Double bonuses poor form

Raise your hand if you lost your job this year.

If you were fortunate enough to hang on to your job in this tough economic climate, raise your hand if you received a pay raise.

Now, raise your hand if you got a bonus.

We're going to go out on a limb and guess that few of you raised your hand the second go-round and fewer yet received a bonus.

But at the offices of the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, employees got the equivalent of double bonuses for meeting performance and revenue goals. (Raise your hand if you got a double bonus. Sorry. We had to ask.)

Ordinarily, SITLA awards bonuses in the fiscal year following annual evaluations. But this year, six of SITLA's top managers received $71,000 in bonuses for two years, even though the state is only three months into the 2009-10 fiscal year. They apparently also have crystal balls over at SITLA that enable the bosses to predict revenues and performances for the remainder of the year.

Aside from it looking bad, state legislative leaders are crying foul, given lawmakers' mandate that there be no bonuses for fiscal year 2010. SITLA, an independent state agency that manages 3.4 million acres of trust lands for the financial benefit of Utah public schools and 11 other public institutions, apparently accelerated the payment by two months.

State lawmakers and Gov. Gary Herbert, who are attempting to assemble budgets amid an anticipated $850 million revenue shortfall, are incensed — and rightly so.

SITLA may have the independent authority to dole out such bonuses, but under these economic conditions, it was poor form to accept double bonuses in a single year, even considering SITLA's success at building the Permanent School Fund to a $970.5 million balance at the end of fiscal year 2009. Only interest earnings from the fund can be spent each year.

SITLA officials told Deseret News reporters that the double bonuses were just a matter of timing. Both payments hit the same fiscal year. "That's why it looks so big," said Lisa Schneider, the administration's assistant director of finance.

We get that. The larger issue is whether SITLA gamed the system by awarding double bonuses in a single year. State lawmakers need to get to the bottom of it.

All in favor, raise your hands.