Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Davlin: Tensions in the legislature's budget setting committee have started to boil over, with major appropriations like public education and health and welfare still unsettled.

This week, we hear from the co-chairs of the Joint Committee on how they feel the process is going.

I'm Melissa Davlin.

Idaho Reports starts now.

Hello, and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week we discuss the winding road through the budget setting process with the co-chairs of the Joint Finance Appropriations Committee, Representative Wendy Horman and Senator Scott Grow.

Committee member Senator Melissa Wintrow outlines her concerns with this year's budget setting process.

Finally, Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News joins us to discuss the state's proposed changes to its medical education agreement.

But first, let's get you caught up on the week on Tuesday, federal workers held a town hall in Boise to discuss the impacts of mass firings of federal workers on government services, including fire suppression and veterans affairs.

Chandler Bursey: We are not going to be able to do our duty and our mission statement.

The mission statement was, is based off of Abraham Lincoln's, to care for him who shall have borne the battle.

And that came from Abraham Lincoln.

And that's our mission statement.

We're not doing a very good job of that.

When the president of the United States is saying he wants to get rid of 80,000 workers.

It's not just 6000.

And we're struggling with that.

We're talking about 80,000.

It's a huge threat.

Davlin: Two days later on Thursday, a federal judge ordered that six federal agencies must reinstate their fired employees who were let go during their probationary period in February.

The order covers employees who worked for the Treasury, Veterans Affairs, agriculture, defense, Interior and Energy departments.

It still isn't clear how many probationary employees were fired in Idaho alone, but as of September, there were nearly 11,000 federal employees total in Idaho, with most split between three of those agencies.

More than 3000 with the Department of Agriculture, which includes the Forest Service, about 2500 with Veterans Affairs and nearly 2300 with the Department of Interior, which includes the Bureau of Reclamation and Bureau of Land Management.

Again, we don't know how many were in their probationary periods and were fired last month, nor do we know how many plan to come back or how the federal government will handle the rehiring.

We'll continue to follow this story and its impacts on Idaho.

On Wednesday, Governor Brad Little made Idaho the first state in the country to use the firing squad as its primary method of execution.

The law takes effect July 1st, 2026 next year to allow the Department of Correction time to finish constructing its new execution chamber.

Before then, the state still has the authority to execute people on death row by lethal injection if they can procure the injection drugs.

Also Wednesday, the Senate approved a bill that could create major changes to Medicaid in Idaho, including transitioning to a managed care system and applying for a waiver for work requirements for expansion enrollees.

That bill now heads to the governor's desk.

Next November, voters will decide whether to turn over some ballot initiative rights.

On a party line vote.

On Wednesday, the Senate passed a resolution that will put on the ballot whether to change the state constitution to give the legislature full authority over whether to legalize marijuana, narcotics or other psychoactive drugs.

This would prohibit citizens from ever bringing a ballot initiative regarding marijuana.

Todd Lakey: I am personally very happy that we are an island in a sea of leafy green substance.

Senators, we planted a flag.

We resist moral and societal decline that's plagued our neighboring states.

And we've done that in part because our Constitution calls for such resistance.

Ron Taylor: This resolution is not about marijuana.

It is about the potential to remove the right of the initiative process from the people.

If we do that, where do we stop?

At what point do the people that we represent not mean anything anymore if we can't hear their voices?

Davlin: The legislature sets its budgets through the Joint Finance Appropriations Committee, which consists of ten members from the House and ten from the Senate.

Sometimes those conversations have been fraught over the years.

But last week, tensions boiled over in public.

And since then, the committee has struggled to pass some budgets out of committee.

Others have failed on the House floor.

Meanwhile, confusion and disagreement about committee rules has halted some of the other meetings.

On Thursday, I sat down with Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow to discuss her concerns with the process and why she and her fellow Democratic colleague, Senator Janie Ward-Engelking walked out of a budget meeting in protest earlier this week.

