Meg Whitman's radio whoppers

The Republican candidate for California governor peddles two falsehoods about state spending and taxing in the very first radio ads for the 2010 race.

From Sacramento

We instinctively grant latitude to advertisers, whether they're peddling politicians, dog food or miracle paring knives. But we do expect that an ad will not flat-out lie.

Sadly, our expectations often fall short when ambitious politicians are pitching themselves.

Neither major party has a lock on truthfulness. I've written about false advertising by Republicans and Democrats alike for years.

Now, in the very first series of radio ads in the 2010 gubernatorial race, comes blatant baloney from billionaire political novice Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of EBay who is running for the Republican nomination.

"Did you know," Whitman asks radio listeners, "that in the last 10 years, state spending has gone up 80%?"

Well, no, I did not know that. So I did some checking.

"They're completely wrong when they say that," replied state Finance Director Mike Genest, a conservative former budget consultant for Senate Republicans.

It doesn't take much digging to learn that general fund spending "in the last 10 years" has risen just 27%, according to finance department data. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, spending actually has decreased by 16.6%.

The Whitman camp got its 80% figure -- it's really 78%, but close enough -- by counting a different 10 years than "the last 10." It backed up a couple of years and counted the period between fiscal 1998-99 and 2007-08, ending with the highest general fund spending in history, $103 billion.

Since then, the budget has been slashed to $84.6 billion for the current fiscal year.

Logic tells us that Whitman strategists used the earlier 10-year period because the 80% figure has a nice dramatic ring.

But campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds insists it was because 2007-08 was the last budget year for which the books have been officially closed. Those numbers are permanent and solid, he says. "Most Californians would agree that's a fair and accurate measure."

No, I suspect most people really would prefer that the gubernatorial candidate be straight-up about which years she is measuring. If it's not "the last 10 years," don't claim that it is.

Even for the period that Whitman minions measured, when inflation and population growth are factored in, spending climbed 16.5% -- not nearly as dramatic as her reported 80%.

Actually, the Whitman team could have generated an even more eye-catching number by using a base fiscal year of 1997-98, which seems the better way to do it. That would measure 10 full years of spending growth, rather than the nine calculated by Whitman. . And it would show an increase of 95%.

Using Whitman's nine-year yardstick, spending has risen only 8.4% in "the last 10," not 27%.

But this has ventured too deeply into thick weeds. Let's move on to another bit of baloney in the Whitman ad that is running all over the state.

"These days," the candidate intones, "Sacramento does the same old thing over and over. Their only solution is to raise taxes and spend more money."

I've already showed that they're spending less money, not more.

In fact, over the current and last fiscal years, projected spending -- the amount that would have been paid out without changes in laws -- has been whacked by $31 billion. So their "only solution" is not to tax and spend.