This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Once again, a little-known financial report from the state Division of Finance highlights the true spending priorities of the governor and the Utah Legislature.

The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report released this month spells out that after significant bumps between fiscal year 2006 and 2008, public education spending in Utah reached a plateau. Expenditures in fiscal year 2008 were $2.96 billion, followed by $3.04 billion in 2009, $3.0 billion in 2010 and $3.06 billion in 2011.

In real per-student dollars, public education probably lost at least 10 percent over that time period. Higher education spending actually fell 11 percent from $858 million to $767 million between 2008 and 2011. And, since student growth at colleges and universities was much higher than K-12's, higher education probably lost 18 to 21 percent in real per-student dollars over the past three years.

We really have to wonder how long Gov. Gary Herbert and the Utah Legislature can continue to play this game of claiming that education is their top priority, while at the same time not adequately funding new students, teacher pay or a fully functional school building equalization program.

To confirm our theory that education is not, in fact, the first "cornerstone" of Herbert's budget, let's take a quick glance at how he proposes to spend education funds in his latest recommendations for fiscal 2013. Revenues in the Education Fund are anticipated to increase 6.3 percent, or by $192 million. But he proposes to only increase spending for public education by 3.5 percent, or $76 million.

So, is he spending those education dollars in higher education? No, he proposes spending for higher education (from both the general and the education funds) to increase only $15 million in fiscal 2013. This leaves more than $100 million of education funds to be spent somewhere else, and raises constitutional questions.

We argued last year that the governor and the Legislature have embarked on a misguided effort to sacrifice investments in education for spending on roads. The 2011 CAFR confirms that transportation spending has risen from $976 million in fiscal year 2006 to $1.9 billion in 2011, an increase of 103 percent.

This was at a time when revenues from the traditional road taxes were stagnant. The additional billion dollars spent on transportation projects [in funds] were taken from the general fund or borrowed through massive increases in general obligation debt.

Blindly following the ill-conceived notion from the Grover Norquists of the world that the only legitimate state government spending is on roads may bring us economic benefits in the short run. But slowly starving both public and higher education will have larger negative economic development consequences in the long run.

Even now, when businesses decide where to locate their next plant expansion, they take note of Utah's last place per-pupil spending on K-12 education. The governor's fiscal year 2013 budget recommendations do nothing to move us out of last place.

At some point in the not-so-distant future, even Utah's leading businesses will reap the impact of mediocre education spending as the quality of the state's workforce begins to slide down the slippery slope.

Doug Macdonald is president of Econowest Associates Inc. and was executive director of Utah Issues and chief economist for the Utah State Tax Commission.