Senator Wintrow, thank you so much for joining us.

Can you walk me through why you and Senator Ward-Engelking walked out of the joint budget setting meeting on Wednesday?

Melissa Wintrow: Well, we just thought it was the prudent thing to do in a culture of folks who've been killing budgets just for the sport of killing them, I think.

And the fact that we had some members missing that we knew would probably vote with us if we didn't walk out and break quorum, we probably would have lost those budgets, which would have been pretty bad for the state as well as the state agencies.

Davlin: And just to clarify, Senate Finance is a little bit different than the germane policy setting committees.

If somebody is absent it, it doesn't take away from the vote count.

It counts as a no.

Wintrow: Well, that's really what's been under dispute this year.

And I guess before I even got on JFAC in the last couple of years, is how we're voting.

And it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that we would count members who aren't present as nay votes.

We don't do that in any other committee, and it just doesn't make sense to me.

But those folks weren't there, and those votes would have counted as no’s and the budgets would have sunk.

So we had to basically in order to save in that culture, in that climate, we had to leave to break quorum.

Davlin: And for those who aren't familiar, breaking quorum means that you have to stop the meeting because you don't have enough members present Wintrow: Correct.

Davlin: to conduct the meeting.

At what point, though, does walking out or in in some cases with you and Senator Ward-Engelking voting no on some of these budgets, at what point does that add to the dysfunction?

Wintrow: Well, actually, I think we added to the function in that case, because there are some members that just seem to say no to everything.

And our obligation in the Constitution is to make sure we have a balanced budget.

We have government agencies, programs and services in statute for our state, and it's our obligation to come to the table and find an efficient and effective way to get to a good budget.

And some members, in my estimation, just don't do that.

And so in order for us to actually save some budgets because of those members that were already gone, that actually, I think added to function and actually probably save time later and paperwork.

Davlin: You've been on the joint budget setting committee off and on over the years in the House and the Senate.

One of the new, newer rules is that both the Senate side and the House side have to have a majority among their own members.

You can't just have a majority of the 20 total members, but on each side, you have to have at least six.

Do you have any concerns with that approach?

Wintrow: Well, my concern is just listening to you to describe it.

I'm not sure if listeners are going to follow along.

Typically in a committee, we all know if you've watched the little video when you were a kid about how a law becomes a bill or not, you know that the majority of the people present in any committee when they vote win.

And here we are trying to make, you know, equations and procedures that are outside the bounds of common sense as well as what should be rule.

And I think that's the problem is that the chairs are operating under procedures that they've determined with their leadership, whoever that is.

And so a few people now are creating procedures that really aren't in rule.

And I think that's a problem.

Rules are there for transparency, fairness and predictability.

So we know how to conduct business.

And right now it's very unsettling.

We don't know.

And so again in the case that we had last this last week, we thought we better just leave to stop things to make sure we can go forward in a more productive way.

Davlin: You say leadership, this is the majority party that we're talking about.

And and the super majority party.

Do you think the solution is making those rules set in stone, or going back to the way things were before?

Wintrow: Well, I think at the very least you have to put the rules in stone, and that's what statute says.

So the Joint Finance Committee will, in the interim, establish rules and vote on those so they know in a predictable fashion how to proceed and do business.

And folks have been dragging their feet about doing that.

And instead, a handful of people at the top are just making decisions that most of us are following along with.

When in reality, have you, as you've heard Senator Cook, say, the committee owns the rules, the committee should be voting on the rules and not just a couple of people calling the shots.

And I think that's bad for government.

And that's why people lose trust in government, quite frankly, is we need to instill trust and faith and not have unsettled ways that we do things so it's unpredictable.

Because you see the you see the eyeballs in the audience of the state agency directors and the people providing these services.

They're hanging on every word we say because their livelihoods and the services they provide Idahoans are on the line.

And instead, a lot of our members are just glued to their ideology and a stance instead of, really, what is our job?

