State spending is surging

If House Republicans had held the line on spending — given bigger tax cuts — that alone may not have restricted overall spending, leaders said.

"Maybe the (public) colleges and universities just increase tuition more; maybe natural resources just increases hunting and fishing licenses to spend more," said Hughes.

The 2006 Legislature had more than $1.2 billion extra in new tax growth and one-time surpluses to spend, a record amount. And the 2006-07 fiscal year budget, which starts July 1, was set at more than $9.5 billion, also a record.

But Valentine said a just-completed study by legislative budgeters on the number of actual new state employees shows that the new 2007 budget only hires 114 more people, most of those coming in a new prison. Overall, that's an increase of less than 0.5 percent.

"That is very interesting," Valentine said. "We are not hiring more people. We gave, for example, $2.6 million more to fund the disabled (citizen) waiting list, but no new employees there — same for many state programs."

House Republicans wanted to give a $230 million tax cut, effectively taking that much money off the spending table. Senate Republicans wanted a $100 million cut. In the end, the two groups and GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. compromised on a $160 million tax cut.

However, the last night of the session, House members talked to death a proposed "reform" of the state personal income taxes that would have cut that tax by $70 million. Huntsman will call legislators back into a May special session to consider lowering the top income tax rate from 7 percent to a systemwide 4.9 percent "flatter" tax.

"We spent a lot of money in compensation," Valentine said — both in pay raises and in increased benefit costs — "not a lot more in new people. And that's important" because if there is an economic downturn and state revenues drop in the near future, money can be taken out of roads, water development, new buildings and not have to come out of programs and people, Valentine said.

"I don't see how we can keep spending like this," regardless of exactly where the extra spending comes, Hughes countered. "When you have years of surplus (tax revenues) like this one, there are lofty expectations.

"Many conservatives say that we can't maintain this government spending. Yet people are now criticizing us for not giving more to higher education."

College and university tuition is going up from 4 percent to 31 percent next fall, depending on the institution, higher-education director of communications Amanda Covington said. The average tuition hike is 8 to 9 percent. But Covington points out that on a per-student basis, state spending in higher education has dramatically dropped compared to the mid-1990s. And Valentine said the new budget has no new higher-ed workers at all. "Its growth is in new student enrollments, not new workers."

Said Hughes: "How can we keep doing like this? There must soon be a great debate, not only in higher education, but in other areas, too," to make people see what's happening in state government spending.

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