Utah's last three Republican governors may have claimed to be fiscal conservatives, but in fact they have overseen significant growth in state spending, a new study shows.

The Utah Taxpayers Association, a nonprofit government tax watchdog group funded mostly by businesses, says in a new study that current GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has overseen the most spending — over the four years he's signed or recommended budgets, spending growth has averaged 11.7 percent each year.

That compares to an average annual growth of 5.6 percent during former Gov. Mike Leavitt's 11 years in office and 11.2 percent for the one budget that former Gov. Olene Walker submitted.

Huntsman spokeswoman Lisa Roskelley said there'll be no apologies from him.

"The governor ran on a platform of boosting Utah's economy, to pay for education and replacing (wearing) infrastructure," she said. The large budget increases reflects those priorities. "And they come also with record tax cuts," Roskelley said.

Higher state spending is not necessarily a bad thing, says House Minority Leader Brad King, D-Price.

"Our (budget) growth is indicative of a fast-growing state," he said. "Personal and corporate income is up, and that's a good thing because people and corporations are making more money, so they are paying more taxes."

One irony in the new report: The Legislature sets the Utah state budget — governors recommend budgets and sign the final budget bills into law. And taxpayers association president Howard Stephenson is also a veteran Republican senator from Draper. Accordingly, the association puts the blame for high spending on Leavitt, Walker and Huntsman, not on the GOP-controlled Legislature.

"These past budgets were the GOP-majority budgets — not just the governors'," said King. "Republican (legislators) put these budgets together. We still need to rank our priorities and make sure we're spending on those — like education. And overall I believe we've done a responsible job in setting our budgets."

But while some may like the overall growth in state spending, Rep. Greg Hughes, R-Draper, head of the so-called Conservative Caucus in the House, says the new study shows that "every legislator should have on his mind further tax cuts in the 2008 Legislature."

"We can't sustain" the increased state spending of recent years, he adds.

But Roskelley adds that most of the increases went to boosting public education spending — a pass-through to the state's 40 school districts — and to rebuilding old roads and constructing new ones. In other words, costs that don't come from hiring new state employees.

"The number of state workers as a percent of our growing population has actually decreased every year" of the Huntsman administration, she said.