And our job is to make sure government works to the people's favor.

Davlin: And again, this is the majority party.

These are the representatives and senators that the Idahoans in their districts sent to Boise to vote on, on their behalf.

And they've been pretty open that they've been wanting to cut government.

So is it really not working for the people when they're voting?

How they've said they're going to vote on these budgets?

Wintrow: Well, because here's what I think, is, we haven't represented the government in what it is right now.

Everybody keeps talking about this bloated government.

We have cinched the belt so tight we can't even find our belly button anymore.

I served on that Finance and Appropriations Committee for four years, and Senator Grow and I used to sit across from each other.

I just really enjoyed that.

And we would always disagree on a few things because he kept cut, cut, cut.

But I said, our state is growing.

What business cuts when you have things growing, you invest.

You find ways to look down the road.

You don't just cut for cuts sake.

And I think the most troubling thing I've seen this year is that people have been public about cutting initiatives that benefit the people, like housing, because they want to make room for income tax cuts.

And people have said it out loud.

That's not the way we budget.

You know, you, you fix the roof before you go on vacation.

And that's our responsibility.

Now that's hard.

Governing is hard.

And what I see sometimes what my colleagues are doing is being stuck and kind of obsessed in these social issues.

And I wonder, is it because they don't know how to govern?

Or they don't want to govern?

It's hard and people will scrutinize your decisions, but we have to be up to that task and we have to do it.

And it is our job as legislators to educate our constituencies as well.

And not just be afraid of doing things so we want to keep our job instead of doing our job.

And I think that's what's happening here in JFAC and we're seeing a big microscope on it.

Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow, thank you so much for joining us.

Davlin: Also Thursday, Joint Budget Committee co-chairs Representative Wendy Horman and Senator C Scott Grow joined me to share their take.

Thank you both so much for joining us this week.

First of all, Representative Horman, how would you say things are going right now?

Wendy Horman: I said to someone earlier today, I'm stronger than I thought.

We've had some bumps in the road, but we are pressing forward, working toward adjournment as quickly as we can get agreements on budgets.

Davlin: And Representative Horman, for those who aren't familiar with the rules, one of the ones that's come up lately is now you need a majority on both the House and Senate committees, not just 11 from the joint committee.

Horman: Right.

And to understand how we got there, you have to look back to where we started.

And that was when there was a change in House leadership.

And there was some concern from the House Majority Caucus that JFAC should not meet jointly anymore, because the House was tired of taking up bills that only had majority support because of the Senate.

And so there was a real pressure on him to split the Joint Finance Committee.

He didn't want to do that.

I didn't want to do that.

So what that led to was a series of extended meetings and conversations where we came up with this letter.

Even with all of that.

The rules we operate under are very clear.

It's, the Constitution, and then it's any adopted rules that apply to the House or the Senate or joint rules.

Although there's a difference of opinion there on what joint rules have been adopted.

And then custom usage and precedent.

Those adopted rules includes Masons.

And when you check Masons, you will see that we are operating, exactly as we should under that, with compromises being made to make sure and try and keep the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee together.

Davlin: For those who aren't familiar with parliamentary procedure, we're talking about Masons Manual, which talks about how to run meetings, basically.

Horman: Correct.

Scott Grow: So Melissa, can I kind of talk about joint finance appropriation committee.

Most people have no clue what the heck that is.

Idaho is unique.

Very few states have this.

A couple of monitors or, modeled after us, but it's where we have ten from the house and ten from the Senate.

And they come through together.

Ten, they're called the appropriation Committee from the House ten on the Senate Finance Committee.

And then we join together.

It's the only joint committee we have.

It's a permanent committee.

All the rest are just the Senate committees or the House committees.

This is a great procedure that we have.

It's worked for more than 50 years because it avoids having to have the House pass bills and Senate pass bills, and then have a conference committee to try to work it out.

We work it out in JFAC.

