From Deseret News archives:
Legislators spending at not-too-thrifty rate
GOP aimed to keep growth below 10% it's at 9%
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.
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.)
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