August 28, 2011 in Idaho

Otter says he’ll continue low-balling state budget

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BOISE - Idaho Gov. Butch Otter is promising more of the same from his administration: tight budgeting that may underestimate state revenues, forcing budget cuts that later prove unnecessary, to avoid mid-year holdbacks.

That approach attracted criticism this year after Otter and state lawmakers discounted economic forecasts and set the state budget tens of millions of dollars lower than estimated revenues, then ended the fiscal year June 30 with a fat surplus, most of which was doled back out to make up budget cuts to schools.

“You can expect the same thing the remainder of my time in office,” Otter declared last week in a talk at a luncheon sponsored by the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce and attended by more than 400 people.

“The future budgets that we’ll have in the state are going to not look an awful lot unlike budgets that we’ve had the last three and a half years,” Otter said. “We’re still going to be conservative. We’re still going to work at institutionalizing a lot of the changes that we made during this economic downturn.”

Otter noted that his first general-fund budget as governor in 2007 totaled about $3.2 billion, while the budget last year was just a little over $2.2 billion. He hinted that the cuts should be permanent – even as the economy recovers.

“We’re not going to grow back at the same rate as the economy grows,” he said.

Instead, the governor said, he’ll work with all state agencies to “institutionalize” the past three years’ budget cuts, “so that everybody up and down – the field people, the people working in the office – everybody up and down the employee levels in the state of Idaho understands that this is a new way of doing business in Idaho government.”

Looking ahead, he said he hopes to announce in his “state of the state” address in January that “this will be the first year that I haven’t already alerted every director for a holdback.”

Mid-year budget holdbacks, which come when revenues fall short after the budget’s already been set, are “dysfunctional to the entire organization,” Otter said. “I find it better to … underestimate a little bit in order to make sure when we tell an agency or we tell a program that they have the money, that they can count on that money and they can plan around that money.”

Ferguson’s back

A new nonpartisan fiscal policy center is being launched in Idaho, with Mike Ferguson, former longtime state chief economist, chosen to head it. The Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy is funded by a grant from the Northwest Area Foundation.

“The whole idea behind the center is to provide an independent, nonpartisan, unbiased source of factual information and analysis relating to Idaho’s fiscal policies,” Ferguson said.

Ferguson will be the new center’s full-time, year-round director. He retired after more than 25 years with the state, and served as chief economist for six Idaho governors from both parties. “I am really excited about this opportunity,” Ferguson said. “I look forward to helping the public and Idaho’s elected decision-makers by providing helpful and easy-to-understand information that hasn’t been readily available before.”

Commissioners clash

Idaho’s three GOP redistricting commissioners have sent out an op-ed piece accusing their Democratic counterparts of “raw partisanship” and a “hardball, union-style negotiating tactic.” It gives something of an impression that the moves toward compromise between the two sides in their past meetings have evaporated.

However, Commissioner Lou Esposito, spokesman for the GOP commissioners, said the guest opinion is referring only to the drawing of congressional districts, not to the drawing of new legislative districts. In their latest public discussion, the Republicans agreed to use the Democrats’ proposed legislative map as a starting point for changes, and some movement toward compromise appeared afoot.

The GOP commissioners plan to distribute a second op-ed piece about legislative redistricting early next week, Esposito said.

The commission reconvenes on Tuesday; its deadline is 5 p.m. on Sept. 6.

One comment on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  bpackley on September 15 at 7:45 a.m.

  Low balling budgets and underestimating is actually a pretty good idea! This way, departments KNOW what to expect. Butch Otter needs to go further though, and get rid of redundant and unnecessary departments, starting with the Department of Education. First, you can get rid of the Dispute Resolution Coordinator and her staff, since she does not have any REAL power to get things done in ways that need to be done! All she can do is negotiate a fix to policy; she cannot hand down sanctions or punishments! And of course districts know what she, and her panel of overpaid cronies, like to hear! So decisions are made to district policy even though the complaining parent HAS NO REAL SAY IN THE MATTER!!! So start with the Department of Education!
  Then move to the Department of Transportation, especially up here in District 1, which Otter thinks no one lives in District 1! I was told specifically by Barbara Babic that the reason that we didn’t get very much stimulus money for NEEDED projects because they were NOT READY TO GO! What are our engineers doing sitting in their offices then?? If they are not doing anything, get rid of them!! There should be plans in place to widen I 90 from the Spokane River bridge (widen the bridge) to East Coeur d’Alene. Plans should be in place to revamp the I 90 SR 41 interchange! Plans should be in place to fix the mess in Rathdrum! Plans should be in place to make SR 41 and SR 53 freeways! Plans should be in place to replace the Spokane River bridge on US 95 and to make 95 a freeway! All the lights should be replaced with SPUI’s (Single Point Urban Interchanges). And the I 90 US 95 should be a free interchange! But of course, no plans have been made to do any of this stuff! Get rid of Barbara Babic and those engineers that sit in their offices doing nothing should promote some cost savings!!!