ITD seeks targeted pay boosts and added frontline staff to reduce turnover and training costs

Idaho Transportation Department officials told the Joint Finance‑Appropriations Committee they are seeking targeted compensation adjustments to reduce turnover in frontline maintenance ranks and to cover ongoing costs tied to workforce growth approved last year.

Brooke Dupree, Legislative Services Office analyst, summarized ITD’s FY26 “targeted CEC” request, which the budget book described as raising hourly wages by $2.50 for roughly 505 affected maintenance positions in the Highway Operations Division. The division also requested targeted CEC for 505 positions listed in the budget materials.

Director Scott Stokes said the department’s retention challenge is concentrated at entry and early career levels. “We're losing about half of them, each year,” Stokes told the committee, referring to early‑career maintenance hires. Stokes said hiring and training new maintenance workers is time‑intensive because many new hires do not possess a commercial driver’s license (CDL) on hire date and that “we spend 6 to 12 months getting them certified as a CDL.”

Recruiting and staffing status

ITD reported adding 53 frontline positions last year after a period of workforce reductions over more than a decade. Director Stokes told the committee the agency had recruited roughly half of those 53 positions at the time of the hearing and that the department still had a number of vacancies (ITD staff described current vacancies in the range of about 60–70 across the agency).

Lawmakers’ concerns and context

Representatives and senators pressed ITD on why the department was requesting the targeted increases in addition to broader compensation changes under consideration for other state employees. Stokes said the targeted request would move all steps in the maintenance horizontal career paths so the pay schedule remains properly spaced and to avoid compression at the bottom steps; he also noted that the state, counties and municipalities are competing in a tight labor market where many local governments pay higher entry rates.

Representative Petzke and others asked staff for more detailed documentation about the positions covered, the methodology for salary comparisons and the expected effects on retention. ITD offered to provide follow‑up information including county and municipal wage comparisons and more detailed staffing projections.

Ending

With recruitment ongoing and multiple vacancies, ITD asked the committee to consider a targeted compensation adjustment to reduce training churn and preserve institutional knowledge for highway maintenance. Committee members requested additional documentation on wage comparators and the proposed implementation before acting on the targeted CEC request.