Legislators spending at not-too-thrifty rate

GOP aimed to keep growth below 10% — it's at 9%

By Bob Bernick Jr.
Deseret Morning News
Published: Wednesday, March 2, 2005 9:22 a.m. MST
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Legislative conservatives say that with $600 million in new money to spend in the 2005 Legislature, they didn't want to be spendthrifts and grow general state government by 10 percent in 2006, the fiscal year that starts July 1.

They met their goal. It's growing by 9 percent, the Deseret Morning News has determined.

Republican legislative leaders have twice turned down the Deseret Morning News' request that the Legislative Fiscal Analyst calculate how the state's two main funds — the Uniform School Fund and the General Fund — will grow from the current year if the base budgets now being approved by lawmakers are adopted.

Legislative budgeters said they wanted to wait until the final (but relatively small) "Bill of Bills" that balances out the fiscal 2006 year is passed late tonight, just before adjournment.

So the newspaper calculated how much cash is being appropriated in various budget bills, while the Uniform School Fund and General Fund spending coming out of the 2004 Legislature (for the current fiscal year) is public record.

Compare the two years' general budgets, and non-transportation funding is growing next year by 8.9 percent, the newspaper's calculations show. That is above the current rate of inflation and population growth, the traditional yardstick used in measuring if government is growing too fast.

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"We can't afford to grow these budgets by 10 percent," House Speaker Greg Curtis told his Republican caucus several weeks ago as House conservatives tried to persuade more moderate party colleagues to put tens of millions of dollars in ongoing tax revenue for next year into transportation funds (and thus not grow general budgets via employee pay raises or otherwise expand state programs).

Informed of the newspaper's calculations, House Majority Leader Jeff Alexander said when final budget comparisons are in, "I think the whole Legislature will be surprised by how (the general budget) has grown."

But conservatives still were able to put tens of millions of dollars in anticipated tax revenue next year into building and road construction, basically curtailing other program growth.

Ultimately, GOP lawmakers agreed to put $120 million, most of it in ongoing funds, into roads. And as of Tuesday night, they were putting $35 million of this year's surplus into the Rainy Day fund, another way of saving taxpayer dollars, and another $35 million in buildings.

(Before adjournment tonight, there likely will be a number of efforts to take some of that Rainy Day and/or transportation money and spend it on other items, including allocating $4.5 million for a new veteran's nursing home in northern Utah.)

An 8.9 percent increase from fiscal 2005 to 2006 is not the largest single year of government growth in Utah in recent years. During then-record-setting tax revenue years of the mid-1990s, non-transportation spending grew even higher than 10 percent.

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