Republican Brandon Woolf is running for his third term as Idaho Controller. His opponents, Democratic Party candidate Diana David and Constitution Party candidate Miste Gardner, didn’t respond to Idaho Public Television’s invitations to submit materials for debate consideration.
This year, we at Idaho Public Television along with debate organizers nationwide saw a number of candidates decline to participate in debates or fail to respond to our invitations in the first place. As Federal Election Commission rules say we cannot hold a debate with just one candidate, we’re allowing those who did qualify for the debates a chance to sit down with us for one-on-one interviews in which they can answer questions much like they would have received in a traditional debate setting.
Melissa Davlin, Idaho Reports host:
Controller Woolf, thank you so much for joining us today. Why are you seeking reelection?
Brandon Woolf, incumbent Idaho Controller:
You know, I’m seeking reelection because there’s a lot of work still to do. I feel there’s an opportunity we have to continue to make Idaho one of the best-run states, financially, in the country. I want to continue to do that. And, of course, I hope we can talk maybe a little bit more about transparency, but there’s a lot of work there that we’re doing. Continuing the work not only at the State of Idaho level, but at the local government level, that’s a part that I want to continue to help bring forward.
IR:
Let’s talk a little bit about transparency. That’s been a big part of your campaign. What have you done over the last eight years to increase transparency in Idaho government?
Woolf:
Well, one of the best things that we’ve done is we’ve opened the books. I think Justice Brandeis said the quote, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.” What we have right now on transparent.idaho.gov is a website that has all of the state expenditures that are posted from the night before. We have every single expenditure from state agencies, we have all the state employees and what their pay rates are.
But one of the key things that we also have: Last year, House Bill 73 passed the legislative session, and what that proposed – My vision was always, how can we take it one step further? One of the key points was how can we get the cities’, the counties’ and the school districts’ data, and all taxing districts? How can we get all of their information? They do a great job, and a lot of the bigger ones have their information posted on their websites. But if there is an opportunity, that means you’re going to have to go to a lot of websites to track it down. And how do you compare? And is it apples to apples? That’s what our team’s been working on, is making that uniformity and standard across so that you can compare a Boise to a Fairfield to a Preston to a Coeur d’Alene; or do the same with counties or school districts.
That’s our big opportunity. From that, it’s not necessarily to be a “gotcha,” but how can we implement best practices? For example, say you have Idaho County and you’re comparing it to the sheriff’s office in Canyon County. They’re two different sizes. But if you were to put a percentage and know what they’re spending it on? Well, maybe Idaho County is the largest geographically, so they have to travel a lot of miles. Can we put metrics behind it and get best practices? Compared to maybe a smaller sized geographic [county], but they have a larger jail, a lot more inmates, a lot more things. What are those best practices? And can we give that to the citizens?
There’s lots and lots of data, millions of rows. How can we make that consumable for the citizens to be able to go in and get to it? I always joke and say, I want it easy so that my grandma can go in and find that and look up that information.
IR:
I have also been in the position of chasing down a lot of that data in 44 different counties, and so I understand the challenge there. Where are you in that process?
Woolf:
Yeah, good question right now. We piloted with eight counties, and we were able to get that standard uniformity. Then we carried that forward to the other 36, and we’ve been able to grab the budgeted information for fiscal year ‘21 and ’22. So, we’re going through a QA/QC –- a quality assurance and quality control check -– and then we’re working on how we publish that. We have the information. We also have, I believe, 185 school districts and charters. We have their data, and we’re pulling a pipeline from the office of the State Board of Education. We’re doing, again, the quality assurance check, and we should have all of that [soon] so we can be able to go ready. Our target that we’re pushing for is before the [legislative] session goes live in January, so that we can at least show the counties and the school districts.
And then with the cities, we’ve started a pilot with 15 cities. Again, how do we get that uniformity and standard? We’re working with them now.
IR:
One of the other big projects that your office has been working on is Luma, and this dates back several years. The launch date for Luma has been pushed back several times. First of all, can you explain what Luma is for those who aren’t familiar with it?
Woolf:
Yeah, definitely. Luma is the name of our project. It’s a statewide project. I’ve been there for 25 years. I started as an intern at the controller’s office, but those systems were put in even before I started. There are some mainframe accounting and payroll systems –
IR:
That every state agency has, right?
Woolf:
Correct, that they use. They were put in in the late eighties. I joke that I have to go to the nursing homes to recruit COBOL mainframe programmers to help us keep it running. That’s one of the key parts of why we’re modernizing and updating, because we need to modernize our backend financial system.
