Summary
Legislative legal counsel reviewed the constitutional origins of the legislature's appropriation power, key Idaho constitutional limits (balanced-budget requirement, item veto rules, prohibition on sectarian appropriations) and the statutes that define JFAC's duties and the budget process.
Elizabeth Bowen, legislative legal counsel at the Legislative Services Office, briefed the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee on the legal framework that underpins appropriation authority and the committee's duties.
Bowen began with constitutional foundations, noting the legislature's "power of the purse" flows from the republican structure embedded in the U.S. and state constitutions and that appropriations "can be withdrawn from the state treasury only pursuant to an appropriation made by law" (she cited Article 7, Section 13 of the Idaho Constitution). She described appropriation statutes as ordinary laws of equal standing and cited a judicial definition: appropriations are authority…
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