The NGO Hydra Using Your Money to Reshape Society

Progressive activists believe all your money is theirs to begin with

On Monday, local news outlets shared a report from the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy (ICFP) claiming that the last five years of tax cuts have cost the state $4 billion, weakening its long-term revenue outlook. The Idaho Capital Sun put it like this:

A new report issued this month by a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization shows the Idaho Legislature reduced state revenue by a combined $4 billion through a series of five income tax cuts passed since 2021.

The new report also shows that wealthy Idahoans in the top 1% of earners – those with an annual income of $738,300 and above – benefited the most from the income tax cuts.

The report, “2025 Update: Idaho’s String of Income Tax Cuts Continues to Jeopardize Investments in Public Services,” was published by the Boise-based Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy.

“The report found that over the past five years since the income tax cuts started, those tax cuts cost the state almost $4 billion in lost revenue during that time,” Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy Policy Director Kendra Knighten said in an interview Friday. “Those are dollars that could have been invested in public education, or that could have gone into improving our roads and public safety. They could have gone into helping support Medicaid to help keep Idahoans healthy. Those are all dollars that the Legislature chose to provide tax relief with instead of investing in our communities, and that is something that we are really concerned about.”

Despite labeling itself “nonpartisan,” it’s ICFP’s worldview is out in the open. Whereas most Republicans have touted the last five years of tax cuts as returning $4 billion to the people where it belongs, ICFP director Knighten believes those tax cuts represent money that was essentially stolen from the government.

How selfish of us!

It made me wonder, though, how nonpartisan and independent ICFP really is. A quick perusal of the organization’s lobbyist report shows that it employed five lobbyists and took an interest in several bills during the 2025 session, including legislation related to homeless shelters, prohibiting sleeping on public streets, property and income tax relief, raising the grocery tax credit, and the Parental Choice Tax Credit.

Lobbyist reports don’t specify whether the organization supported or opposed each bill, but based on everything else we’re about to learn, we can make some educated guesses.

ICFP was registered as an assumed business name (ABN) for an organization called Mountain States Group, Inc. in 2013. What is Mountain States Group? Back in 1956, Congress created a structure for Regional Medical Programs (RMPs) to coordinate healthcare between states. In 1974, Congress altered the program to require these programs to convert to nonprofit status. Mountain States Group was formed out of a merger of multiple RMPs as a private nonprofit.

The organization expanded its scope in the 1980s and 1990s, adding programs such as the Idaho Office for Refugees, Mountain States Early Head Start, the Agency for New Americans, and Idaho Kids Count. In 2014, Mountain States Group changed its name to Jannus, a reference to the two-faced Roman god of doorways and boundaries.

By Marie-Lan Nguyen (2009), CC BY 3.0

Jannus celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2024 with a report showing how pervasive its influence had become. At that point, it listed 16 separate programs:

• Agency for New Americans

• Mountain States Early Head Start

• Economic Opportunity

• Empower Idaho

• English Language Center

• Aging Strong

• Global Gardens

• Global Talent

• Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy

• Idaho Crisis & Suicide Hotline

• Idaho Office for Refugees

• Idaho Out-of-School Network

• Idaho Voices for Children

• Legacy Corps

• Southwest Idaho AHEC

• Nutrition Works (website now defunct)

The report explained how Jannus manages all of these programs through a “shared services team” led by CEO Amy Ridenour Little (no relation to the governor, as far as I know). Read a little about these organizations, and you begin to see a picture that resembles a hydra: multiple heads emanating from a single body, each one working in concert with the others. Consider this 2022 puff piece from KTVB about daycare field trips to a community garden:

Nutrition Works, an organization that provides health and wellness resources, partnered with Global Gardens, a refugee-led community garden, to provide seven childcare centers throughout the Treasure Valley with fresh produce.

The article did not explain that Nutrition Works and Global Gardens were both subsidiaries of the same organization. Everyone loves fresh produce, but that’s just scratching the surface of the Jannus operation. Founded in 1974 to engage with healthcare, today it is almost entirely focused on refugees. Part of that focus involves directing as many of your tax dollars as possible toward its own programs.

