Officials outline SWICAP allocations, central-service billing and two-year lag

A staff member explained the statewide cost allocation plan (SWICAP) to the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee on Jan. 7, saying the mechanism allocates central service and direct-billing costs across state agencies and fund sources and therefore affects many agency appropriations.

Jared Tetrault (staff) said SWICAP covers services provided by three central service offices — the attorney general, the state controller and the state treasurer — and a set of direct-billing activities such as risk management, building services, legislative audit billings and information-technology services. "There’s always a two year lag," he said, describing how appropriations provided to central service agencies in one biennium are recovered from user agencies in the following biennium’s budget adjustments.

Tetrault summarized the mechanics that determine how costs are allocated: attorney-general billings are based on allowable billable hours (excluding the criminal division and a handful of exceptions), controller charges rise with the number of active employees and accounting transactions, and treasurer fees track the number of warrants issued. DFM (the Division of Financial Management) runs the calculations and notifies agencies and LSO of adjustments; agencies can contest the splits with DFM before the adjustments are finalized for JFAC consideration.

Tetrault presented example figures from the 2023–25 cycle: the state controller had a 2023 appropriation shown as $4,800,000 and the treasurer’s 2023 figure was shown as $966,000; the attorney general’s recoverable costs were presented in the $14–16 million range, with the general-fund appropriation for the three central agencies around $21.8 million and recoveries currently near $19.8 million. Direct-billing totals cited in the presentation included legislative-audit recoveries (about $1.5 million, declining to roughly $1.1 million), risk-management base billing of about $18.3 million (reducing to about $16.2 million in the budget adjustment) and information-technology services billed near $39.7 million in the current year and estimated at $36.8 million next year.

Tetrault said the SWICAP process returns recovered amounts to the general fund and that dedicated and federal fund sources are used in the allocation process: "We take dedicated and federal, they become general for payment purposes, and then we continue the cycle," he said. The plan is governed by statute and the presentation cited Idaho Code 67-3531 as the statutory basis for the statewide cost allocation process.

Committee members were advised that SWICAP adjustments typically appear as small net changes on agency budget pages even though the underlying bases and totals are large. Tetrault said detailed breakdowns (for example, how much of an agency’s increase is attorney-general legal support versus controller charges) are available on request and in the legislative budget materials to help lawmakers review whether allocations are equitable and tied to actual service consumption.

The office indicated it will provide a more precise report on recovered percentages and that agencies will continue to receive DFM-calculated allocation notices each budget cycle. The presentation emphasized that SWICAP keeps central-service costs equitably distributed among state agencies and fund sources and that the committee’s role is to review and appropriate any net adjustments that flow into agency budgets.