Senate Bill 1442 – Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses, Appropriations FY25
The Idaho Spending Index serves to provide a fiscally conservative perspective on state budgeting while providing an unbiased measurement of how Idaho lawmakers apply these values to their voting behavior on appropriations bills. Each bill is analyzed within the context of the metrics below. They receive one (+1) point for each metric that is satisfied by freedom-focused policymaking and lose one (-1) point for each instance in which the inverse is true. The sum of these points composes the score for the bill.
Analyst: Niklas Kleinworth
Rating: -1
Bill Description: Senate Bill 1442 appropriates $36,482,100 and 267.20 full-time positions to the Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses for fiscal year 2025.
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.)?
Replacement items for this agency have grown steadily over the last few years. This year, several replacement items in this request are well over what would be prescribed by budgeting guidelines. The following replacement items are of concern:
There was also a request for 52 docking stations and 76 laptops at a total cost of $121,400. This expense is not priced out by the Division of Financial Management. Overvaluing the cost of replacement items is wasteful. It permits the agency to spend above what the typical cost for those items would be by providing no incentives to keep costs low.
(-1)
Is the maintenance budget inappropriate for the needs of the state, the size of the agency, or the inflationary environment of the economy? Conversely, is the maintenance budget appropriate given the needs of the state and economic pressures?
The Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses was established by House Bill 318 in the 2020 legislative session. Appropriations were not moved to the newly established division until the 2022 fiscal year.
Being that the 2022 fiscal year was the first year of appropriations for this agency, spending was measured in total appropriations only. This would not provide a very good measure of ongoing growth of the agency. One could expect there would be a great deal of one-time startup costs associated with this first-year budget.
It is worth noting that the budget for this agency saw a decrease in total spending from $38.7 million in the 2022 fiscal year to $36.5 million in this request for the 2025 fiscal year.
(0)
