A series of bonuses given to Utah's school trust lands top officials are still in the crosshairs of legislative leaders, who are convinced the $150,000 in payments were an end-run around state budget cuts.

Legislative leaders were given several options for addressing the bonuses this week, including cutting the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration budget to offset the $150,000 and beefing up state oversight of the semi-autonomous agency.

"It is our intention to deal with the issue," said Senate Majority Leader Sheldon Killpack, R-Syracuse. "We feel our direction was clear. This was an outright, deliberate action to go against that direction and we don't feel it would be appropriate to not respond."

The six top officials of the trust lands administration, which manages 3.2 million acres of land with the proceeds going to Utah schools, received a total of $150,000 in performance bonuses in June, two months earlier than the bonuses had typically been awarded.

The awards were moved up so they could be given before a legislative ban on bonuses took effect July 1.

"I think this was a circumvention around the Legislature and I think it should be corrected," said House Speaker David Clark, R-Santa Clara, who met with SITLA executives earlier this month to discuss the issue.

He said the SITLA board's claims that they were honoring promises to the executives doesn't hold water because there was no money in the agency's 2009 budget to award the bonuses. Instead, he said, the board took the money from funds that would have gone to Utah's schools.

Clark said that if the SITLA board does not fix the problem, legislators will.

Three options were presented to House and Senate leaders in a joint meeting Tuesday. One would be to deduct the amount of the bonuses from SITLA's administration budget this year.

Another would be based on legislation that former state Sen. Tom Hatch sponsored in 2006, which sought to revoke SITLA's exemptions from personnel management rules. That would make SITLA's salaries and bonuses subject to an $8,000 yearly cap.

A bill is being drafted to make those changes in the upcoming session.

Lawmakers are also considering moving SITLA oversight from the natural resources budget committee to the education budget committee.

SITLA Board Chairman John Ferry has said the board felt obligated to award the bonuses to the agency's executives because the board had promised the bonuses if the agency met its production goals.

Ferry could not be reached Thursday, and SITLA director Kevin Carter declined to comment on the Legislature's plans.

The board awarded the bonuses, ranging from $21,660 to $36,000, to the top six executives at the trust lands administration in June.

Legislators expressed outrage that the awards had been moved up to avoid a ban on bonuses that would kick in on July 1. Gov. Gary Herbert initially said the actions were "not good form," but reversed himself after meeting with SITLA officials and said he was satisfied with their explanation.

A legislative report in February questioned the bonuses, noting that SITLA executives were already paid more than heads of comparable state agencies and that the targets set to receive the bonuses were, in some years, just more than half of the actual revenue earned the year before.