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: House Bill 275 appropriates $825,700 and 6.00 full-time positions to the Public Charter School Commission for fiscal year 2024.

The Charter School Commission was made a separate and stand-alone agency in the 2022 fiscal year. It was originally part of the Office of the State Board of Education to enforce regulations on charter schools. This budget makes internal fund adjustments to accommodate a technical records specialist within the base budget and adds an additional Program Manager as a new full-time position.

Does the budget grow government through the addition of new permanent FTPs or through funding unlegislated efforts to create new or expanded entitlement programs? Conversely, does this budget reduce the size of government staff and programs except where compelled by new legislation?

House Bill 275 provides one new, full-time position for an additional Program Manager. The Commission states that this is to reduce the workload of the other two program managers and allow for observation of charter school board meetings. Adding this new full-time position will grow the size of the agency, ongoing spending, and the overall size of government.

(-1)