Aloof on Sandy bonuses

By Rebecca Walsh

May 8, 2008

SALT LAKE CITY Royce Van Tassell doesn't want to say anything about Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan's candy jar of bonuses.

Normally the first person to pop off at government excess, the spokesman for the Utah Taxpayers Association is distracted this week - and distracting.

The big business-funded lobbyists have been too busy, Van Tassell says, organizing a conference next week to eviscerate city-run wireless networks to notice. "I haven't paid any attention to" Sandy's slush fund, he says. But he "understands why some people might be concerned." Finally, Van Tassell awkwardly repeats the same line over and over again, simply changing the tense of the verbs:

"The association really doesn't have anything to say about it," he says. "I don't anticipate we'll say anything about it. I don't think it's something the association plans to say anything about."

Sandy's exclusive bonus program puts professional tax protesters like Van Tassell and his boss, State Sen. Howard Stephenson, in a pickle. They claim to advocate for "everyday" taxpayers - the ones who pay Sandy City Administrator Byron Jorgenson's $151,000 base salary as well as the $50,500 in bonuses he's cashed over the past five years. This is red meat for the taxpayers association, a pre-fab bully pulpit about government mismanagement and personal enrichment on the taxpayers' dime.

But Van Tassell and Stephenson can't even muster a gentle question about an administrative reward program that reserves 20 percent of the city's bonus money for Dolan and 12 of his closest friends. The city's remaining 1,000 employees split the rest. So while managers average $7,800 bonuses each, the rank-and-file take home checks ranging from $15 to $300.

The Sandy mayor, his employees and even some residents are throwing out the same old conservative pablum about running government like a business, paying public workers like corporate CEOs so they aren't lured away to Silicon Valley or West Jordan.

Meanwhile, Sandy City Council members - who knew enough to reject the 1 percent bonuses they were offered 10 years ago - ineffectually hem and haw about reviewing the program.

"We don't apologize for it," says Jorgenson.

But they should.

For all Dolan's and Jorgenson's bluster and council members' mumblings, the lengths Sandy managers went to to keep the bonus program secret show they know what they are doing looks bad.

Instead of turning over public records to The Salt Lake Tribune -- as they were ordered by the State Records Committee four years ago -- Dolan and his cronies continued to appeal, hoping for a different answer. Even after a district court judge ended the legal battle this year and ordered the city to pay the newspaper $32,700 in attorney's fees, Sandy flailed on. The city racked up another $14,600 in legal bills - including one final $102.50 phone call with a private firm.

"To call it frivolous is to be polite," says Jay Stewart, director of the Chicago-based Better Government Association. "They spent taxpayer money trying to prevent the public from finding out how much taxpayers are paying public employees. They should be ashamed."

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