Bill Description: Senate Bill 1331 the “2026 Idaho Rescissions Act” makes a 4% general fund cut to most agencies to deal with the FY26 budget shortfall.
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Does this budget incur any wasteful spending among discretionary funds, including new line items? Conversely, does this budget contain any provisions that serve to reduce spending where possible (i.e. base reductions, debt reconciliation, etc.)?
Senate Bill 1331 would reduce FY26 appropriations by a total of $192,656,600 and 110.05 positions. Of the reductions, “$131,321,800 is from the General Fund, $9,097,700 is from dedicated funds, and $52,236,600 is from the Federal Grant Fund.”
The Joint-Finance Appropriations Committee took action to reduce budgets by a further 1%, above and beyond the Governor’s 3% holdback, which this bill would codify. However, Public School Support, the Division of Medicaid within the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Correction, and the Idaho State Police were not subjected to the additional JFAC action.
Additionally, public schools “participated” in the holdback only to the extent that they reduced the number of support units to match student populations, which is a statutory requirement as opposed to a forced base reduction.
Finally, these are one-time rescissions. The funding is added back into the base for the purposes of calculating FY27 budgets. The FY27 reductions are then subtracted from that starting point.
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