Idaho State Police seeks fee hike to fund $12.6M pay plan as vacancies climb

Noah Peterson, a budget and policy analyst with the Legislative Services Office, told the Joint Finance-Appropriation Committee that the Idaho State Police (ISP) is proposing a $12.6 million appropriation from the Law Enforcement Project Choice Fund to implement a new commissioned-officer pay plan and that the FY27 budget assumes a statutory fee change that would raise the Project Choice vehicle-registration fee from $3 to $12.

The request is grounded in staffing shortfalls: Peterson said ISP has 606.67 FTP allocated with 78 positions vacant as of November 2025 and that patrol is the program with the largest concentration of commissioned officers. "If that registration fee were to pass…that new pay plan would be implemented," Peterson said, noting the $12.6 million appropriation would come from the dedicated Project Choice fund and would disappear if the legislature did not change the fee.

Colonel Gardner, director of the Idaho State Police, told legislators the proposal is aimed at a structural problem in how certain fee‑derived pay currently interacts with cost-of-employment changes (CECs). Gardner said many premium payments under the…