That's our responsibility.

I'm grateful to my Co-Chair that we've been able to work great together these last three years, and keeping JFAC together is important.

Davlin: Now, you say that it's working well.

You're meeting together, and you did change some of the rules three years ago, when Speaker Moyle became the speaker and you two became the co-chairs.

We are seeing, Grow: I could respond to that.

It is critical that you understand the speaker and the pro tem agree to that.

They’re our bosses.

We work under their direction.

We work together.

A 50-50 Committee or business is the toughest kind of partnership to have because nobody's in c.harge.

And that's why I'm grateful that we can get along well.

But to make sure that we did, we had the speaker and the pro tem work with us and came up with that letter, and we all agreed to it.

That's the way we've been operating.

Horman: This year was the first year we had to test run that, our staff tells us we didn't lose any budgets the last two years.

This year we did.

And so we started using the language that it will be sent to the House or the Senate.

That's when our clerk came in and said, wait, the motion has failed the House.

Therefore, there is nothing that you can send to the House.

And sure enough, when you read Mason's, you will see that is the case.

You have to have a majority of each of the committees to advance a bill.

So that's something we'll take up in the interim.

Refine that language.

But that's, that's what our leadership has agreed to.

We meet with them regularly on this, and that's how we're trying to proceed in the committee.

Davlin: And for the average Idahoan, listening to this, they're going to say, look, this just looks like dysfunction to me.

This looks like people walking out of meetings, appropriations bills that are failing on the floor and in committee.

Ultimately, how is this going to affect me as an Idahoan?

Horman: Well you know, members are free to protest in whatever way they choose.

But the allegation that we are not operating under rules is it's just not true.

Grow: Well, and this is how democracy, or a democratic republic, we're the representatives of the people.

This is how it works.

And so you'll have constituents from one senator, for example, or for a House person, have totally different opinions of what they want.

And so those opinions are brought into these workgroups where they're trying to come up with, with motions which become bills.

And so, sure, there's going to be differences of opinion.

And that's what we work out in JFAC, and not have a big fight between the House and Senate.

Horman: When you take into context the whole of how many agency budgets we're setting.

Well over 100 motions that happened in JFAC, we've lost six.

That's part of the normal process and to be expected.

So we'll we'll, get the team back together and figure out how we can, get something that we can get a majority vote on.

Davlin: On Thursday morning, Senator Grow, you held up a list of appropriation bills that you, as a committee still need to get through.

It's mid-March right now.

When are we going to see those?

Grow: We're hoping that we can see them through this next week and get them done by by week from tomorrow.

Now, that depends on our work groups, because they're the ones that come up with the motions or the recommendations people might think of as to what a bill should be.

And then we work that out, in JFAC, and there can be more than one motion, and so there's agreement or disagreement.

And when we come to a consensus, that's when it passes in JFAC, then it goes to the Senate and then it goes to the House or vice versa.

We go 50-50 starting.

So we're hoping that our workgroups can get the information to us.

We can get the bills done, move them along in the next few days, we, have the last day be a week from tomorrow.

That's our hope.

Horman: The closer we get to the end of session, the more willing people may be to compromise.

Grow: They get anxious to go home.

Davlin: Which I understand to be fair.

Grow: Yeah, so do we.

Davlin: You know, some of the bills that are left to be set are the biggest ones, the health and welfare and Medicaid and public schools.

Why did you save those to the end?

Horman: That was intentional.

We saved budgets to the end where we knew there would be a lot of policy activity that would likely impact the budget.

That was true in K-12 this year.

That was true in Medicaid.

That was true in, water resources.

So these are budgets we intentionally left to the end to make sure that whatever policy action was going to happen could happen, and we could incorporate that into the budget.

Grow: In addition, those are huge budgets.

You're talking about $2 billion for the K-12.

You're talking about $5 billion for health and welfare.

I mean, these are the big dollar items.

