Idaho Lt. Gov. Bedke accuses state lawmakers of budgeting like Washington, D.C.

Ahead of the 2026 legislative session, Lt. Gov. Scott Bedke painted a grim picture of the state’s budget.

After lawmakers slashed income taxes during the 2025 session, the state’s budget is “upside-down,” with a projected gap in 2027 of over $500 million, he said at the Associated Taxpayers of Idaho conference Wednesday. Idaho is projected to end the current fiscal year with a deficit of nearly $60 million, according to the state’s Legislative Services Office.

“We weren’t three months into the new fiscal year when even the most optimistic people, the most irrationally exuberant — whatever you want to call them — had to pause and say, ‘The math is not working,’” he told the hundreds of people, including dozens of state lawmakers, at the event. “We’ve got some tough sledding ahead.”

He took lawmakers to task for acting “more like Washington, D.C., than we did Idaho” by approving costly projects and programs before establishing a realistic plan for revenue. In 2025, the Legislature’s finance committee didn’t agree on a revenue estimate until early March, after it had already committed to billions in spending, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.

Amid Idaho’s rapid growth — and the resulting demands on government services and infrastructure — lawmakers must be better stewards of the state’s resources, he said, and return to the state’s traditionally cautious approach to budgeting.

“Idaho cannot afford to abandon the very things that made us successful,” he said. “We know better than what we did last year.”

Revenues are ‘volatile,’ finance committee head says — but situation isn’t dire

Rep. Wendy Horman, the co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, called such “doom-and-gloom” comments “inaccurate” and “irresponsible in some cases.”

During a panel discussion at the event, she said Idaho revenues in recent months had been “volatile” but emphasized that they’d been low by relatively narrow margins that “could almost be considered a rounding error.” Most of the losses are coming from corporate income taxes, said Lori Wolff, the administrator of Gov. Brad Little’s Division of Financial Management.

Balancing the budget — a requirement of the state’s constitution — remains a “solvable problem,” said Horman, a Republican from Idaho Falls.

It will require a different mindset, she acknowledged, focused on making “trims” to state agencies rather than fulfilling their budget requests. Gov. Brad Little in August called for all state agencies other than public schools to cut their spending by 3%.

Referring to Bedke’s comments about projections that the state may face a deficit over $500 million in fiscal year 2027, she said, “In the most simple terms I can think of, that means state agencies have requested $555 million more than the revenue forecast predicts.”

“That’s our job to balance the budget in the upcoming session,” she said.

Little’s team suggested it would be open to dipping into the state’s $1.4 billion in “rainy-day” funds to help close the gap. Bedke called such a move “prudent,” and Emily Callihan, a spokesperson for Little, told the Statesman that the use of the funds “remains an option” that the governor may recommend to balance the budget.

Little calls to trim spending — even as he celebrates Idaho’s booming economy

During a keynote address at Wednesday’s conference, Little celebrated the fact that personal incomes in Idaho are rising faster than anywhere else in the nation, and that the state is in the top 10 nationwide for low unemployment and job growth.

“Businesses continue to relocate and expand here, creating the most diversified economy we’ve ever had and reinforcing Idaho as a magnet to entrepreneurs,” he said.

Even so, in fiscal year 2027, “we will have to do more with less,” he cautioned. “In Idaho, we right-size government to match the people’s means.”

The state does not “enjoy a surplus of money at the moment,” he said.

Is it time to use some of the state’s rainy-day funding?

“It’s not raining,” he said Wednesday. “Maybe a cloud or two.”

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