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Goedde: Funding difficult to find

DAVE GOINS/Press correspondent | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 11 years AGO
by DAVE GOINS/Press correspondent
| January 17, 2014 8:00 PM

BOISE - Sen. John Goedde said Idaho lawmakers would be hard-pressed this year to unearth the millions of dollars it would take to close the gap between Gov. Butch Otter's proposed education budget and state public schools chief Tom Luna's budget proposal.

Otter, in his Jan. 6 State of the State and Budget Address, recommended increasing K-12 school funding by $37.4 million, or 2.9 percent, to $1.34 billion in state general fund support.

Luna's draft education budget, released in October, called for a $77 million increase. On Wednesday, Luna adjusted the budget request to a $70 million increase for education.

"I think we'll be challenged to find it (the revenue)," said Goedde, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

The Senate panel, along with the House Education Committee, expects to make policy recommendations later to the joint budget committee.

Goedde noted that the education committees only make policy recommendations, not specific funding recommendations, although policy decisions come with price tags.

"You can't spend what you don't have," Goedde said.

Goedde said the feasibility of Luna's higher K-12 request hinges on whether a federal law enforcing online sales tax collections is passed, increasing available revenue.

But it's unlikely the law will change in time to make a difference this year, Goedde said.

"It might be a way to fund the next installment of the $350 million (in task force) recommendations, two years down the road," Goedde said, referring to 20 recommendations recently presented to the Legislature's education committees by the Idaho Task Force for Improving Education. "But it's not gonna happen this year."

Otter, during his Jan. 6 address to state lawmakers, suggested implementing $54.7 million in task force recommendations, including $35 million to begin restoring - within a five-year plan - $82 million in annual K-12 schools operations money that was cut several years ago, largely as the result of the national recession.

The task force recommended restoring the K-12 school operation budgets to state fiscal year 2009 levels.

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