And so our work groups need a lot of time to work through a lot of recommendations, a lot of we call them line items, the different requests by the agencies or department, things they want.

That takes a lot of time.

So we save those for the end.

Davlin: Things are also changing by the day and sometimes the hour in DC.

How is that affecting the budget setting process?

Grow: I'll comment on that.

It's tougher this year because everybody wants to cut.

But what they don't understand is these are the requests for the current year's operation to make things happen and keep things going.

And so also I'll just speak to health and welfare.

We have entitlements that are from the federal.

Those are mandates.

Davlin: Things like Medicare and Medicaid.

Grow: You got it.

We have to do those.

We have to do Medicaid.

And so whatever the bills are, whatever the people have been, helped, the number that it helped, the difficulty and the expenses, we have to pay those bills.

Now, people don't like that because Medicaid is huge, but we are obligated by the federal government.

It’s a mandate that we have Medicaid.

We have to pay the bills.

So that's some big money there.

Horman: One other thing I would add on that is you will see some intent language in, the appropriation bills, making clear that if the uncertainty at the federal level leads to cash not coming in, a grant, whatever that looks like, the agency has no ability to spend it.

We're giving them spending authority.

But if they don't get the cash, they can't spend it.

That's something that anyone on JFAC knows, but perhaps our floor doesn't.

So we've added specific language to account for that possibility.

Grow: And that's Governmental Accounting, and it's two fold, the cash, as she said, and the authority which is appropriation to spend that cash.

That's different than business.

So we have a lot of complexities to begin with.

Davlin: Just because the federal government gives you the money or you receive a grant, it doesn't mean that a state agency can spend it.

Grow: Right, until our legislature, JFAC and the legislature appropriate’s that money.

That spending.

Davlin: You both, mentioned waiting for big policy bills to come through in health and welfare and education to wait to set those budgets.

This year, the revenue forecast was set later in the session than normal.

And after the legislature passed a very large income tax bill.

Were there any concerns about having an accurate revenue forecast before setting aside more than $200 million for that income tax cut?

Horman: That's another really good example of something we tried to do in January.

Committee didn't agree.

It failed.

So we tried to set it in January and we couldn't get consensus.

Now we have consensus and we set it as soon as we knew we had consensus.

Grow: Actually, a day earlier than last year.

Horman: That's correct.

Grow: We’re running ahead.

Davlin: On Friday, the day after our interview at the end of the JFAC committee meeting, Representative Horman told committee members she was unsure if they would be able to set budgets on Monday.

After a sudden push this session to withdraw Idaho from the Multistate WWAMI Medical education program named for member states Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho, the House passed a bill 46 to 21 on Thursday that seeks to expand Idaho's medical training relationship with the University of Utah, while also starting to decrease the number of medical seats offered through the long standing partnership with University of Washington.

Dustin Manwaring: We are in a place with this legislation where we're adding seats and we're putting Idaho in a position where we're going to be more in control of the process.

We're diversifying how we spend and appropriate our Idaho state dollars in undergraduate medical education.

Mark Sauter: My heartburn is that we're going to drop the 30 seats with WWAMI before we actually pick up the other seats.

Davlin: Joining me to discuss is Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News.

Kevin, let's back up a little bit.

Why was Idaho looking at leaving the WWAMI agreement in the first place?

Kevin: Richert: This has been a simmering debate over the past couple of sessions, but it has really taken off this year.

The debate is about whether Idaho wants to continue with WWAMI, which stands for Washington and Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho, the member states.

It's a University of Washington led medical education consortium that Idaho has been a part of since 1972.

But really, the controversy has unfolded here over the past couple of years.

Lawmakers are upset because the University of Washington hasn't added more seats for Idaho students.

They're also very upset that it's taken the University of Washington a long time to state in writing that it isn't using Idaho tax dollars for abortion training.

So it really it's ideological, but it's also an issue of capacity, which, you know, gets at what we heard on the House floor to a large degree on Thursday.

