In his 2012 gubernatorial campaign kickoff speech, Republican Rob McKenna blamed much of our state's budget woes on the growing cost and number of state workers. Between 1998 and 2008, McKenna claimed, the state's cost per employee increased by 5 percent per year, while the number of employees increased by 13 percent.

Of course, that's bullshit. As the AP's Mike Baker recently pointed out, McKenna can't do simple math. Salaries for state workers actually grew by 3.6 percent during that time period (it's got something to do with compounding, Rob), right in line with the state average for all jobs, public and private sector. And, any way you slice the data over the last decade or so, the number of state workers has actually increased substantially slower than the state's population.

But all that bullshit aside, McKenna went on to use his own Attorney General's Office as a shining example of how to get these costs under control. "The end of this biennium, June 30th, we're going to have fewer positions in our office than we did when I became Attorney General over six years ago," McKenna proudly proclaimed. "But we're doing more work. We're more productive. We get more work done for the dollars taxpayers spend on us."

Well... not exactly.

The Attorney General's Office has 1,088.4 FTEs budgeted in the 2011-13 biennium that starts July 1. That's actually up slightly from the 1,084 FTEs in the 2003-05 budget that was in effect at the time McKenna took over from his Democratic predecessor and current governor, Chris Gregoire. By comparison, the number of FTEs in the Governor's Office shrank from 56.7 to 52 over the same period.

But FTEs only tell part of the story. Over that same period, the appropriation for the Governor's Office fell 3.5 percent, from $12.5 million to $12.1 million, while McKenna saw his office's appropriation rise from $182.3 million to $232.1 million... an increase of over 27 percent despite the flat head count. So much for getting "more work done for the dollars taxpayers spend on us."

Sure, McKenna's FTEs and appropriations grew less slowly than state government as a whole, but not by enough to make the Attorney General's Office the paragon of fiscal prudence, sacrifice, and efficiency he claims it to be. For example, DSHS saw its FTEs fall from 17,762.2 in 2003-05 to 16,941.3 in 2011-13, the Democratic controlled Legislature from 828.3 to 805.5, and even the Department of Licensing—perhaps the agency most commonly associated with the popular caricature of lazy state bureaucrats (think Marge's chain-smoking, DMV-working sisters on The Simpsons)—saw its FTEs fall from 241.3 to 230.7. None of this is to suggest that the Attorney General's Office is overstaffed and overfunded—I know some assistant AGs, and they work awfully hard for considerably less money than they'd earn in the private sector. But there's absolutely no evidence that McKenna has managed his bureaucracy any more efficiently than any other agency or department head.

Quite simply, McKenna's thesis is a fiction. Just like much of the rest of state government he grew his payroll during the fat years—peaking at 1,147.5 budgeted FTEs and $250.1 million in appropriations during the 2007-2009 biennium—and then cut staff and expenses after the economy busted and revenues became scarce. No unique shame in that. For various reasons, that's how state government has always worked.

McKenna is free to talk all he wants about the need to run government differently, but any claims to have already done so simply aren't supported by the facts.