The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee this morning shifted savings around, restored a federal grant, and added $10.5 million in one-time funds to the state Office of Drug Policy to bring statewide substance abuse treatment services for next year back up to this year’s level – rather than slashing them as Gov. Butch Otter had recommended in his budget. Otter’s budget director, Wayne Hammon, was fuming after the joint committee’s action. “Yes, we need to do something about drug treatment, but this is a lot of money,” he said. “They’ve just busted their own budget, as far as I’m concerned.” Read my full story here at spokesmanreview.com.

Hammon said by his calculations, budget writers have trimmed about $10.7 million from the governor’s budget recommendation in their budget-setting so far. But now, he said, “They’ve just spent it.” Otter wanted millions to go to 5 percent average raises for state employees, which the Legislature has cut back to 3 percent; and for other proposals, like adding forensics staffers to the state police crime lab, which lawmakers cut. “Is their priority state employees? No, it’s drug users, that’s their priority,” Hammon said. “All the money they’ve saved so far in the general fund, they’ve just spent.”

Rep. Margaret Henbest, D-Boise, said the joint committee tried to “meet the governor halfway” on substance abuse funding. “The governor vocalized some concerns that we don’t have the data yet” about whether treatment programs are working, she said. “It’s a Catch-22, because if you remove the effort, then the data’s going to look bad. This maintains the current effort. We’ll look at some data.” The one-time funding means lawmakers still will have to debate the issue and determine again next year whether to provide the funds, Henbest said. “It seems like a wiser approach.”

One-time funds like the $10.5 million that JFAC spent typically couldn’t be spent for items like state employee raises or adding new workers, because those are ongoing expenses. But Hammon noted that the Legislature shifted a big chunk of the state’s revenue forecast from ongoing to one-time, rather than accept the governor’s economists’ evaluation of how much of each type of funding the state should expect.

JFAC noted that overall, the budget they set this morning keeps statewide spending on substance abuse treatment at $27.4 million, and $25 million of that goes to the criminal justice population, including those in prisons – only about $2 million goes to community-based treatment. “We’ve always underfunded community treatment, forever,” Henbest said. “So we’re trying to ramp up that community side … but it’s taken a while. … We haven’t fixed it yet.”

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