The top bosses in Utah state government are finally getting pay raises — and for a few they are healthy double-digit salary hikes.

Action by the 2007 Legislature allowed Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. to give his department heads more money as soon as the bill took effect in March — and again when the new budget year begins July 1.

Huntsman declined to speak with the Deseret Morning News about the pay hikes. But his spokeswoman, Lisa Roskelley, said the pay scales and raises reflect Huntsman's desire to "get the best of the best" to run multibillion-dollar state operations.

"You don't get rich working for the state. It really is public service, especially when you compare" the top state executives to private sector CEOs' pay or even the Utah Legislature's top pay scales or those of Salt Lake County, she said.

One of the goals of the new pay scale for top state bosses is that no longer will the Legislature yearly set the salary ranges for top executives. Huntsman and human resource executives will decide those after broad pay studies of the private and government sectors.

The change will keep legislators from punishing or rewarding individual state department heads — something that's been seen in recent years, officials said.

And the change permanently ties the amount of money the governor can pay top bosses to what their lower-ranking employees can earn — which has been more than department directors in years gone by.

Now there is no longer the chance of a repeat of what happened during the 2006 Legislature, when lawmakers failed to pass a bill that would have permitted salary increases for department heads.

There have been other problems, too, with letting lawmakers set the salaries every year.

For example, several years ago a special bill was filed to give a big raise to any physician who may be named head of the state's health department.

Huntsman and others had complained that Dr. David Sundwall, health department boss, was not being paid enough money — and that the state could not recruit a physician for that top job unless things changed. But looking at just one state boss' salary was inappropriate, some argued.

On the other side, some House members held up an executive pay bill one year until an amendment kept Agriculture Commissioner Leonard Blackham from getting a state car. As the Senate's budget chairman several years ago, before his appointment to head the Agriculture Department, Blackham angered a number of House members over his take-it-or-leave-it, budget-setting stands.

Pay for top state executives shouldn't depend on whether powerful legislators like them personally or not, or even whether they liked the job the department heads were doing or not, some state leaders said.