RALEIGH — My new friend Elaine Mejia, fiscal policy analyst at the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center, has just written a new report that purports to disprove the notion that a “spending spree” during the 1990s set the stage for the state’s recent budget woes.

The paper is short, fact-filled, and admirably to the point. Longtime observers of the public policy scene in Raleigh will note that Mejia’s center, part of the N.C. Justice and Community Development Center, has been a sometime sparring partner and a sometime ally of ye old merry John Lockeans.

Today we spar.

The paper offers two main contentions. First, what appears to have been significant growth in North Carolina state spending during the past decade was almost entirely due to Medicaid growth. And second, even when Medicaid is included, the amount of growth is so underwhelming that it couldn’t possibly explain the predicament that state lawmakers are debating, most recently Monday afternoon at a public meeting of a Senate appropriations panel.

The gist of my disagreement with Mejia is her choice of starting dates for her analysis. Let me back up and give a brief fiscal history lesson. North Carolina posted dramatic spending growth during the 1980s. Then in 1990-91, we endured a recession. The 1991 session of the state legislature brought a combination of spending restraint and tax increases to address projected budget deficits over the next two years (FY 1991-92 and FY 1992-93). After these two years of nominal growth (and a slight decline when adjusted for inflation and population growth), the state budget took off like a rocket. Then, starting in 2000-01, another recession brought another series of budget deficits — with which state politicians are still grappling today.

Mejia’s tracking of the fiscal trend begins in 1990-91, and thus captures two years of recessionary budget declines (in real, inflation-adjusted terms). It ends in 2002-03, after two more years of budget declines (again, in real terms). In between, from 1992-93 to 1999-2000, the state’s General Fund budget grew at a rapid rate, up 27 percent even after adjusting for inflation and population growth. During this period, by the way, the budget expanded by 25 percent when Medicaid is excluded, so it can’t be blamed for most of the growth.

A longer-term analysis is also illustrative. From 1981-82 to 2001-02, state spending nearly doubled in inflation-adjusted, per-person terms.

The statistics in the Budget and Tax Center report aren’t incorrect. But I would argue that they don’t tell a full and meaningful story about North Carolina government growth. Lawmakers did go on a spending spree — in the 1980s — and then enacted the largest tax increase in state history to force taxpayers to clean up their mess. Then, without sensing the irony, they went on another spending spree in the 1990s, and again enacted major tax increases in 2001 and 2002 to try to clean up their latest mess.

No, the rapid budget growth of the 1980s didn’t persist into the early 1990s. And, no, the rapid budget growth of the 1990s didn’t persist into 2001 and 2002. North Carolina’s boom-and-bust fiscal cycle is striking, when the data are viewed in context.

One last point: a Deloitte Consulting study for Governing magazine found that from 1996 to 2000 — the period during which state spending really ramped up nationwide — North Carolina ranked second in the U.S. in average annual budget growth, at about 7 percent, compared to a national average of about 4.75 percent. Now, we are the only state I know of that is considering a third straight year of significant tax increases (New Jersey joined us in raising taxes in 2001 and 2002, but is considering only major gambling taxes this year).

It’s not a pretty picture, no matter how one tries to dress it up.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.