A legislative committee charged with recommending how much the state should spend in the next two years set a soft target Monday of 4 percent growth.

That’s slightly above Gov. Dave Heineman’s target of 3.8 percent growth in state spending but more realistic, said members of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee.

The state’s 10-year average is about 5.4 percent. As of Monday, based on spending levels agreed to so far and with a few agencies left to review, the committee had preliminary growth at 4.9 percent.

But Heineman is putting an emphasis this year on lowering taxes and controlling spending.

The governor’s plan, for example, held the University of Nebraska to a 2 percent increase. The committee earlier proposed a tentative increase for the university of 4.2 percent.

To reach the 4 percent overall goal, senators would have to revisit some of their earlier decisions.

Heineman said during a press conference Monday that he hoped the Appropriations Committee would remember what his budget was all about.

“We need to control state spending,” he said. “We need to create jobs, jobs for young people to keep them in our state. … We have talked about middle class families having better job opportunities.”

To the extent the committee goes over the 3.8 percent, he said, he would be disappointed.

The 4 percent increase stays in sync with the governor’s budget  but is more grounded in reality, committee members said. They emphasized that 4 percent is not what agencies can expect to get but an overall increase.

Four percent is more realistic, the senators agreed, because when Heineman set his two-year budget, state aid to schools was estimated at $130.7 million more than in the previous two-year budget. Now, certified aid amounts show it’s actually $144.8 million more, a bump of $14 million more the state is required to pay out.

Sen. John Harms of Scottsbluff was the first to suggest the committee set a goal for the maximum overall increase members want to shoulder. He started the discussion with 4.5 percent.

Sen. Lowen Kruse of Omaha said he believed the committee should pay attention to that total figure but not be driven by it. There are items  such as state aid to schools and negotiated salaries that are not flexible.

“I would happily vote for a 4.2 percent increase that does not include (state aid to schools),” Kruse said. (School aid) knocks it out of the park.”

The next round of decisions, Kruse predicted, referring to hearings in which agencies can appear before the committee to justify their budget requests, will increase the overall figure. The committee felt some of those agencies were underfunded.

In their tentative decisions, for example, senators gave more funding than the governor to the state’s courts, higher education and correctional services. They gave less than the governor to some divisions of Health and Human Services and the Department of Environmental Quality.

The state, Harms said, is going to have to start thinking about what it is willing to do without. “We’ll have to give some things up. What will they be?” he said.

Lincoln Sen. Tony Fulton asked the committee to go lower, still, on its target.

“Start off at 4 percent, knowing that when we go to public hearing, we’re going to soften,” he said. “I know enough about human nature, we’re going to soften.”

A majority of the nine-member committee accepted the 4 percent goal.

The committee will hear agency testimony beginning next week. A preliminary report from the committee is due by Feb. 28.

Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com. Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.