After initially voicing concern about $150,000 in bonuses, Gov. Gary Herbert now believes trust land officials acted appropriately in taking the awards, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

Herbert had called it "bad form" for executives with the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration to accelerate their incentives of up to $36,000 apiece to get them before a legislative ban on bonuses kicked in.

SITLA has said it moved up the bonuses to honor previous commitments made to its executives.

The governor met Tuesday with agency executives to discuss its budget for the coming year, and had his concerns addressed, said Herbert's spokeswoman Angie Welling.

"The governor had a conversation with SITLA officials about the bonus issue, among other things, and is satisfied with the explanation that the agency was fulfilling obligations made prior to the directive from the Legislature," Welling said.

"That said, officials are acutely aware of the problem created with the timing of the bonus payments, which come as the entire state is struggling and agencies across the board are operating with reduced budgets and facing the possibility of additional reductions," Welling said. "SITLA officials have assured Governor Herbert that no bonuses will be awarded in 2010."

The SITLA explanation that seems to have assuaged the concerns of the governor still doesn't hold water for Senate President Michael Waddoups.

"I'm still a little distressed" by the bonuses, the Taylorsville Republican said. "To circumvent the intention of the law in a time when there are people out there unemployed, giving out bonuses in excess of what some people are living on still seems to me to be the wrong thing to do."

One of the aspects of the SITLA awards that troubles Waddoups is the low performance targets the board sets for the executives to receive bonuses, a practice called into question in February by the Legislature's fiscal analyst.

The analyst noted that the bonus-triggering goals were, in some years, barely half of the actual revenue from the year before.

Futhermore, the analyst noted, SITLA executives were already paid more than the heads of comparable state agencies.

According to SITLA figures, the executives received their entire 2009 bonuses even though the revenues had fallen by nearly 20 percent from 2007, while the balance and amount distributed to schools fell by nearly 10 percent since 2008. However, the overall amount distributed from the fund is up 75 percent since 2005.

The trust lands administration manages 3.4 million acres of Utah land with the proceeds dedicated primarily to Utah schools, which use the money to hire reading and math tutors and to pay for other educational programs.

In June, the SITLA board of directors awarded bonuses ranging from $21,660 and $36,000 to its top six executives. The bonuses typically would have been awarded in August, but were moved up so they would be paid in the 2009 fiscal year, before the Legislature's bonus ban took effect.

The state awarded $3.4 million overall in employee bonuses in the 2009 budget year, but the SITLA awards are by far the largest. The next highest was $8,000, about a third of the average given to SITLA executives.