Budgeters Keep Cutting Water, Health Items Snipped

Legislative budget writers regained control of the state’s purse strings on Tuesday, trimming the general tax commitment to two major water programs and health care for the poor.

They also rejected state financing of restaurant food inspections, prompting one lawmaker to warn that they have increased the possibility of disease outbreaks.”We have to be careful on the budget and try to hold the line,” Republican Sen. Dean Cameron of Rupert said.

By the end of its session, the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee had rebuilt its cache of uncommitted money to more than $6 million, with barely 12 percent of the state’s general tax budget left to draft.

But lost in building up that pool of cash was the food inspection program for restaurants that was put together by a task force last summer in response to increasing concern over outbreaks of hepatitis.

The $940,000 would have been combined with $627,000 local health districts already get from the state for a relatively ineffective food safety program to provide restaurant inspections statewide.

In the process of denying that money, the committee also voted to cut three more jobs from the Division of Health on top of the four it eliminated earlier this year.

Division Director Dick Schultz said his agency could have coped with the earlier staff reductions, but the new ones will require him to actually shut down some programs.

Starting a relatively quick series of votes, the House-Senate panel diverted $1 million to a scheme to dump 300,000 acre-feet of water onto the high desert over the East Snake River Plain Aquifer.

Although not included in the barebones spending blueprint proposed by Republican Gov. Phil Batt, that was $600,000 less than supporters had originally sought. But GOP Rep. Maxine Bell of Jerome said steps needed to be taken to begin rebuilding the primary source of groundwater for southern Idaho.

The panel went short on Batt’s recommendation to keep the Snake River Basin Water Rights Adjudication, setting aside only $1 million of the $1.7 million the governor sought.