Davlin: It's ideological and it's also an Idaho law that Idaho taxpayer dollars cannot go for anything abortion related.

Now, since then, on February 14th, the University of Washington did send a letter to the state Board of Education saying no Idaho funds go to abortion.

Richert: Which did basically nothing to appease lawmakers because they pointed out okay, University Washington finally signed this agreement the same day that the House Education Committee passed a bill that would phase out Idaho's involvement in the WWAMI program.

So they didn't win themselves many allies with the timing of that signing.

Davlin: Now, this proposal that we are talking about this week, the one that passed the House, is a new proposal.

It would not entirely remove Idaho from WWAMI.

Richert: A very important distinction.

The first bill would have forced Idaho to get out of the WWAMI program entirely in two years.

This would require the state to scale back its involvement with WWAMI.

So let's talk about the level of that involvement.

We're talking about 40 medical students per year right now.

This bill, the one that the House passed on Thursday, would require the state to get rid of at least ten of those WWAMI seats.

And at the same time, Idaho would find 30 new medical school seats per year through other parties.

That might be the University of Utah.

It might be the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine, the for profit school in Meridian.

It might be Brigham Young University, which is looking at opening a medical school.

So it's unclear where those new seats would come from.

And that, again, was part of the debate on Thursday.

Davlin: That we're potentially taking away seats without having anywhere else to put these medical students.

Richert: Exactly.

There's your two schools of thought.

The Dustin Manwaring School of thought is we’re to kind of diversify.

We're going to have more options.

The school of thought that you heard from opponents is we don't know what those options are.

And we have a medical shortage right now, and we're getting rid of medical school seats.

Davlin: And you put out a story on this on Thursday.

What did you find?

Richert: What I found out is where the University of Idaho really stands on this.

The University of Idaho is the partner with the University of Washington, and WWAMI has been for decades.

They've been fairly quiet through this whole debate.

I was able to get an internal memo through the state Board of Education that kind of lays out the university of Idaho's position.

They were kind of blindsided by all of this.

The level of opposition to WWAMI that has developed over the past couple of years, and the past few months, really sort of surprised, University of Idaho and has forced the University of Idaho, not really of their own initiative, to look at other options like the University of Utah.

And it's a really interesting look behind the scenes because it connects a lot of dots to the debate.

So the story we published it on Thursday, it's online.

Davlin: IdahoEdNews.org it's a great story.

And it's such an interesting point because the backlash to WWAMI, I'm coming up on 20 years in Idaho journalism, and one of the first things I learned was how popular WWAMI was with Idaho medical organizations because of the quality of students that come out of that program.

Richert: And we're learning that now in the debate, where we've been seeing a lot of backlash, and it's really a community within the state, you know, of doctors who have gone through the program, not necessarily Idaho natives who have gone through the program and are practicing in Idaho.

Patients who have doctors who went through the WWAMI program.

I mean, there's kind of a there's kind of a little WWAMI nation here within the state.

And you've heard a lot of that this year.

Davlin: We have less than a minute left.

But where do we go from here?

Richert: This bill now goes to the Senate.

And, you know, House speaker Mike Moyle and Dustin Manwaring both told me on, on Thursday that they hadn't really started to work the Senate yet.

So we'll see where this goes.

This is one of the big unresolved issues as the session goes on.

But, you know, I think the session is going to be going on for a while.

Davlin: And with about half a minute left coming up next week, as we noted earlier in the show, big budgets coming up, you're going to be looking at higher ed and public education I imagine.

Richert: We're still waiting on public education, higher education, Medicaid.

We've got JFAC, as we saw in the open, a lot of dysfunction right now in JFAC, this is why the session will be going on into April.

It's all about budgets and it’s all about the delays in budgets.

So spoiler alert, we're going to be here till April.

Davlin: Oh lucky us.

Thank you so much for watching.

We'll see you next week.

Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.