RALEIGH – If you want to understand why so many citizens are up in arms about the direction of North Carolina government – and why a group of them are planning to convene Wednesday at the state capitol for an early-evening rally – you might start by grasping the import of the following set of numbers.

Over the past 20 years, North Carolina’s state budget has grown by nearly 270 percent. City and county budgets in most parts of the state have also tripled, quadrupled, or more during the period. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, that still translates into 67 percent higher state and local spending in 2004 than in 1984.

The 67 percent is an average rate, so naturally some government services have seen lower rates of growth while others have exploded. School spending has essentially doubled in inflation-adjusted, per-pupil terms since 1984 (the next time someone claims that public education is “starved for funds,” feel free to point that out). Medicaid spending has grown even faster, as North Carolina met and usually exceeded the national rate of growth in this largest state-administered component of the welfare state.

For those who believe that government should be constitutionally grounded and limited in its scope, such a large increase in state and local spending would inevitably be viewed with suspicion. After all, the truly necessary functions of government should not be growing faster than population and prices do. Indeed, they ought to be shrinking as a share of taxpayers’ budgets. But not everyone is committed to enforcing constitutional limits on government power, or even aware that they exist.

You don’t have to think big government is unconstitutional to believe that it is unwise. The measurements to consider along with the past 20 years of spending growth show how government programs are performing. In all too many cases, the outcomes are mediocre if not lousy.

On education, where the bulk of state and local dollars flow, the picture leans more heavily towards the mediocre. On some measures, North Carolina has seen some improvements in measurable outcomes, particularly for younger students and in mathematics. But on other measures, such as high-school performance, our public schools aren’t making the grade. Only around 60 percent of our students are graduating from high school, with the percentage falling below 50 percent for black and Hispanic students.

North Carolina is high by national standards when it comes to state subsidies for higher education, but our college-attainment rate is not. We spend more on Medicaid than most of our neighbors do, but health-care outcomes aren’t better. Our gasoline tax is among the highest in the country, but our roads still rank far below-average in quality and cost-effectiveness. Crime has been falling lately, but remains significantly higher than in 1984. We’ve spent billions on welfare, health clinics, outreach programs, and sex education, but a third of North Carolina’s children are born out of wedlock today, compared with 19 percent two decades ago.

In short, the taxpayers of our state are getting a raw deal. They’re paying more and more money into a system that isn’t generating satisfactory results. If they thought it would buy them good schools, good roads, lower crime, and stronger communities, many North Carolinians might accept the higher taxes.

But they don’t believe it will. They’re wise that way.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.