Bills were taking over for federal grant

BOISE – Gov. Butch Otter has issued his first veto of the legislative session, $16.8 million in substance-abuse treatment funding that numerous lawmakers had made a priority the past several years.

Lawmakers sought to use the appropriations to preserve efforts that began in 2005 with a three-year, $21 million federal grant. The federal money ran out in 2007, and lawmakers opted to continue with state money, 80 percent of which goes to fund drug courts and treatment for probationers and parolees.

Some funds also go to community-based treatment for priority populations, including women, children and teenage addicts.

In a letter accompanying his line-item veto, Otter said lawmakers should have limited the state’s contribution to $7 million annually but instead more than doubled it before Office of Drug Policy Director Debbie Field had documented the program’s effectiveness to his satisfaction.

He also objected that the money went for direct treatment services, although the federal grant was intended to develop community-based resources, he said.

“There is no question that we need an effective, community-based substance abuse treatment system in Idaho,” Otter wrote. But he said there isn’t sufficient data to show that the programs are working. Without that, he said, it’s “fiscally responsible and prudent to limit funding.”

The veto, slicing funding out of two budget bills, endangers substance-abuse treatment for participants in drug courts across the state. Many see those programs as the state’s biggest success story in tackling substance abuse. The veto also crimps efforts to develop community-based substance abuse treatment services, rather than relying on prisons.

“Those are two things that we’re doing right,” said Senate Minority Leader Clint Stennett, D-Ketchum, after learning of the vetoes. “That’s remarkable.”

Senate Finance Chairman Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, said, “The Legislature over the last several years has had a paradigm shift.” Rather than continue putting money into prisons, he said, lawmakers want to invest in treatment. “It’s obvious that some haven’t made that shift. We’re disappointed,” he said.

“We have to either redo the budget or have to consider whether or not we override the governor,” Cameron said. “It’s important to understand that what we did in that budget was not an increase over what we did last year. This was a maintenance of effort. We did not want to go backwards.”

Otter wrote in his veto messages on the two budget bills, SB 1458 and HB 608, “It has been my consistent position that such investments must be justified over time by results.”

Because the vetoes are of one House bill and one Senate bill, both houses will have to decide how to proceed. Said Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls: “There’s a lot of work ahead of us on that.”

Lawmakers originally had hoped to wrap up the session today .