Under questioning from both co-chairs of JFAC, Sen. Shawn Keough and Rep. Maxine Bell, Jani Revier, Gov. Butch Otter’s budget director, had this explanation for why the governor’s budget proposal doesn’t account for transferring $27.5 million to the Idaho Transportation Department’s strategic initiatives fund, as directed by last year’s Legislature: He doesn’t like the idea.

“The governor does not support general fund for roads,” Revier told the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee. “He has had a longstanding position on this. He is not going to recommend a general fund transfer.” That doesn’t stop lawmakers from making it, but they’ll have to come up with the money.

“There was a drafting error, we acknowledge there was a drafting error, but the transfer did not occur,” Revier said. “He did not recommend a transfer,” but did make a note about it, noting that the transfer would be necessary if lawmakers want to spend the money on roads.

Bell said, “We made the transfer, but didn’t put the spending in. We, I assume, will put the spending – I think the roads are still full of potholes.”

Keough asked Revier, “It doesn’t show up anywhere in the governor’s budget. So that we will, should we choose to uphold the law, we will have to account for that and take it off the bottom line – is that what I thought I heard you say?” Revier said yes.

UPDATE: On Wednesday, Keough said after further review, she’d concluded that the governor was following the law, and she shouldn’t have used that wording. “They – the governor and DFM – did follow the law as it was passed, and we, the Legislature, made a costly bill drafting error,” Keough said. “As I have reread SB 1206 and found the drafting error, I would like to retract my use of ‘follow the law’ and apologize for my mischaracterization.”

The governor’s budget shows a $155.9 million year-end balance – a surplus – at the end of the current budget, year, 2018, and then transfers that over as the starting balance for fiscal year 2019. Then, his budget for fiscal year 2019 projects a year-end balance of $70 million. But Bell noted that with the $27.5 million transfer issue, “That’ll be a little bit of a different number.”

Lawmakers last year passed a “surplus-eliminator” bill to split any year-end surplus between the state’s main rainy-day account, the Budget Stabilization Fund, and road projects funded through ITD’s Strategic Initiatives Fund. Because of the drafting error, only the $27.5 million rainy-day transfer was made.

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