Slate of Millennium Fund grants approved 19-1 in JFAC, but confusion reigns over intent language…

The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee today approved the budget recommendation from the Joint Millennium Fund Committee, including an array of one-time grants and two ongoing ones, but stopped short of endorsing the panel’s bid to stop handing out one-time grants next year and consider other uses for the state’s growing endowment fund payouts from earnings on a nationwide tobacco settlement. JFAC members got embroiled in a debate over the process, including whether such a move should happen at JFAC or in another committee, the proper use of “notwithstanding” clauses, and which state laws are binding on the Millennium Fund committee and which aren’t.

The legislative intent language that would have recognized the Millennium Fund’s desire to hold off on considering grants next year – except for public health districts’ tobacco cessation programs and the Department of Health & Welfare’s Project Filter, both of which were approved in the budget bill for ongoing funds that will recur each year – failed on a 9-11 vote. That was after the budget proposal won 19-1 support. After the budget vote, the sole dissenter, Sen. Mark Nye, D-Pocatello, asked to change his vote to yes, but it already had been recorded and rules didn’t allow for a late change. Nye moved for reconsideration, but that wasn’t allowed either, as he hadn’t voted on the prevailing side.

Several JFAC members who also serve on the Millennium Fund Committee urged JFAC to approve the one-year break in considering and reviewing grants. Sen. Fred Martin, R-Boise, JFAC’s Senate vice chair, said he felt the health districts and Health & Welfare tobacco programs “were important ongoing items, but the rest need to be evaluated.”

This year’s grants from the Millennium Fund came to $9.1 million. “It’s becoming to be quite a large pot of money and will continue to grow,” Martin said. “We also felt an obligation, I think, to those people requesting them, to give them some time so that they would be able to plan accordingly. We didn’t want to all of a sudden in the fall say, ‘We’re sorry, you’re cut off.’”

Martin asked, “Is there a better place for this money, that would have a better direct effect upon the citizens of Idaho? … To be able to make that decision, I think we needed some time.”

Rep. Phylis King, D-Boise, said, “This is only for one year. The committee felt that the majority of the applications were not as effective as we’d like them to be. … We still are obligated to meet twice, and will do that, and we’ll consider other options. It’s just a one-year hiatus.”

Legislation that was earlier introduced by Rep. Fred Wood, R-Burley, to tap $10 million from the Millennium Fund payouts to fund some primary health care for a portion of Idaho’s health coverage gap population was pulled back by Wood, but similar legislation from Sen. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, is up for a Senate committee hearing on Thursday.

Rep. Luke Malek, R-Coeur d’Alene, who doesn’t serve on the Millennium Fund panel but is an attorney, said in his legal opinion, the current state law that directs the Millennium Fund Committee to receive and review grant applications lists the panel’s powers, not its duties; it’s not required, he said, to take that step.

But others questioned whether state law would have to be changed to skip the grant process, possibly by taking a bill to the State Affairs Committee. Martin said the Millennium Fund Committee would like time to review the issue and make a recommendation to the Legislature next year, and that it hasn’t yet decided how or if the process should be changed.

Rep. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, said she’d feel more comfortable voting on the issue if she had a current Idaho Attorney General’s opinion addressing it; Wood has requested one.

At the meeting, legislative staffers distributed copies of a 2010 Attorney General’s opinion about legislative intent language, but it dealt with school districts and emergencies, and JFAC members said they weren’t clear if it was addressing the current question.

Deputy Attorney General Brian Kane said later that he sent the 2010 opinion to Wood along with an email, and that his answer was that it’s within JFAC’s authority to include intent language in the Millennium Fund budget to set aside the portion of state law that talks about the grant process. Legislative intent language included in a budget bill lasts for only one year, the fiscal year for which the budget is in effect.

The Millenium Fund budget that lawmakers approved includes 19 grants, including $2.7 million for Project Filter; $1.9 million for Department of Correction substance abuse treatment; $747,000 for the Idaho Department of Juvenile Corrections; $649,900 for the Idaho Meth Project; and $300,000 to the Idaho Association of Counties for recovery centers, among others.