Head of Idaho’s powerful legislative finance committee to step down
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Rep. Wendy Horman will resign before Jan 2026 to join HHS as child care director.
- Her departure creates leadership gap as Idaho faces a projected $500M deficit.
- Horman sponsored school grant tax credits that sparked union opposition and debate.
The head of the Idaho Legislature’s finance committee, which focuses on setting the state’s budget each year, is stepping down from the Legislature ahead of the January 2026 session. The decision comes at a moment of turmoil for the state, which faces a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, has served as a co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee since 2023, and as a committee member for the previous eight years. In January, she is moving to Washington, D.C. to work for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Alex Adams, the former head of the Idaho Health and Welfare Department, she said in a Friday news release.
“Serving in the Idaho Legislature has been the privilege of a lifetime,” Horman wrote. “As I transition to this new role in the Trump administration, I will carry with me the values and lessons learned from serving the people of Idaho.”
The release did not include details about who would replace her on the finance committee.
Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, declined to speculate on who might replace Horman, which is a decision for House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star. Grow, who serves as the co-chair on the finance committee, said he hoped Horman’s replacement would be willing to maintain the “courtesy” and “consideration of each other’s perspectives” that he and she had shared.
He and Horman had already decided on a calendar for when state departments and agencies would present their budget requests to the committee during the upcoming legislative session.
“I am hopeful that our new House co-chair will ratify what Co-Chair Horman and I have already done,” he told the Statesman by phone.
Horman leaves the committee at a fraught time. After lawmakers slashed income taxes during the 2025 session, Idaho faces a projected deficit in 2027 of over $500 million. The state is projected to end the current fiscal year with a deficit of about $40 million, according to the state’s Legislative Services Office.
Idaho Lt. Gov. Scott Bedke recently accused the committee of budgeting “more like Washington, D.C., than we did Idaho” by approving costly projects and programs before establishing a realistic plan for revenue, leading the state into tough economic times.
“We weren’t three months into the new fiscal year when even the most optimistic people, the most irrationally exuberant — whatever you want to call them — had to pause and say, ‘The math is not working,’” he said at the Associated Taxpayers of Idaho conference Dec. 3. “We’ve got some tough sledding ahead.”
At the same conference, Horman called such “doom-and-gloom” comments “inaccurate” and “irresponsible in some cases.” Balancing the budget — a requirement of the state’s constitution — remains a “solvable problem,” she said.
Horman sponsored controversial school tax-credit bill
In the 2025 session, she was at the center of controversy over a bill she co-sponsored to set aside $50 million for $5,000 grants to students who don’t go to public schools. Under House Bill 93, students with disabilities can receive up to $7,500 annually. The grants will come in the form of refundable tax credits.
The bill’s supporters said the tax credits would help level the playing field for children from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
”I’m just so excited for the opportunities this will bring for students who maybe just need a different option for one reason or another, especially families of modest resources,” Horman told the Idaho Statesman in February.
Opponents, including the Idaho Education Association, the state’s teachers union, called the move a “huge mistake.”
“House Bill 93 is just the beginning,” IEA President Layne McInelly said in a statement. Each year, proponents of government payments to families sending their children to private schools “will try to siphon more and more tax dollars away from public schools as a gift to private and religious schools and their patrons.”
In D.C., Horman will serve as director of the Office of Child Care in the Administration for Children and Families, according to her release.
“I am grateful and honored by this opportunity to again serve with Dr. Alex Adams in a new capacity to help make this nation a better place for children,” she said. “I first ran for elected office because I want every child to have the opportunity for an excellent education. This is an opportunity to continue that work.”
This story was originally published December 19, 2025 at 8:30 AM.
