Budget process moving forward

As students crammed for their last exams of winter term, the Senate met during finals week to vote on its final recommendations for the Student Fee Committee 2011-12 budget.

The SFC approved the recommendations with minor changes, and therefore the Senate must final the budget at tonight’s meeting before it goes to the Portland State president for approval.

“The budget will be presented [to the president] late,” SFC Chair Krystine McCants said. “I expect that either he will not have the full 10 days to review it, or the Budget Office will have a shortened time frame. [The SFC] had hoped to avoid either situation when we created the calendar at the beginning of the year, but our dates were based on a deadline of “the end of April for final submission to OUS.”

The ASPSU constitution requires that the president have 10 days to review the SFC budget before it goes to the Oregon University System. Because the budget will be submitted a day late, President Wim Wiewel will only have until April 10 to finalize the budget. It is due to OUS on April 15.

One of the major contentions in the SFC budget had to do with the proposed increase to the Athletics Department’s budget. The senators were divided on whether or not to make cuts to it.

“I don’t think we should propose to reduce [the Athletics] budget,” Student Senator Adam Rhamlow said at the March 15 Senate meeting. “Although I see the Athletics budget as a big problem area, I don’t think it’s foreseeable that it get done today.”

The Student Fee Recommendation Committee, an ad hoc committee created at the March 8 Senate meeting to review the Athletics budget, presented its findings to the senators. According to the committee’s report, its members did not believe that there was ample time to thoroughly analyze the Athletics budget and how its funds are being used, and therefore proposed to leave it untouched for the 2011–12 academic year.

“We just did not have enough information to make a rational decision to make that cut,” Sean Green, an Organization Budget Council coordinator and a member of the ad-hoc committee, said. “It would not be based on any logic because of the minimal timeline.”

Green also added that if a cut were made, Athletics would not have a chance to fight it because the appeal period is over.

“We [the committee] felt that it would reduce the legitimacy of the process,” Green said.

However, the group also proposed to create a long-term fiscal strategies committee that would conduct a thorough investigation into how Athletics uses its student fee funds and whether or not it is a priority to students at PSU.

After brief discussion, the Senate agreed to accept the committee’s recommendations. According to the literature handed out at the meeting, the fiscal strategies committee would be created by the PSU president and would include faculty and student representation.

According to McCants, the SFC proposed a couple of changes to be made to the nature of this committee, which Senate will vote on tonight.

The Senate also included in its recommendations a $6,500 increase in allocations to the OBC, an SFC sub-committee that funds student organizations. According to Green, this money would be used to fund a fifth OBC coordinator position.

Green said that in its initial budget allocations, the SFC only funded four of the positions. However, next year the OBC will oversee twice as many student groups and will be responsible for allocating $500,000, compared to the $70,000 it was responsible for this year.

“If this position is not funded…[the OBC] is not going to be able to support the requests of student groups,” Green said before the Senate voted unanimously to include the increase in its recommendations.

The SFC also approved the Senate’s recommendations to restore the Oregon Student Association Campus Organizer position, which the SFC had previously proposed to cut. According to the 2011–11 budget, the position pays a stipend of $600 per month. ?