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What SWICAP is and why statewide cost allocation shows up in many budgets
Summary
A Legislative Services presentation explained the statewide cost allocation plan (SWICAP), how central service and direct‑billing costs are recovered across agencies, the plan's two‑year lag, and recent dollar amounts that appear in the governor's budget adjustments.
Statewide cost allocation (known in the budget documents as SWICAP) is the process Idaho uses to recover shared central service costs—such as legal, payroll and treasury work—across state agencies, a Legislative Services presentation to the Joint Finance and Appropriation Committee explained on Jan. 7.
The presentation, given to the committee by Jared Tetrault, described SWICAP as a published plan the Division of Financial Management prepares and submits to the federal cognizant agency to show how the state apportions central costs across fund sources and eligible entities. The plan determines two broad types of budget adjustments lawmakers routinely see: allocations that recover central service costs (attorney general, state controller, state treasurer) and direct billings for services provided to agencies (risk management, building services, legislative audit billings, information technology services).
Tetrault told members the SWICAP calculations typically produce adjustments that appear in appropriations two years after the underlying activity: what was provided in fiscal year 2023 is recovered in the 2025 budget, and activity in 2024 will be reflected in 2026. DFM runs the percentage calculations using metrics such as billable attorney hours, active employee payroll counts for controller fees, and warrants issued for treasurer fees.
Tetrault outlined typical allowable costs and the exceptions that cannot be recovered (for example, criminal‑division attorney time is excluded from AG billings). He said the program recovers most controller and treasurer costs and about 80% of attorney general central‑service costs; the general‑fund appropriation for those central agencies is adjusted and agencies then pay DFM, which deposits the recoveries back to the general fund.
He gave several recent dollar examples from the governor's budget and DFM calculations: controller billings for the period cited were roughly $4.8 million; Treasury billings near $966,000; attorney general billings in the range of $14–16 million; a combined general‑fund appropriation for the three central agencies quoted at about $21.8 million with roughly $19.8 million expected to be recovered in that cycle. On the direct‑billing side, the presentation showed risk management billed at about $18.3 million in base with a proposed drop to $16.2 million, information‑technology services billed around $39.7 million with an expected decrease to $36.8 million, and legislative audit billings shrinking from roughly $1.5 million to about $1.1 million in the current cycle.
Tetrault said the total dollar value of SWICAP‑related appropriations across all affected funds in the presentation amounted to roughly $7.98 billion when fund sources and agency budgets are aggregated; in the budget book, members see only the incremental change for each agency. He encouraged members to ask analysts for detail on how costs are split across fund sources (general, dedicated and federal) and noted that agencies may contest DFM calculations if they believe an allocation should be split differently.
Ending
Tetrault said analysts can provide committee members with more detailed reports on how specific allocations were calculated and which fund sources bear the recovered costs.
