State Rep. Marko Liaas (D-Mukilteo) pulls out his trusty old whiteboard to demonstrate the truth about "out-of-control government spending": That it's a lie. Per capita state government spending—that is, spending adjusted for population and inflation—has actually remained relatively flat over the past quarter century, and in the coming budget could hit a 25-year-low.

But even that's misleading, as the cost of providing government services inflates faster than the consumer price index (as I've previously explained, it all has to do with the relative lack of opportunity to increase productivity), so even if CPI-adjusted per-capita spending remains flat, the amount of services government can afford to purchase will fall.

The better metric of government growth is its size relative to the state economy as a whole, as it is a well established principle that growth in demand for public services closely tracks growth in aggregate personal income. And by that measure, state government has been steadily shrinking over the past 15 years, from 6.9 percent of personal income in 1995 all the way down to 4.7 percent today:

But then, regular readers here already know this. If only more legislators would read The Stranger.