Colorado’s Common Sense Institute released an eye-opening report on job creation last spring, and it was doubly alarming. It shed light not only on the challenges faced by our state’s employers in putting people to work — but also on how government is growing out of control.

According to the institute’s report, Colorado posted a net gain of only 500 non-agricultural jobs statewide in the 12 months ending last February. That represented a puny .02% growth rate in non-farming employment. Worse still, the report’s authors dissected the numbers and found that, after accounting only for private-sector jobs — the bread and butter of our economy — Colorado actually had lost 14,700 jobs overall.

As insult to injury, the report culled out and tallied growth in public-sector jobs, i.e., those created by government and funded by taxpayers. It turned out Colorado added more than 15,000 jobs to the public payroll at various levels of government in our state. 

It was the second highest rate of public-sector job growth among all U.S. states. 

As we pointed out at the time, it was a wake-up call to the state’s policymakers, who have been growing government — and killing investment in the private sector with waves of heavy-handed regulations.

All of which comes to mind as Gov. Jared Polis now rolls out his proposed budget for next year. In a meeting on the budget last Friday with The Gazette’s editorial board, the governor disputed our assertion that his administration as been growing government’s payroll willy nilly. 

Instead, he deflected blame.

“The single largest driver of (the state government’s) employee growth was something that we had nothing to do with and I did not support, which was the Family Act passage at the ballot box,” Polis said, “and that now has (added) several hundred state employees.”

Then, he noted, that as for “other bills, when the legislature wants us to do something, we put a fiscal note on it, meaning if you want us to do this or do that, it takes one person or it takes three people (and) they fund that…When they pass through laws, sometimes they have costs.”

And he insisted that if new laws add programs and employees, “we always try to implement the law as efficiently, at the lowest cost as possible … but we still have to do what the law tells us to do.”

It’s as if the legislature dispatches a couple of its more physically imposing members to twist the governor’s arm behind his back while forcing him to use the other arm to sign bills into law.

Of course, it doesn’t work that way. Not only does Polis have bodyguards, but he also knows from his days in middle school civics class that he could as easily veto bills that expand government and the state payroll. And that’s assuming he doesn’t use his clout at the Capitol to head off government-growing bills even earlier in the legislature process.  

In fairness to Polis, he has little influence, beyond his bully pulpit, over misbegotten ballot measures like the family leave act. 

But claiming, “the legislature made me do it,” doesn’t wash.

It is bad enough Colorado has imposed so many rules, like the leave policy, on real job creators in the private sector that it’s smothering their ability to add jobs. Indeed, job growth in August still was only .6%, ranking our state a mere 34th nationally.

It’s also troubling — and embarrassing — that the most notable “investment” in job growth lately is by taxpayers. Which essentially makes government the employer of last resort.