How many tax dollars? You might want to sit down for this. A Twitter account called RandoLand.us has been documenting federal grant payouts to various NGOs and nonprofits. A keyword search for “Jannus” brings up dozens of results. These include:

• 2021:

  • Nearly $1.4 million to help refugees in public schools

  • $725,000 for cash assistance to refugees

• 2022:

  • $5.4 million to administer a refugee support services program

  • $1.6 million for employment services and other support functions for recently arrived refugees

  • $2.8 million to administer a refugee cash assistance program

  • $2.8 million to support community health services for recently arrived refugees

• 2023:

  • Just under half a million dollars to assist with healthcare for refugees.

  • $16.7 million for refugee support services

• 2024:

  • $2.5 million for cash and medical assistance for refugees

And those are just a handful of examples. Scroll through the entire list for yourself to see what your tax dollars are paying for. Note also that Jannus is often just a middleman for these funds.

Niklas Kleinworth, then with the Idaho Freedom Foundation, highlighted some of Jannus’ work last year:

I briefly wrote about one of these programs, Idaho Voices for Children, two years ago:

According to its website, this organization “champions policies that helps kids and families thrive.” You don’t have to dig too far to figure out that they support any and all expansion of government subsidies and benefits.

A notable example is on their “Education and School Readiness” page where they lament that 68% of Idaho’s 3 and 4 years olds do not attend preschool. Advocating for getting children away from their parents and into government programs seems dystopian to me.

On their “Healthcare” page, they cheer Medicaid, sharing stories of children with medical needs that were paid for by taxpayers. They urge 100% coverage of all Idaho children, writing that, “To ensure a healthy start for every child, each newborn in Idaho should be enrolled in health coverage before leaving the hospital.”

Of course they assume that all children are born in hospitals! Organizations like this fondly imagine a world where every citizen is taken care of by a powerful and benevolent government from birth until death.

In case you were still wondering about where this group stands, they recently honored former State Supreme Court justice and attorney general Jim Jones as their “2023 Children’s Champion”. Jones, of course, has gone full speed to the left, advocating for every progressive program in Idaho while never missing an opportunity to trash conservative Republicans.

It’s unclear how closely IVC and ICFP are connected to Jannus today. Both were scrubbed from Jannus’ programs page sometime after September 2024. The Wayback Machine reveals that IVC noted that it was a “Program of Jannus” through mid-2024, but that reference has now been removed.

Like ICFP, IVC was once an assumed business name of Mountain States Group / Jannus. However, both ABNs were terminated in September 2024. Jenna Renner, chief financial officer at Jannus, signed the termination paperwork for both programs.

Another organization called Idaho Voices for Children, Inc. was initially founded in 1995 as the Children’s Alliance of Idaho. Its registration lapsed in 2003 after failing to file an annual report, but was reinstated in 2005, and apparently changed its name to IVC. In 2008, it changed registered agents to one located at the same Boise address as Jannus.

I’m not entirely clear if this means that IVC was an affiliate of Jannus, a subsidiary, or something else. It’s possible that IVC was originally independent, was brought under the Jannus umbrella, and then just this year became independent again. In 2025, IVC registered an assumed business name for Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy, showing that those two organizations at least remain tied to each other.

So how independent is ICFP, which just released a report lamenting that the government “allowed” citizens to keep too much of their own money? Not very. It is one small part of a massive web of NGOs and nonprofits, all designed to convince the government to take more of your money and give it to them for their own purposes. While the mythical Janus had two faces, the modern Jannus is akin to the hydra, which had many.

One head of this hydra issues reports like this, claiming that we need higher taxes to support more government spending on social programs. Another head lobbies the Legislature to create more of these social programs and to appropriate more money—federal and state—to them. Finally, yet another head stands ready to apply for these new grants and distribute them as they see fit. Oftentimes, the purpose of the grants is to incorporate more people into government dependence. Refugees, for example—the primary focus of Jannus now—are brought here and immediately enrolled in myriad taxpayer-supported programs, all with Jannus acting as the middleman.

As IFF’s Fred Birnbaum said during testimony against an IVC-supported bill last year: “You know the old saying ‘All roads lead to Rome?’ Well, all government-created committees lead to the call for more government spending.”

So when you read stories in local news media about this “independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit” policy center issuing reports saying taxes are too low, keep in mind that it’s one small part of a giant machine designed to take your money and use it to reshape society.

Now that Jannus and its subsidiaries and allies are on your radar, keep an eye on the reporting, lobbying, and electioneering you see over the next year. You might notice some interesting connections. I’ll be there too, giving you the information and tools to be an informed citizen.