Sandy City Council members, unless taxpayers make them repent at a public budget hearing at 7 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, will keep the city's unfair and seemingly unprecedented employee performance bonus program largely intact.

The top-heavy program - a dozen high-level administrators received bonuses of $7,000 to $12,500 last year while the rank-and-file received $300 or less - was revealed last month after a four-year public records battle waged by The Salt Lake Tribune. City officials shamelessly fought in court to avoid disclosing the plan, wasting tens of thousands of taxpayers' dollars in an attempt to hide the bloated bonuses from the public.

Now, as they draft the city's budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, Mayor Tom Dolan and city administrators are recommending, and the City Council is endorsing, minor changes to the program. It would be a small step in the right direction. But, for the most part, the proposed solutions would simply perpetuate the problem.

Future bonuses would be limited to 1 percent of an employee's salary. But the new program still won't share the wealth equally. When bonuses are awarded as a percentage of salary, the disparity in pay between administrators with six-figure incomes and the rank-and-file becomes even greater.

Dolan, the only elected official to have accepted a bonus, says he will now join City Council members in declining the annual stipend. That's a wise decision. But city policy should ban performance bonuses for elected officials, whose work is judged by the electorate, instead of leaving them as an option.

And employees who have reached the city's salary cap for their position, instead of the standard 1 percent bonus, would qualify for a bonus of up to 5 percent. If 28 percent of Sandy employees have hit the salary ceiling, as reported last week, it's time to raise the salary caps or, better yet, offer retirement incentives to save the taxpayers money.

The only acceptable part of the plan is the call for an extra 1 percent bonus for employees who provide exceptional, extraordinary service. Sandy officials should keep that part of the program, and ditch the rest. Rare rewards for special workers who save the taxpayers significant sums of money is the only bonus program Sandy, or any city, needs.