Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee advances behavioral-health spending, approves dozens of agency budget items and debates federal home-energy rebates

The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (JFAC) on Friday voted on a slate of supplemental and fiscal-year 2026 budget items, advancing multiple behavioral-health appropriations, clearing replacement-item requests across agencies and approving accounting corrections for the Department of Labor. Members also debated a federal home-energy rebates package, and adopted language designed to limit the state’s exposure if federal funding is reduced or rescinded.

Sen. Julie VanOrden, who identified herself as chair of the Senate Welfare Committee, and a House health-and-welfare representative briefed the committee before the budget actions. VanOrden relayed committee observations about Medicaid spending trends and workforce concerns, including growth in the Medicaid expansion population and lingering questions about how recent rate increases for direct-care workers flowed to employees. The representative said committee members urged examination of pharmaceutical costs and continuity between children’s and adults’ mental-health funding.

Why it matters: the committee’s votes allocate and authorize funds that directly affect hospital- and community-based mental-health services statewide, correct accounting entries for unemployment operations, and set conditions for how federal grants will be treated if funding changes. Those actions determine near-term spending and reporting requirements for multiple departments.

Key approvals and decisions

- Behavioral health and psychiatric hospitalization: JFAC approved a set of supplemental and FY2026 actions for the Division of Mental Health Services and the psychiatric hospital system, including a FY2025 one-time appropriation of $6,743,800 in federal Cooperative Welfare funds for Idaho Behavioral Health Plan contract implementation; a FY2026 federal increase of $261,400 for mental-health grant-related line items; a FY2025 one-time $2,663,500 general-fund appropriation for civil-commitment community hospitalization expenditures; and a series of fund-shift adjustments at State Hospital West and State Hospital South to reflect forecast and payer changes. Language exempting Mental Health Services and Psychiatric Hospitalization divisions from statutory transfer limits (Idaho Code 67-35-11) for specific trustee/benefit and personnel classes was adopted alongside those motions. Committee records show these behavioral-health motions carried with the tallies listed below in “Votes at a glance.”

- Substance-abuse funding: The committee approved a fund-source adjustment for the Division of Substance Abuse Treatment and Prevention (net-zero budget impact but a reallocation between dedicated and federal sources) after discussion; that motion recorded a mixed vote as noted below.

- Department of Labor: an initial request to add $7.33 million (unemployment insurance operations) and $161,001 for IT hardware did not pass on the first vote. Committee members then took up accounting corrections and fund-balance adjustments to align internal Labor fund accounts. The committee approved a transfer and appropriation of $4,868,000 from the Unemployment Security Administration and Reimbursement Fund into the Employment Security Fund to correct bookkeeping; the panel also approved related fiscal-year-2024 fund-balance corrections and a reporting requirement for departmental position counts by unanimous consent.

- Across-government replacement items and enhancements: JFAC approved dozens of smaller replacement-item requests and enhancements for agencies including Idaho Public Television, the Soil…