The state’s budget calls for spending $370 million more than it receives, provides a poor example of transparency and creates challenges for the future, Iowa Auditor David Vaudt said today.

“[Our] appetite to spend is much greater than the revenue we have,” Vaudt said. “It doesn’t seem to make much sense.”

Gov. Chet Culver and legislators shifted $443.7 million in general fund spending into other funds and special accounts, Vaudt said, allowing them to “get around our statutory expenditure limitation because that limitation only applies to our general fund budget.”

However, the general fund expenditure shifts that are released to the public are not an accurate picture of actual spending, he said.

Final budget numbers released to the public indicate a spending reduction of 4.2 percent from the governor’s proposed budget, Vaudt said.

The numbers are “like looking at your checking account and ignoring your charge cards,” he said.

Add in the state’s “charge card” figures alongside the “checking account” figures, and the reduction of the proposed budget, compared to the actual adopted budget, drops to 0.4 percent — 3.8 percentage points less than what the public is being told.

“We’re very vulnerable to what the economy might do to us,” Vaudt said. “We need to get back in line.”

Vaudt said that although lawmakers claimed to spend $266.6 million less than Culver proposed, that figure dwindles to $25.3 million after “record-breaking” spending shifts are included.

Growth in spending outpaced increases in revenues by nearly 52 percent, Vaudt said, noting that state income has increased nearly 10 percent over a two-year period.

The budget “maxes out” funds that have been used in recent years to balance the budget, Vaudt said, and it creates concerns for what the auditor called “Iowa’s new charge cards:” the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund and a new statewide sales tax.

Rebuild Iowa will receive $193 million from the general fund in fiscal 2009 and 2010, Vaudt said. He noted that money earmarked for other special funds has been channeled back to the general fund. He also expressed concern that sales tax revenue targeted for schools could be diverted to pay for general fund expenses.

In all, the budget, which takes effect July 1, creates $569.3 million spending gap, which lawmakers will have to address next year, Vaudt said.