Lawmakers pondering different future role for Millennium Fund money

The Legislature’s Joint Millennium Fund Committee, which makes recommendations on how to spend millions each year in earnings from Idaho’s share of a nationwide tobacco settlement, gave a belated report to JFAC this morning, which is scheduled to set the Millennium Fund budget tomorrow morning. “We apologize for the lateness of this report, however other plans did not materialize as many of us had hoped,” Rep. Fred Wood, R-Burley, co-chair of the panel, told the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee.

Wood had proposed legislation to tap $10 million of the fund’s earnings for a limited primary-care program for people who fall into Idaho’s health coverage gap, but pulled his bill back, saying he didn’t have the votes to pass it. A similar proposal has since been introduced in the Senate, however.

The Millennium Fund has been handing out grants each year to programs ranging from the Idaho Meth Project to Idaho Drug-Free Youth to the Boys & Girls Clubs; Idaho put its tobacco settlement money into a permanent endowment, to generate earnings that can go to health-related programs each year.

Wood said the panel met four times this past year, twice to review and score grant applications, and twice to discuss funding recommendations. Only higher-scoring grant applications were approved for funding, Wood said. The panel also worked with public health districts on the distribution of Millennium Fund money for tobacco cessation. “The public health districts have their own methodology of funding,” Wood said. “It’s not clear to the committee exactly what that is at this point in time.” So when the Millennium Fund budget is set tomorrow, the panel is recommending “intent language that states: Do whatever you’re going to do this year, but come back next year and give us an exact, detail report of how your funding formula works, how your funding formula changes over time, so we understand that there is an equitable amount of money going to the different public health districts for tobacco cessation,” he said. Wood said the issue the committee is eyeing is basing the funding on the number of smokers in the district, so that “no matter where you are, you get the same chance at tobacco cessation as everybody else does.” The percentage of the population that smokes varies in Idaho’s public health districts, he said, from as low as 10 percent to as high as 20 percent.

Wood said funding recommendations for next year include both one-time grants and ongoing funding, with funding for the Department of Health & Welfare’s Project Filter and for health districts’ tobacco cessation programs the only items identified as ongoing. “The committee has reviewed the results of Project Filter in the Department of Health & Welfare and believes the results are excellent,” Wood said. “And this program is founded in sound science. The committee believes the same about public health districts in their tobacco cessation efforts. Hence, whatever duration the committee recommends for funding in the future, these two programs will continue as Idaho’s efforts for tobacco cessation from the master settlement monies.”

The committee also is recommending that the Department of Correction and Department of Juvenile Correction, both of which have been receiving allocations from the Millennium Fund since the recession, should “be placed back on the general fund,” Wood said.

Overall, Wood said the committee has been questioning the path it’s taken in recent years to distribute funds each year for grants to various organizations for health-related projects. It’s long wanted better measuring of the success of those projects, “however this endeavor alone can be very expensive,” and eat up a lot of the money, he said. The committee’s looking at whether Idaho should “explore other options for recommendations for future funding of the tobacco master settlement money.” So it’s recommending intent language in its budget for next year “to make absolutely sure that everyone’s on notice that the committee most likely is going to take a different direction.” What that direction is, hasn’t yet been decided, he said.

Sen. Fred Martin, R-Boise, JFAC vice-chair and a member of the Millennium Fund Committee for the past five years, thanked Wood and Co-Chair Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston. “I too feel like we need to kind of pause, step back, look at this situation and decide what’s best for this quite large pot of money. We need to decide what’s best for it,” he said.

Rep. Maxine Bell, R-Jerome, JFAC co-chair, said, “Well spoken, and I’m truly grateful that you are taking a look at what we’ve been doing for so many years, which sometimes seemed to be just doing.”