Bill Description: Senate Bill 1344 would require the Director of the Department of Health and Welfare (DHW) to monitor programs for explicit statutory authorization and discontinue any program lacking such authority.
Rating: +2
Does it violate the spirit or the letter of either the United States Constitution or the Idaho Constitution? Examples include restrictions on speech, public assembly, the press, privacy, private property, or firearms. Conversely, does it restore or uphold the protections guaranteed in the US Constitution or the Idaho Constitution?
The proposed bill would amend Section 56-202 of Idaho Code to state that no later than July 1st, 2028 “the director shall complete the discontinuation of any program or service not expressly authorized by Idaho Code.” In addition, the director will “continuously monitor all department programs and services to ensure statutory compliance” and cease all expenditures of any program found to be expressly authorized by Idaho Code within sixty days.
Article II, Section 1 of the Idaho Constitution:
DEPARTMENTS OF GOVERNMENT. The powers of the government of this state are divided into three distinct departments, the legislative, executive and judicial; and no person or collection of persons charged with the exercise of powers properly belonging to one of these departments shall exercise any powers properly belonging to either of the others, except as in this constitution expressly directed or permitted.
The legislative power may not be delegated to any other body. The DHW (or any other agency) should not be able to create programs without statutory authorization. This is the sole purview of the legislative body. Several long-standing programs currently operate without statutory authorization, brought into existence by the rulemaking process. The rulemaking process should not and cannot extend to the authorization of new programs. By ending this practice at the DHW, this bill takes significant steps towards constitutionalizing the agency and some of its programs.
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Further, the proposed bill would amend Section 67-3516 of Idaho Code to state that “No Appropriation act shall be construed to create, extend, or imply independent authorization in Idaho Code for any program, service, or activity. Every appropriation is contingent on such express authorization as may be required by the specific title of Idaho Code governing the appropriating agency.”
Article VII, Section 13 of the Idaho Constitution:
Money — HOW DRAWN FROM TREASURY. No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in pursuance of appropriations made by law.
No agency may draw funds from the treasury unless pursuant to appropriations made by law. The power of the purse is the first and foremost faculty of the legislature. This power is rightly entrusted to the representatives of the people alone. To allow it, under any circumstances, to be exercised without appropriations made by law is diametrically opposed to any conception of self-government and intolerable to a free people.
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