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

Still, the new study shows just how quickly state spending has grown since the tax-revenue lean years of the early 2000s, when states across the country saw significant dropoffs in tax collections as the nation's economy slowed.

The slowdown in Utah was less severe, and its economy recovered more quickly, leading to record levels of tax collections. During the last three years of Huntsman's administration, the governor and lawmakers gave around $400 million in tax relief, even as state spending hit new highs.

The record 11.7 percent growth each year during the Huntsman administration is an average. For example, for fiscal year 2007-08, the total state budget grew by more than 15 percent. And discounting federal funds — counting only state tax revenues for the education fund and the general fund — spending grew by a whopping 22 percent, the study found.

For years, Utah governors used to promise that state spending would not grow faster than Utah's growing population and inflation — the argument being that state government had to at least keep up the number of people being served and the cost of those services.

But the study shows that rarely has Utah government grown at those rates — but has grown faster.

For example, from 2004 to 2009, the association says the state budget for public education, higher education and general state operations has grown by a yearly average of 11.6 percent. Population and inflation has grown by an annual average of just 5.8 percent, the Utah study shows.

Even when all state spending is added together — including federal funds and the state's transportation fund — state government grew on average 8.4 percent a year — still faster than did the state's population and inflation.

Hughes says that it makes some sense that public education spending alone has outpaced the growth in the general population and inflation, because so many more new students are coming into the system. "But many of us are still uncomfortable with the pace of (general) state government growth. There will come a reckoning — like in the early 2000s — when we won't be able to sustain" the larger state government that governors and legislators have approved.

"That's the main reason we need tax cuts again this year," said Hughes, who favors tax cuts even higher than the $100 million that the House GOP caucus recommends to the 2008 Legislature.

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E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com