Luma consists of five modules. It’s finance, procurement, and budget, and then the H.R. and payroll pieces. And again, when you have a large state government – 25,000 employees, 85 agencies – it’s being able to put that all together. The unique part is my office, constitutionally and statutorily, I have a responsibility for finance and payroll. The other three areas – procurement, budget, and H.R. – are under other departments, under the respect of the governor. So, it’s a great coordination there.
Luma is being able to bring all those forward. How do we modernize them? We really feel great about where we’re at. Why we’ve pushed it back is we want to make sure it’s ready. We don’t want to turn over something that’s not quite baked or not quite ready. We want it to be fully ready, and for the state employees to be trained up the proper way. So that’s where we’re at.
IR:
With that pushed back launch, you have had to borrow some of the accountants from other state agencies. This has come up in Legislative Council meetings, with at least a handful of frustrated lawmakers and state agency heads. Do you still have the trust of the lawmakers and those state agencies?
Woolf:
We do. I feel that we do. We continue to keep them updated with where we’re at with the process. It’s a massive program to be able to implement. I obviously want to have it ready to go from that standpoint. But we’ve communicated almost weekly, if not monthly, to the agency heads to keep them apprised of where we’re at, where we’re going. And we have borrowed. We call it the A-team, being able to bring in the best accountants and H.R. staff from various state agencies to help us with this implementation. But we feel we do have that trust and respect still to get it completed.
IR:
Your office processes the payroll for those 25,000 state employees that you mentioned, and also payments made to state contractors. You know, this is a lot of money. Why should Idahoans continue to trust you with this role?
Woolf:
From the standpoint of what we have: it’s my experience, my knowledge, and integrity that I bring to the office. I feel that Idahoans should hopefully respect [that] and earn their trust, that we’re doing the right thing.
As we bring forward the Luma project, one of the key things from there that I’m super excited about is being able to bring contracts forward, so that we can then include contracts that state agencies have set up, and so that we can again be more transparent on who has a contract, how much, what’s the term, what’s the timeframe and who has it. Is it Cousin Bob’s that’s helping doing Jim’s work at the county or at the state? How can we help bring that forward?
IR:
Looking back now instead of forward: transparent.idaho.gov expanded its use to include the federal loans and PPP loans that were allocated to businesses in the pandemic. Is there anything you would have done differently with that rollout or implementation?
Woolf:
Not necessarily. I think what I would share is that, from my understanding – I just finished my term as the president of the national state controllers association – knowing, we were the very first state of all 50 to go live with posting that information when it was taking place, with the CARES Act and the ARPA dollars, being able to put that out, to let the citizens know where was that money going.
I think the continued part there is that it was a lot of money, a really large sum of money, that went out from the federal government. Being able to help track and make sure that there was no fraud, and continue to keep an eye on that, and to help make that easy for the citizens. I don’t know if we were to change or have done anything different, but I think what we do now is how do we make that, again, consumable for the citizens to be able to pull open or track or look up that information.
IR:
One of the other major roles of the controller is sitting on the state land board. Recently, the Land Board made headlines for trying to sell off parcels on Cougar Island, which is in Payette Lake in Valley County. A very popular location with locals, a very unpopular move with them to sell it off. Understanding that it’s in the state constitution – that it’s the Land Board’s mandate to get the maximum financial return for those lands – do you see anything that the Land Board should be doing differently to balance the interests of locals who are interested in preserving access to public land while also getting back that financial return?
Woolf:
I think that’s a great question and great point, and I think that’s what we need: to continue to work with all stakeholders involved and hear them out. But at the end of the day, that constitution line still drives what our mandate is as trustees for that that endowment.
But I think it is appropriate to hear all sides and hear it out. Is there a better way that we can do things, or can it be done so that there can be a win-win-win? But we always have to have a win, those [constitutional] beneficiaries have to come out on top. And if we can have those conversations, continue to develop that, I’m all for that. But like I said, at the end of the day, that beneficiary has to come out and continue to maximize those dollars there.
IR:
Would you support exploring a change to the constitution to change that balance a little bit?
Woolf:
You know, I would be open. My biggest thing that I have is that we have, what, a million acres in timber? We have a million or 1.4 million in grazing. The amount of money that’s being made off of those grazing allotments or those grazing parcels [is small] compared to what we make off of timber, which is our breadbasket. Is there opportunities of how we can block up [those grazing parcels] and make them more valuable? Where we’re limited is what the constitution currently says: that those are 320 acres.
If there’s an opportunity down the road to continue to work with the legislature – work with the citizens, if that were to be a constitutional amendment down the road – that would be something I would be very interested in continuing to pursue, how we can continue to maximize from that standpoint.
IR:
Controller Brandon Woolf, thank you so much for joining us today.
Woolf:
Thank you, appreciate it. Thank you for your time.
