Idaho’s DOGE Task Force is preparing to recommend potential state employee position eliminations as well as agency, board and commission repeals or mergers.
The legislative task force, named for the federal Department of Government Efficiency, voted Thursday at a meeting in Boise to allow the co-chairs to provide state budget writers with information on long-term vacancies at the interim budget meeting in November.
DOGE members also heard a staff report on the first 13 potential agency eliminations or consolidations, with more planned for consideration.
Task force co-Chair Rep. Jeff Ehlers, R-Meridian, said Thursday the members would evaluate information compiled by legislative staff and hear from heads of the agencies to make recommendations at next month’s meeting.
The task force may study issues and provide recommendations, but cannot pass legislation. Its recommendations will go to the germane legislative committee for consideration and a vote before going through the rest of the legislative process through the Idaho House and Idaho Senate.
Task force considers recommending elimination of longstanding vacant positions statewide
Legislative staff compiled and presented a list of all the agency employee positions that had been authorized and funded but not filled for the past six months, which totaled 381 positions.
Ehlers noted to lawmakers that he and co-Chair Sen. Todd Lakey, R-Nampa, would be presenting findings from the task force at the budget-writing Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, or JFAC, meeting in early November, and said he’d entertain a motion to provide the report to the budget writers with the recommendation that the positions and their associated funding be eliminated.
The task force’s sole Democrat, Sen. Carrie Semmelroth of Boise, asked if there was a way that agencies could be reached about the necessity of each position to the functioning of the agency before the group recommended elimination.
Republican Rep. Dustin Manwaring of Pocatello, also thought the task force didn’t have enough information to recommend a full elimination, but thought JFAC members should have the information.
“That’s what I think JFAC’s job will be, is to dig into the weeds on some of these,” Manwaring said.
Some of the vacant positions included trial attorneys for the newly established State Public Defender’s Office, which Manwaring highlighted as wanting to have more time for those to be filled before removing their funding.
Other positions included in the report were Idaho State Police troopers, several nurses with the Division of Veterans Services, Idaho Department of Transportation engineers and technicians, and a number of health care provider and social worker-related positions at the Department of Health and Welfare.
Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, made a motion that the task force direct the co-chairs to provide the report to JFAC for its members’ “review, consideration and research” for possible removal of positions.
Members unanimously voted to provide the report without a specific recommendation.
DOGE members look to eliminate seven state entities, move seven more under other agencies
Jared Tatro, of the Legislative Services Office’s Impact Review Team, provided an overview of items legislators on the task force had identified as “low-hanging fruit,” for elimination and consolidation, many of which are no longer used or active:
Some of the eliminations may be done through work under the Idaho Code Cleanup Act, which passed this year and directed agencies to identify sections of code that are redundant, unnecessary or out-of-date.
Tatro told lawmakers staff would be diving into questions about feasibility, such as whether lottery commissioners had adequate knowledge and resources to advise charitable gaming and that lawmakers would need to consider questions such as if bingo and raffles needed to be regulated at the same level going forward.
North Idaho representative urges task force not to eliminate lake commission
In addition to the 13 elimination and merging options presented, Ehlers asked task force members Thursday to look at a larger list of about 70 possibilities that he previously presented, and recommend 10 more to research and consider.
The list to consider “further review” included the Pend Oreille Basin Commission, which advises the state on North Idaho water quality and quantity issues.
Rep. Mark Sauter, R-Sandpoint, who is not a member of the task force, told its members during the public comment period that the commission is vital to the area, and urged them not to remove it. He said it deals with issues related to federal authorities over a dam in the area.
“It started out as an issue with Army Corps of Engineers, federal Fish and Game, federal endangered species, you name it,” Sauter said. “So it was just to push back against federal overreach, and we’ve been fighting ever since.”
The DOGE Task Force plans to meet again Nov. 19.
