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: -2
Bill Description: House Bill 361 appropriates $272 million in transfers to the Department of Environmental Quality for fiscal year 2023.
House Bill 361 makes several transfers to the Department of Environmental Quality for larger water modernization and infrastructure projects as supplementals for the 2023 fiscal year. $23 million of these funds will come from federal dollars through the American Rescue Plan Act. These are specifically dedicated to drinking and wastewater projects. The remaining $249 million comes from the General Fund.
Does this budget perpetuate or expand state dependence on federal dollars, thereby violating principles of federalism? Conversely, does this budget actively reduce the amount of federal dollars used to balance this budget?
This legislation expands Idaho’s dependence on the federal government through spending funds from ARPA for water projects. ARPA was a largely partisan measure due to its severely negative impact on the national debt, incurring the cost for our grandchildren to bear. This is an inappropriate use of funds that were supposed to mitigate the negative economic effects incurred by the government’s response to the pandemic.
(-1)
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.)?
House Bill 361 makes several transfers to the Department of Environmental Quality for larger water modernization and infrastructure projects as supplementals for the 2023 fiscal year. $23 million of these funds will come from federal dollars through the American Rescue Plan Act. These are specifically dedicated to drinking and wastewater projects. The remaining $249 million comes from the General Fund.
These transfers from the General Fund are primarily sourced from income, business, sales, and grocery taxes. These transfers are made from the General Fund surplus, reducing what taxpayers should have received from paying too much to the state. Transferring these funds and those from ARPA in the 2023 fiscal year instead of the 2024 fiscal year allows these additional expenses to be hidden from view when doing a historical analysis of the budget.
(-1)
