Tuning out when there's Little to watch

I opted not to watch the governor's latest performance, and I have no regrets

I haven’t missed a single Idaho gubernatorial State of the State address since 1995. But this year was different. I just couldn’t bring myself to endure the emptiest of all empty suits, Brad Little, give another totally disingenuous speech about how awesomely “conservative” Idaho’s government is under his leadership.

Don’t get me wrong. I know Idaho state government might be better than other states — California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, and Connecticut come quickly to mind — yet Idaho is still the skinny kid at the Fat Camp. Idaho state government is bloated and Little’s budget proposal calls for it to be even more so. I’ve had my fill of Brad Little saying one thing and doing another.

The real meat and potatoes of what Little is about is not to be found in the governor’s speech to the Legislature or in media accounts about it, but rather in budget documents available online. It’s more government. More programs. More employees. More money stolen from the pockets of Idaho taxpayers.

Little still has medical welfare and other subsistence programs continue to make up the largest portion of Idaho government spending. Contrary to popular belief, education is not the state government’s largest endeavor; it’s second fiddle to health and human services by about a billion dollars. The programs that represent the actual proper role of government — public safety and general government operations — represent a mere 10% of Idaho government expenditures.

Under Little’s budget request for FY2026, the state general fund expenditures are shown to grow by an astonishing 7.4%, but true to form, the governor uses accounting gimmicks to get to that number. Actual general fund expenditure growth is actually a bit more than 8%, definitely not the hallmark of “limited government.”

And, of course, Little’s proposal calls for the state government to remain heavily dependent on money from Washington, D.C., with more than a third of the government’s revenue from the Feds.

Little’s budget would also have the state venturing deeper into areas that the government had no business in, prior to his administration, namely funding for housing and daycare centers.

Little speech, more than anything, is theater. It’s performance, illusion, and distraction. It’s designed appears to build a narrative intended to appeal to conservative voters in 2026, when he’s up for reelection.

There’s also something really disingenuous about the Little administration’s branding of the 2025 legislative agenda. He calls it “Keeping Promises,” which is rich coming from someone who, in 2018, promised to end Idaho’s distinction as one of the few states that taxes food, and hasn’t done a thing toward that end.

Watch the governor’s speech? Not this year. Little gave me a chance to break with tradition and do something really useful, like watch YouTube videos of baby ducks and kittens. For that, I’m grateful.