After budget cuts, Idaho plans to maintain low government spending, state official says

Idaho state government agencies’ budget requests for the next fiscal year are now publicly available. 

The requests, which are online on the Division of Financial Management’s website, are for Idaho’s fiscal year 2028, which starts July 1, 2027. 

After ‘tight budget year,’ Idaho ends fiscal year with positive cash balance

On the heels of a 2026 Idaho legislative session marked by budget cuts after years of state tax cuts, the requests outline the state’s strategy of continuing to operate state agencies and public programs with less funding, according to the governor’s budget chief, Lori Wolff.

In a media briefing last week, Wolff told reporters that non-discretionary funding for Medicaid, state prisons and public schools is eating up most of a recent projection of increased revenue.

“We were very tight on our bottom line before, so it doesn’t give us a whole lot of room,” Wolff told reporters.

“That really quickly takes up most of the increase in our revenue,” she said. “So, our focus this year is going to be on keeping those budgets at where we set them last year.”

In May, she wrote a memo to state agencies instructing them to only submit barebones budgets, and that the next budget year was not the time to start restoring budget cuts. 

The budget request for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare — the state’s largest government agency that runs Medicaid and other public assistance programs — is the only budget plan that hasn’t been published yet, the governor’s spokesperson, Emily Callihan, said in a statement. She said officials expect to post the agency’s budget request Tuesday.

The requests are one of the first major steps in the process to fund state government. 

In January, Idaho Gov. Brad Little typically releases his own proposed state budget. Then the Idaho Legislature, which meets during the first few months of the calendar year, considers budget requests by state agencies and the governor as lawmakers draft budget bills. 

In recent years, Idaho’s powerful budget-setting committee, the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, has shifted to a different budgeting process that splits agency budgets into barebones funding and new spending.

The 2027 Idaho legislative session is set to start in January.