Christensen went along with that, saying it was high time that Utah's top law officer — whose opinions, both legal and in the public arena, are given the gravity of a judge's — should earn a salary commensurate with his responsibilities.

The low pay — when compared to what a senior partner in a large law firm earns — is a "serious detriment" to attracting a "deep, broad pool" of AG candidates every four years, said Christensen, noting he has no interest in running for attorney general himself.

A separate bill, which would have set pay scales for other top state executives, died in the final minutes of the 2005 Legislature.

Huntsman placed that pay hike bill on the special session call last week. That bill didn't have any pay hike for Shurtleff, since his pay was dealt with in a separate bill that passed in the general session.

However, last week, legislators gave Huntsman a 2.5 percent pay hike, to $104,100. (Other top executives and elected officials also got 2.5 percent pay raises.) And so Shurtleff's pay increase is 95 percent of that now-higher amount.

Accordingly, Shurtleff's pay will go to $98,895, a nice 15.8 percent increase, or $13,495 a year more than he is now making. That is nearly 4 percent more — a total of $3,295 — than recommended by the executive compensation commission.

Last November, the six-member citizen commission said that the Utah attorney general, following the 90 percent rule, should get nearly a 12 percent percent pay hike, to $95,000 a year.

The commission makes salary recommendations annually for the five constitutional state offices — governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, auditor and treasurer — for judges and for top appointed state executives.

The commission noted that the former annual salary of $85,400 for Utah's attorney general was below the average of attorneys general's pay among the Western and Midwestern states studied in 2004.

Shurtleff himself says he's making $50,000 less than the Davis County attorney and other public attorneys.

Plus, he oversees the largest legal firm in the state, with 211 attorneys and 187 support staff. Fifty-four assistant attorneys general now serving under the attorney general were, last fall, making more money than he was, with a few making $27,100 a year more than Shurtleff.

Even though the commission for years recommended substantial pay hikes for the attorney general, when Democrats held the AG office the GOP-controlled Legislature never came close to meeting the commission recommendations.

In fact, several years ago a House Republican during debate on the executive pay hike bill made a motion to cut then-Democratic Attorney General Jan Graham's pay. The motion failed.

With the pay raises given to Utah's governor, lieutenant governor, auditor and treasurer in last week's special session, only state Auditor Auston Johnson, at a new salary of $83,500 a year, remains below the West/Midwest average pay for his colleagues in other states. The average pay for a state auditor last fall was $95,303.

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