During the second special assembly in a week, ASUO Senate gathered Saturday afternoon for a meeting originally allotted for 15 minutes but walked away two hours later with a budget now in need of approval from the ASUO Executive.
The weekend meeting was necessary because the body wanted the Programs Finance Committee and the Departments Finance Committee to retouch their respective budgets and make fixes as recommended by the Senate.
Despite passing a DFC benchmark in late November that suggested a 10 percent decrease, DFC granted increases and presented a budget with over $45,000 in increases.
“This body gave specific instructions and you blatantly disregarded our recommendation and put us in a really hard spot,” Sen. Ben Bowman said to the members of DFC.
Senator and DFC Chair Lamar Wise stated his committee had received mixed signals from PFC and that DFC also answers to its constituents, not just the senate body.
“While you all were saying one thing, we had departments saying other things … I know that you all are a voting body, but DFC is also a voting body and we had to take both sides into account,” Sen. Wise said.
Without being able to change the DFC budget, members of DFC who sat on Senate reached out to their fellow members to see if the committee would be flexible enough to reduce their budget by $10,000 — the amount needed to keep the total budget’s growth under the seven percent cap.
No DFC members were available.
Although members of the band who attended the meeting reluctantly said the Oregon Athletic Bands was willing to take a $10,000 decrease, this option wasn’t considered because DFC could not meet quorum to make a decision. Since PFC was able to meet quorum, the burden was passed along to them, a charge that Sen. Lindy Mabuya had passed down to PFC the year before.
“I am pissed that it comes down to our committee because consistently it is our committee every single year that bails you guys out,” Sen. Mabuya said.
After the PFC budget was reduced by $10,000, the body passed both the DFC and the PFC budget by votes of 11-2-1 and 11-1-2.