Battle of the budgets - Senate, SUFAC

A new amendment was passed granting student senate the final say regarding the Student Government Association's budget, solidifying a system of checks and balances within student government. "This opens up a door that I don't know if I feel comfortable with," said Matt Kehl, vice chair of Segregated University Fee Allocation Committee. "It's all a question of control." SUFAC, the organization within SGA that handles the distribution of segregated university fee money to various orgs and services, has up until recently held the power to approve SGA's budget, but now must receive final confirmation from senate. This decision stemmed from a series of conflicts and court decision within the past few semesters. Last year, SGA had an excess of funds due to two vacant positions, the chief of staff and press secretary, which normally receive honorarium payments. Former President Sara Duginski wanted to move money within the allotted honorarium fund to establish a ninth committee, Quality and Diversity, to senate. Any unused org funds normally goes back to the main SUFAC account. Duginski, after still having an excess of funds once adding the Quality and Diversity committee, sought to distribute it within the association rather than having it absorb back into the SUFAC reserve. Traditionally, SUFAC must be consulted before moving any funds around within a budget. With any change in the allocation boundaries, such as hiring a guest speaker instead of throwing a concert, the formality of asking SUFAC must be abided by. "With this, the argument was that money was moving within the same pot so the president didn't see the need to seek SUFAC's approval when they are using money already allocated for basically the same thing," said Joe Tyrrell, SGA president-elect. The student court ruled changes needed to be made. The two groups in question both vested interest in the budget money and could possibly have biased views one way or the other. The solution: seeking out neutral territory. The Student Senate holds the position of student representation, and is the only branch of SGA that does not receive honorarium payments strictly for their positions, with the exception of Speaker and Vice President. Since there is no direct gain from what the general SGA budget is, it was decided that it is only fair that this be the group who wields the final authority in SGA's own budget matters. "The court ruled that having five senators on SUFAC isn't quite neutral enough," Tyrrell said. "Having a senate of 20 is definitely a lot more neutral and a lot more objective." An amendment was presented that would grant the senate full control over SGA's budget. It didn't, however, gain the approval of two thirds of the senate and was shot down shortly thereafter. It was eventually decided to grant senate the power to approve or disapprove the budget set by SUFAC. "The original SGA constitution was drawn to mimic the federal government, and in the federal government the senate has a financial committee that creates the budget and presents it to the entire senate," said Kehl, though he did acknowledge the differences between the federal government and ours on campus. "SUFAC works as that body." While Kehl believes this amendment is a small change, it could perpetuate into something more significant if used in the wrong matter. "It's very open to interpretation," Kehl said. "There wasn't a policy that was set up. My problem is that it is open-ended and there was never a discussion of the vagueness of it." Some believe that this will help resolve future conflict within SGA. "What we did was basically created a safety mechanism so if there is clashing, there is an outside force that wields the final authority," said Nick Cibula, senate speaker. He went on to compare student government as a corporation, with SUFAC representing a subsidiary of the main holding company -- SGA. "You can't have a subsidiary telling the holding company what to do," he said. "The primary group always has the final say." This brings the University of Wisconsin Green Bay one step closer to having senate take care of all budgets, which is a rule the rest of the UW system currently abides by. "Though some may be shocked at this, but it really isn't that big of a change," Cibula said. "This occurs within every other university, only to an even greater extent."