ASOSU Executive Branch overpaid since June

Since taking office June 1, 2011, members of the Associated Students of Oregon State University executive cabinet and task force directors have been overpaid. The amounts have been above the guidelines for pay in ASOSU statutes, amounting to a gross overpayment of $4,960.80.

The pay raises came as a result of cabinet meetings held in the weeks after the Hopoi administration came into office, and were not known to the other branches of government.

The increases resulted in an almost across the board pay increase for executive cabinet members task force directors. However, many paid employees, including legislative positions, such as speaker of the house and graphic design employees, did not receive pay raises and continued to be underpaid according to ASOSU statutes.

"One thing Sokho (Eath, ASOSU Vice President) and I noticed from last year was that everyone was being underpaid," said ASOSU President M. Tonga Hopoi.

ASOSU statutes peg employee pay based on the State of Oregon minimum wage, to account for increases in the cost of living and changes in minimum wage without having to vote for new pay.

 "The statutes should have gotten read, either the president or the executive director of finance should have found … what the pay rates for the various pay grades are, and they are all indexed based off the minimum wage of the State of Oregon. They could have seen then that everyone was not being paid according to the rules and if the pay rates had been adjusted to what it should been according to the statutes, there would have been no problem," said Chris Van Drimmelen, administrative and logistics advocate.

It appears that statutes were not followed and the way to change the amount paid to officials would have been to change the statutes, which would have required the approval of both houses of the legislature.

"Our focus on giving the pay raises was not on us, it was on our lowest paid employees like Saferide and our task force directors," Hopoi said. "Afterward, the compression rate applied to the rest of the executive staff."

However under the pay increases given by Hopoi in June, executive cabinet members, including the president and vice president, each received a $1 per hour raise while task force directors received an increase of 50 cents. Saferide employees received no raise at all.

"I had to figure out how underpaid people were," Hopoi said. "What we had stepped into was already wrong."

There have been questions raised about the ethics and legality of the pay increase.

"Do I think the pay was low? Yes," said Drew Hatlen, ASOSU Speaker of the House. "Was it done correctly? I don't think so. When you are elected to a position, you take on the responsibility to make sure student fees are being spent wisely."

While it is not clear whether there was a violation of ethics, what is clear is that the statutes were not followed.

"It states pretty clearly in the statutes what the pay rates are," Van Drimmelen said. "Everyone who works for ASOSU takes an oath to uphold the constitution and statutes, however that would mean reading and understanding the constitution and statutes."

Pay discrepancies seemingly came as a result of lack of understanding of ASOSU statutes. This may have been because executive cabinet members receive little formal training over the summer.

"The executive this summer did cancel a lot of training which may have contributed," Van Drimmelen said. "There was a clear lack of understanding of ASOSU constitution and statutes and there wasn't really a concerted effort at the time by the executive."

"Professional development got cancelled after a few sessions… by the president shortly into the summer." Hatlen said. "It would be a farce to claim ignorance as an excuse."

Since the overpayments have been discovered, steps have been taken to rectify the situation. The Hopoi administration has agreed to begin paying staff according to statutes and is currently working on what to do about the overpaid wages with the Auxiliaries and Activities Business Center and the ASOSU Senate Ethics and Oversight Committee.