Maybe not anymore.
City Council members are calling for a review of Sandy's incentive program in response to recent revelations that Mayor Tom Dolan and his 12-member leadership team comprise less than 2 percent of city staff but routinely take home 20 percent of the bonus money. Incentives are doled out much more sparingly - if at all - for lower-level workers.
"We will definitely have to take a closer look at the bonus plan in context with the whole compensation package for all the city employees," Councilman Bryant Anderson said today via e-mail.
"I want to sit down with the council. I want to discuss this," agreed Councilwoman Linda Martinez Saville.
The topic could be broached as soon as Tuesday night's council meeting, although the issue is not on the agenda.
Details of Sandy's bonus program were kept hidden until the city was forced by court order - after a four-year legal battle - to disclose the incentives paid to all employees.
"It disturbs me that Sandy fought for so long," said community activist Robyn Bagley. "These are government salaries that are funded by taxpayers. Transparency is critical."
Sandy officials, including Chief Administrative Officer Byron Jorgenson, argued the program should be kept private to avoid bad feelings among city employees. They later defended their disproportionate shares as similar to bonus structures in private industry.
On today, Councilman Stephen Smith called that argument "a tenuous comparison at best."
Jorgenson, who earns an annual salary of $151,000, has amassed $50,500 in after-tax bonuses the past five years, including $12,500 this fiscal year.
Meanwhile, rank-and-file employees, in the years they get bonuses, typically snag only a few hundred dollars at best. By contrast, their department heads never are overlooked. Each one of them has reaped $7,000 or more this year.
Smith worries that regular bonus checks are being used to circumvent salary caps on positions held by long-serving administrators and department heads.
"That they apparently have received the same bonus each year seems to suggest that possibility," he wrote in an e-mail. "Sandy City is heading into a tough budget year, and it may be prudent for the City Council to take a closer look at the bonus program."
Councilman Steve Fairbanks said he wants more information about the system, but he defended its merits.
"The bonuses help us keep people around," he said, "which is really beneficial in the long run."
He fears opening up the bonus program to the public eye will be "detrimental to morale" and create "animosity among our employees," who now can compare payouts.
"That's going to have a worse impact on us than the question about whether the administrators deserve their bonuses," Fairbanks said.
But Sandy resident Gary Forbush, who lost to Dolan in the 2005 mayor's race, said the program itself, not its disclosure, could boost attrition. He criticized the city for not using more of the incentive pay to reward hard-working employees at the bottom end of the pay scale.
"This is going to only reinforce to people that the upper echelon doesn't [care] about the rank and file," he said. "These [top administrators] are very well paid for what they do - and it's still not enough. . . . It looks awfully self serving."
What Sandy needs now, Forbush added, are "truth-in-compensation" hearings.
