by Logan Finney, Idaho Reports
Questions arose at the Idaho statehouse Thursday about whether legislative budget writers violated open meeting laws.
Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Winder, R-Boise, made a brief announcement to his half of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee on the Senate floor before lawmakers broke for lunch.
“I would ask that the JFAC committee please meet me in the conference room,” Winder said.
House Appropriations Committee chair Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, told Idaho Reports she was made aware of the situation by questions about the meeting from other lawmakers.
Although legislative committees are not bound by the 48-hour agenda notice outlined in the state open meetings law, they are required to meet in public except in extraordinary circumstances.
Horman said the budgeting committee in particular has to be cautious about open meetings.
“We cannot have a quorum,” Horman stressed.
Horman said the Senate Finance members would not tell her what Winder discussed with them.
The Idaho House held an ethics investigation in 2003 into then-Speaker Bruce Newcomb over a closed meeting with members of the House Revenue and Taxation Committee.
Sen. Rick Just, D-Boise, told Idaho Reports that Winder talked about the Department of Health and Welfare budget the Senate had just voted down, which included funding for summer EBT cards.
“The majority of JFAC voted for it and then on the floor flipped – and that’s just procedurally not something you do,” Just said. “You can change your vote once in a while because things happen, I get that, but it is quite unusual to see everybody change.”
Sen. Ben Adams, R-Nampa, told Idaho Reports he doesn’t think the conversation broke the law.
“We didn’t have a quorum,” Adams said. “The entire JFAC committee besides the sponsor voted against the budget. He’d never seen that before. He wanted to make sure there was a path forward.”
Just said most of the Senate Finance Committee was in the room, but wasn’t sure exactly how many.
For the committee to have a quorum, six of the ten members would have to be present.
Just said there are plenty of outstanding budget decisions before lawmakers adjourn the session.
“He said, ‘Is there a way forward?’ and one of the senators said ‘Yes, I’m meeting with Health and Welfare today at noon,’ but apparently nothing really came out of that,” Just said.
Winder told Idaho Reports on Friday that no committee business occurred.
“The door was open, I just asked them, in my 16 years here I’ve never seen anything where the whole committee basically except one voted against the budget bill. And I walked out of the room and that was all,” Winder said. “We didn’t do any committee business. It was not a committee meeting.”
The full joint committee reconvened publicly at 2pm and rewrote the IDHW budget with no summer EBT funds.
Rep. Brooke Green, D-Boise, made the first motion which included the summer EBT program funding. The attempt garnered five House Republican votes in support – making a majority on the House Appropriations Committee – but not a single Senate Republican.
Just noted that a majority of House members on the committee actually voted to fund the program.
“There was a time when we were talking about the new rules or that there are no rules for JFAC, where you had to have both houses agree to something,” Just told Idaho Reports. “We took the committee as a whole – which is what it has been forever, and I don’t disagree with that, and I think that’s the way it should be. But it was kind of interesting.”
The Senate on Thursday also voted down the Idaho Transportation Department budget, which included language that Winder opposed forbidding the sale of a state property in downtown Boise.
House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, is pushing to stop the transaction over concerns about the sale.
Logan Finney | Associate Producer
Logan Finney is a North Idaho native with a passion for media production and boring government meetings. He grew up skiing, hunting and hiking in the mountains of Bonner County and has maintained a lifelong interest in the state’s geography, history and politics. Logan joined the Idaho Reports team in 2020 as a legislative session intern and stayed to cover the COVID-19 pandemic. He was hired as an associate producer in 2021 and they haven’t been able to get rid of him since.