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 343 appropriates $728,900 and 5.00 full-time positions to the Public Charter School Commission for fiscal year 2024.

The Charter School Commission works to manage Idaho’s public charter school system. House Bill 343 provides a true maintenance budget for the agency with no supplemental requests, no line items, and no growth over the past three years.

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?

This legislation sets the maintenance budget for the Charter School Commission at $728,900, demonstrating negative growth of 39.5% in the last three years. This rate is very favorable compared to what would be prescribed by inflationary pressures and growth. 

The Commission was made a separate entity from the Department of Education in the 2022 fiscal year. This negative growth in the agency is largely due to the removal of one-time startup costs associated with establishing the Commission.

(+1)