It's not likely that officials at the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) were looking to produce more controversy just months after taking heat for having spent $860,000 treating board members and staff to retreats at luxury resorts. But more negative press is exactly what the student loan agency got — and deserved — after it recently awarded more than $500,000 to top executives.

The five executives, who received bonuses ranging from a high of $180,587 to a low of $52,436, all earned salaries over $200,000. The top PHEAAexecutive's salary is $289,118. The executive who received the smallest bonus ($52,400) had worked at the student loan agency only since January.

A PHEAA spokesman defended the bonuses by saying they were appropriate rewards for strong financial performance at the agency. He also noted that this year's bonuses were lower than the previous year's, which totaled $852,834, because the organization had trimmed the number of executive vice presidents.

But those arguments didn't carry much weight with critics, including Gov. Ed Rendell and a few members of the state legislature.

Responding to both the half-million dollars in bonuses and the earlier excessive travel expenses, state Sen. Jane Orie, R-McCandless, is supporting an effort to privatize the agency. Orie correctly notes that the outsized bonuses suggest the student loan agency is compensating its top managers as if it were a private business, not a state-supported agency run for the benefit of students seeking financial aid for college degrees.

Privatizing PHEAA was rejected by the board in 2005 when an offer of $1 billion was received from rival agency Sallie Mae (SLM Corp.). Sallie Mae could have taken over management of PHEAA and produced overhead savings, which would have allowed more money to go to student loans. Also, the $1 billion payment would have been available for a variety of spending projects in the state.

By awarding the overly generous bonuses, PHEAA officials are only focusing more negative attention on their operation. The luxury travel story dragged on for months while PHEAA spent $400,000 waging a legal battle to keep its spending records secret. The courts eventually ruled against PHEAA over the spending records.

The current bonus scandal looks like the same mentality that allowed the excessive travel expenses. Given the loose spending controls and the sense of entitlement among board members and top managers, it comes as little surprise to note that 16 people on the PHEAA 20-member board are state legislators. The same attitudes that prevailed when state lawmakers voted themselves a massive pay raise in the middle of the night on July 7, 2005, seems to have migrated to PHEAA with the lawmakers/ board members.

The self-serving mentality of many officials in Harrisburg has been the target of much public criticism since the now-repealed pay-raise vote two summers ago. But despite the talk of reform, there is little evidence of real change.

In fact, this PHEAA bonus story will remind many voters of the $1.9 million in bonuses paid early this year by Democratic legislative leaders to their top staffers, many of whom worked on political campaigns in the fall.

Rendell is right to criticize PHEAA, and Orie is right to keep the heat on by demanding responsible management and reasonable cost controls — or face privatization.

Voters should not have to tolerate another spending scandal at the top of the state student loan agency.