The Utah House and Senate, run by Republicans, have been frugal in their own spending the past seven years, keeping their individual budgets well below the growth seen overall in state government.

But many individual legislative staffers — and especially two of the Legislature's own staff departments — have received big raises and/or seen significant spending increases of taxpayer cash, an analysis by the Deseret News shows.

The Legislature, including the House, the Senate, and their three main staff departments, has increased its overall budget by 49 percent over the past seven years.

In comparison to legislative spending on its own staffs, the state's two main non-transportation funds — the General Fund and the Education Fund — have also increased by 49 percent over the same time.

Both Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and GOP legislators hope to benefit this election year from a state Republican Party's public relations campaign (the "I Can" campaign) that touts Utah state government as being well-managed by GOP officeholders, so budget growth may well be a campaign issue.

But the Legislature's spending on itself only matches the state's budget growth because of lower-than-average spending by the House and Senate themselves. That includes the 29 senators and four or five full-time Senate staffers and the 75-member House and a similarly small staff. The House's internal budget grew by just 34 percent over seven years; the Senate's by just 28 percent. Legislative leaders have actually cut the House and Senate travel budet over the last seven years.

However, the newspaper's analysis, based on budgets and staff salaries obtained through the state's open records law, found that some legislative staffers' pay has far exceeded what most executive branch employees and managers are seeing, even outstripping the wage growth of average Utahns.

In addition, two legislative staff departments have outpaced general government growth.

The Office of Legislative Auditor General's budget grew by an astounding 80 percent over the past seven years. The Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel's budget grew by nearly 62 percent, figures show.

More auditors needed

House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, said legislative leaders made a conscious decision several years ago to hire more legislative auditors. "These audits save taxpayer dollars, because we find out how we can manage (the executive and judicial branches of government) better. Audits were backing up (not being finished in a timely manner), and we couldn't do the number of audits that were requested" by lawmakers.

Legislative auditor general John Schaff said he hired three additional auditors and one staff support person, reorganized the office, giving promotions to several people, and last year turned out 22 audits compared to 17 several years ago.