[Vision2020] Boise - Lawmakers Plan for Worst Case Budget

[Tom Hansen]

More extensive budget cuts are anticipated as more tax breaks are provided 
to line the wallets of Idaho's corporate managers.

Courtesy of today's (January 16, 2009) Spokesman Review.

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Lawmakers plan for worst case budget
Families protest disability cuts
Betsy Z. Russell / Staff writer  

BOISE – Idaho’s state budget challenges grew tougher Thursday, as 
lawmakers concluded the governor’s estimate for how much tax revenue will 
fall next year didn’t go far enough.

If the new estimate stands, lawmakers would have to slice $101 million 
beyond the steep budget cuts Gov. Butch Otter already is recommending or 
find the money elsewhere by dipping deep into rainy-day funds or raising 
taxes.

Sen. John Goedde, R-Coeur d’Alene, chairman of the special economic 
outlook and revenue assessment committee, noted that the panel heard two 
days of dismal economic news last week from Idaho industries, agencies and 
economists. “Based on the testimony that the committee received … we felt 
that the governor’s projections are over-optimistic,” Goedde said.

The committee’s decision, which will go before the Legislature’s joint 
budget committee this morning, came as hundreds of people with 
disabilities, their family members and advocates from around the state 
converged on the Capitol annex to protest budget cuts in services. 

Protesters toted signs saying, “No Medicaid Cuts,” “Our Community Includes 
ME,” and “Do you enjoy living in your own home? So does my son!” The crowd 
rallied outside the annex, then streamed inside to collar their local 
legislators.

Goedde said a North Idaho mother of two autistic children, with whom he’s 
exchanged letters, came to see him. “I had a discussion with her,” he 
said. “There’s nothing easy about budget cuts.”

Rep. Frank Henderson, R-Post Falls, voted for the lower revenue 
prediction, which passed with only one “no” vote, from Rep. Bill Killen, D-
Boise.

“I unfortunately think it’s the safest course to take,” Henderson 
said. “It’ll make us work much harder on the budget. It’ll make us make 
cuts we need to do.”

Henderson said he, too, heard from constituents concerned about cuts in 
Medicaid. “Of course they’re concerned, and we’re very conscious of that,” 
he said. “That’s why it makes this so difficult. But sometimes we have to 
put limits on very critical programs.”

He noted that cuts also are looming for senior programs such as Meals on 
Wheels and respite care, “critical things that help seniors stay in their 
homes. It’s not easy to do those, but when you don’t have the money, you 
don’t have the money.”

The protesters were especially concerned about the 4 percent midyear 
budget cut, or holdback, Otter already has imposed, and resulting 
reductions in treatment hours for disabled children and adults. On 
Thursday morning, the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee voted 
unanimously to make those cuts permanent.

Said Senate Finance Chairman Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, “I guess we can only 
hope and pray that it doesn’t get worse before it gets better.”

No one voted “no” on the cuts. Two lawmakers, Rep. Janice McGeachin, R-
Idaho Falls, and Sen. Nicole LeFavour, D-Boise, later spoke at the rally.

“I’m going to do all I can to try to minimize the impact,” McGeachin said. 
Advocates at the rally said they hope that when the House and Senate 
Health and Welfare committees review rules for implementing the 4 percent 
cuts, they’ll soften the effect by making them temporary and allowing for 
exceptions. 

Katherine Hansen, of the Idaho Association of Developmental Disability 
Agencies, said that in some cases, cuts in treatment hours may end up 
costing the state more, because of their harm to patients. One woman held 
a toddler bundled in pink, along with a sign saying, “I am the face of the 
governor’s holdbacks.”

The special revenue committee accepted the governor’s revenue estimate for 
the current year, fiscal year 2009, of $2.6338 billion – down 9.5 percent 
from the previous year. But instead of accepting his estimate for fiscal 
2010 of $2.6593 billion, the committee went with $2.5579 billion. That’s 
$101.4 million less.

The budget Otter is proposing for fiscal year 2010, which starts July 1, 
already is 7.3 percent below the original budget lawmakers set for this 
year. With another $101.4 million taken out of it, that 7.3 percent cut 
would grow to 10.8 percent.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"For a lapsed Lutheran born-again Buddhist pan-Humanist Universalist 
Unitarian Wiccan Agnostic like myself there's really no reason ever to go 
to work."

- Roy Zimmerman


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