More Funds Reserved For Juvenile Facilities Higher Education Funding Denied

Legislative budget writers pumped millions more dollars into juvenile detention programs on Thursday, while refusing to restore some of the millions withheld from higher education.

The philosophical clash underscored the fiscal dilemma facing Idaho lawmakers.

“We choose which children we spend it on and when we spend it in their lives,” Republican Rep. James Lucas of Moscow told his colleagues on the Joint FinanceAppropriations Committee.

“We’re certainly willing to give a supplemental to those children who fail and deny one to those children trying to succeed in school.”

The committee voted unanimously to dump another $2.8 million in general tax revenue into the new Department of Juvenile Corrections, along with $500,000 in extra cash the Health and Welfare Department did not spend before relinquishing control of the juvenile programs.

That money is needed to pay for housing juveniles under court detention orders in private or out-of-state facilities because Idaho’s limited detention space is full.

But while there was no discussion of that decision, budget writers debated at length the proposal to restore 70 percent of the general tax money Gov. Phil Batt withheld from the colleges, community colleges and vocational education programs to cope with Idaho’s slowing economic expansion.

The withheld money - $3 million - would have come from the budget reserve account, which lawmakers tapped for $9.2 million earlier this year to cover part of the holdback on public schools.

“There’s not a person in here who wouldn’t like to give more to the colleges,” Senate Finance Chairman Atwell Parry, R-Melba, said. “But this is not the way to do it. We don’t have the money at this time.”

Democratic Rep. Ken Robison of Boise pressed the proposal, calling it a way to soften the blow of what he said was Batt’s inadequate 1997 budget recommendation.

“The future of our revenue in Idaho depends on the quality of our educational system,” Robison argued. “We’re not going to solve our revenue problems, either long-term or short-term, by continuing to shrink our education budgets and increase our prison budgets.”

But other members of the panel warned that this year’s slowdown is only the beginning and the economic situation will only be worse a year from now. In fact, they said, the $23.7 million remaining in the budget reserve account may well fall short of handling next year’s potential financial problems.

, DataTimes