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The Idaho Spending Index provides a fiscally conservative perspective on the state’s budgeting while providing a fair measure of how Idaho legislators apply these values to their voting behavior on spending bills. Helpful. Each invoice is analyzed within the context of the following metrics: He receives 1 (+1) point for each indicator fulfilled by freedom-oriented policymaking, and he loses 1 (-1) point if the reverse is true. The sum of these points is your bill’s score.
Analyst: Niklas Kleinworth
evaluation: -1
Invoice description: House Bill 715 appropriates $3,827,100 to the Idaho Millennium Fund for fiscal year 2025.
In this budget, including new items, are there any unnecessary expenditures in discretionary funds? Conversely, does this budget include provisions to reduce spending as much as possible (i.e. base cuts, debt adjustment, etc.)?
The Idaho Millennium Fund is the result of a 1998 legal settlement between tobacco companies and 46 states, including Idaho. Idaho will receive $250 million over the next 25 years. The Millennium Fund is capped at $100 million, with excess funds transferred to the Millennium Fund Permanent Fund.
Spending from the Millennium Fund is recommended by the Joint Millennium Fund Committee. The 2025 recommendations focused on youth prevention and smoking cessation programs. This included funding a media campaign on Idaho Public Television.
It also included intentional language stating that these funds would no longer be used to support Idaho’s Medicaid program.
One critic of this spending is that $406,000 is allocated to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare for Project Filter. Even though IDHW misused the funds to provide expensive sponsorships to Pride festivals in the state, the request contained no intentional language regulating its use. Given the department’s track record with these funds, diverting funds to this program without any accountability will likely lead to further waste.
(-1)
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