Three of the ASUO Finance Committees presented their yearly budget in front of the ASUO Senate during Wednesday night’s meeting knowing that there was close to $32,000 still needing to be cut.
With the Programs Finance Committee, Departments Finance Committee and the Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee all fighting to maintain their budgets, the conversations were heating as each senator presented his or her ideas.
Before the committees began, ASUO Finance Coordinator Greg Mills made an Executive recommendation, suggesting that the groups with the largest budgets split the cost by taking a $237 cut.
This recommendation was met with a lot of opposition.
“The whole ‘punish all committees because they all broke their benchmarks’ seems attractive, but this doesn’t punish the committees, it punishes the programs involved,” Sen. Ben Rudin said.
The PFC proposed cutting $2,001 from their entire budget that would be taken away from a finance retreat in the fall. After the cut, the Senate body unanimously approved the PFC budget, a 12.4 percent increase.
After the DFC and ACFC presentations, senators argued back and forth about which committee would take the brute of the cuts.
“We will meet, and we will cut, but we will not front the entire cost,” Sen. Lamar Wise and DFC member said.
Sen. Ben Bowman mentioned that if DFC met and came back with a budget without the appropriate cuts then the entire budget would be sent to the ASUO president.
“Failure in this case is that we don’t submit a budget … and not that the Executive would do this, but they would be able to unilaterally change the budget,” Bowman said.
Sen. Chase Salazar was concerned that while the Senate body had proposed zero percent funding of the band, the DFC gave the OAB a budget increase.
“I really think that we gave DFC a budget of zero and they gave (OAB) money so it should be up to them to find this money in their budget,” Salazar said. “We need to approve ACFC and send it to DFC and have them figure it out.”
By the end of the night, the body passed the ACFC budget since contract negotiations are much harder to hash out in small amounts of time that budget line items, which is relevant because this budget has to be passed by March 31, and the DFC budget was sent back to the committee to find $32,000 worth of cuts.
Because of this decision, the ASUO Senate will have to meet before the end of the month. So far the tentative plan is to meet this Saturday at 6 p.m. for a quick meeting to approve the new DFC budget.