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ITD provides budget details to Legislature

ITD executives recently outlined the department’s accomplishments of the past year and its agenda for Fiscal Year 2006 when they met with the combined House and Senate transportation committees recently.

More than one-third of the transportation germane committee membership is new this year so the presentation served as an introduction to ITD programs and fiscal needs and a refresher for veteran legislators, explained deputy director Charlie Rountree.

Board chair Charles Winder gave an introduction, and administrators of ITD’s six divisions followed, outlining accomplishments and plans for the coming year. Director Dave Ekern concluded with an overview of the governor’s recommended transportation budget.
Although the session was not intended to provide details of Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s ambitious transportation plan “Connecting Idaho” or its possible use of bond revenue, questions naturally migrated to GARVEE bonding.

“Certainly GARVEE (Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicle) bonding has been of much interest with legislators this session, but it remains to be seen how that will relate to our budget,” Rountree said.

The FY06 transportation department budget request does not include projects identified by the governor in Connecting Idaho. But Rountree said that if the initiative passes, the necessary changes could be made quickly to this year’s budget bill.

Earlier in January, ITD met with the Joint Appropriations and Finance Committee (JFAC) to explain the governor’s initiative and explain how the GARVEE bonding process could support the initiative.

Winder and Ekern will return to JFAC to formally present the FY06 budget Friday (Feb. 11) from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. (MST). The board chair will give an overview of the department before Ekern explains the budget in detail. Members of the executive management team will be present to address specific questions.

The session will be carried live via Internet streaming from the Legislative Web site, http://idahoptv.org/idreports/LegislatureLive.cfm .

“We will present an overview of the department’s activities, the basic elements of our budget and the anticipated output from our expenditures for the coming year,,” Rountree explains.

“I expect questions to arise about the governor’s initiative and some facets of GARVEE bonding. But the real emphasis is our budget and about the forecasting we used to arrive at the increase… We are not presenting any major new initiatives and have not identified any significant enhancements in our budget.”

The governor’s FY06 budget request for ITD is $477.8 million. (See First Friday report.)