Comments about ‘My view: Utah government is spending money at alarming rate’

There are several errors in this piece.

First, the FY09 budget is closer to $11 billion instead of $11.5 billion according to the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget.

Second, the 29% growth should also be discounted for population growth which has been about 2.5% annually.

Third, Huntsman took office in 2005, not 2004 and his first budget was for FY06.

Oh no. Not a Sutherland piece.

Fraught with errors.

Of course the budget is going to grow. So has the population of the state. This argument always makes me laugh. Especially when it comes to education spending.

Our legislators love to say how much the education budget has increased while they have been in office. What they never say is that the increase has barely kept up with the student population growth.

Bigger family = bigger budget needed

This article raised interesting questions, but didn't answer any of them. Where does the additional 29% go? How much is for education? Transportation? I tried the link to the Sutherland Institute, which does have a spending clock, but I didn't see anything about where the money is spent.

So the article is reduced to this: if government didn't spend money, you could have more material goods. Of course, you wouldn't be able to drive to RC Willey to buy that big TV, because there would be no roads.

It must be nice to be as philosophically pure as the Sutherland Institute.

Ah yes...the justifiers are out. Perhaps this piece did only say we spend a lot of taxpayer's money in this state, but the comments don't say anything helpful in response to clarify. Okay, Governor Huntsman was elected in 04...has the budget gone DOWN once during his administration? No. Okay, why not? Population increases? Let's see...say 10% pop increase over three years...spending up over 20% in three years. I didn't realize that every new Utahn must more than double the state budget just to have roads to drive on!

The exact point of the piece is that the state budget is growing at an unreasonable rate, given ALL factors...oh yeah, except one: some people don't have principled bearings to know what is the proper role of government and what isn't.

You want to argue numbers? Drop by our office where we can chat longer than 400 words. Katie's article hits the nail on the head: money doesn't grow on trees; there are trade-offs for every tax dollar collected and spent...which, collectively, amount to a trade-off between freely-made personal decisions vs. government-made decisions about our personal lives.

All "anonymous" should get off their high horses and pay us an office visit.

I noticed that Sutherland provided exactly zero recommendations as to how government spending could be slowed.

Uh oh.

Paul came out.

No one takes the sutherland institute seriously.

Rhetoric that means nothing.

I agree with Bigger family = Bigger budget.

So let's not pay teachers. Let's not build roads. Maybe the State should not let anyone in anymore. Let's kick all the Californians out so the State budget won't continue to climb. Blah blah blah. Did Howard Stephensen edit this article?

Paul,

It's not accurate to say that a 20% increase in spending and a 10% increase in population means that the state budget doubled. Most of the 20% increase would have occurred due to inflation even without population growth. Are you saying that state spending should not increase at all even if population growth is zero?

Paul,

You're wrong to say that spending hasn't gone down once in Huntsman's administration.

According to GOPB documents, FY09 appropriations are $11.028 billion, down from $11.478 billion in FY08. Given the current economic climate, it's not likely that FY09 supplemental appropriations will boost spending over FY08 levels.

FY09 appropriations are still lower than FY08 pre-supplemental ($11.05 billion)

Correction: some of the 20% increase would have occurred without inflation, not most.

I love the Sutherland pieces. It keeps my elderly brain active looking for the flaws in fact, logic and reality. My,how my IQ has improved over time. Thanks Sutherland -- keep up the good work.

Using the Sutherland Institute as a reference doesn't give me much confidence. Remember they are the ones that promote unlimited legal and illegal immigration into Utah and the United States in order to keep wages suppressed enough to compete with India, China and Mexico. They wish to keep the globalists as wealthy as possible. Then I suppose that is not all bad since a low wage is better than no wage.

But Katie!

How is the State of Utah going to remain big and powerful enough to enforce all of the Sutherland Institute's morality legislation if it doesn't continue to tax, tax, tax and spend, spend, spend?

Sutherland Institute + ill educated populace = Scary thinking and backwater state

Truth Squad: You're squabbling over minor details does not invalidate the point of the oped. Wherever the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget gets its information, they need to get in touch with the legislative fiscal analyst, who in the state budget summary published in March reported an appropriated FY 09 budget of $11,459,984,010 (where we got our data...you can find this through the state legislative website).

Further, even after accounting for population growth (in addition to inflation) the budget has still grown over 12%, not accounting for the fact that public school enrollment growth was smaller in every year during this period except 2006 when the public school increase was 3.1% while population growth was 2.7%.

Lastly, while the governor's first official budget recommendations would have been for FY2006, he was also in office overseeing the 2005 special legislative sessions and 2006 general legislative session. During that time the FY 2005 budget increased by more than $350,000,000, a not-so-small number that cannot be attributed to another governor.

The only possible conclusion that any reasonable, thinking person can reach is that state government has grown in recent years and significantly increased spending beyond levels necessary to maintain services.

The alleged $350 million increase for FY05 was done during the general session, not the special session, not that it matters that much. It's called a supplemental appropriation.

More importantly, including F05 as Huntsman's budget is wrong for two reasons. First, the supplemental appropriation was only a very small part of the total FY05 final budget. Attributing the FY05 budget to Huntsman when he had very little to do with it can't be accurate. Second, the supplemental budget was largely proposed by Walker as one of her last acts before leaving.

Anonymous--I disagree with you that attributing the $350 million increase to Huntsman is wrong.

The reasoning in your first point is backwards. It doesn't matter that $350 million is a small portion of the budget. It's still $350 million dollars! That would have been enough money for the state to cut a $137 check to EACH PERSON in Utah that year. For an average family, that's almost $550 they could have used to put food on their tables, pay for schooling necessities, or drive to work. Government that is supposed to serve its people, and not the other way around. Whether or not it's a big chunk of money to the state, it is a big chunk of money to Utah citizens.

And while your second point is true, it doesn't change the fact that Gov. Huntsman signed that budget into law. He had no obligation to simply do what Governor Walker told him to do. Your argument would be like blaming me for something the governor did simply because I suggested it to him. That's not the kind of personal responsibility that leads to good government.

So you are going to attribute the entire FY05 budget to Huntsman when the supplemental impact was less than 5% of the total?

How do you attribute the $350 million to Huntsman without attributing the other 95% or of the budget to him when it was Walker's budget?

Huntsman took over from Walker when FY05 was more than half way over. At that point, there isn't a lot the incoming governor can do.