If the state bureaucracy had a foot, it would probably be comparable to that of professional basketball player Shaquille O’Neal.

Unlike Shaq, however, the state’s footprint demands taxpayer dollars to feed its rapid expansion.

As home base for all state executive and agency office headquarters, Thurston County is disproportionately affected by the state’s aggressive growth rate.

This should matter to all Washington residents though, since the state’s growth rate in the Thurston County is reflective of government’s overall growth.

The Department of General Administration (GA), an agency involved in facilities planning and management for the state, released a study in October 2000 which identified 5.3 million square feet of government-owned and -leased space in Thurston County.

A similar GA study released in June 2006 found the state’s footprint had grown an astounding 56 percent to approximately 8.3 million square feet.

Even more startling is the inaccuracy of the government’s own 10-year growth estimates.

The 2000 GA report suggested the state should acquire between 550,000 and 1.2 million additional square feet over a 10-year period to provide for a growing number of state employees.

Even the GA’s most ambitious 10-year estimate fell short of the 3 million square feet in actual growth that has already occurred.

But the state’s facility expansion is merely mirroring the growth of government as a whole.

State spending has increased 34 percent in the last two biennia, and according to the Office of Financial Management, about one in five Washington workers is currently employed by state, county or local governments.

Since governments do not have their own source of revenue, this means the other four workers must pay taxes to support the government worker.

As more workers become employed by the state, the burden on the private sector to fund their wages, pensions, and benefits grows.

The overall problem with public-sector growth is that governments redistribute wealth in lieu of creating it.

This is what economists call a “zero-sum game” where the one party’s gain is exactly matched by the other party’s loss.

This means governments, large or small, negatively impact job growth and wealth creation.

State growth also competes with private growth, just as private businesses do with each other.

The problem, especially illustrated by Thurston County, is that every facility occupied by a wealth-redistributing government could house a wealth-creating private business.

In fact, the region’s economic viability is becoming increasingly dependent on state government as its leading employer and landowner.

The opportunity costs of dollars lost to the state bureaucracy are high.

When we allow government to claim an increasing share of our economic resources, we forego the benefits of other things that might have been done with those resources.

Markets weed out inefficient businesses that may be squandering scarce resources, but monopolistic governments are exempt from market punishments or rewards.

This is why it is in the public’s interest that governments provide only that which the private sector cannot and that it be limited, accountable and transparent.

As citizens, we must recognize the costs associated with an ever expanding state government.

In the upcoming tight budget years, we can ill-afford to support a resource-gobbling bureaucracy.

Amber Gunn is director of the the Washington Policy Center’s Economic Policy Center. Brian Zapotocy is an

economic policy analyst at the

Evergreen Freedom Foundation.