Ways and means committee discovers errors in proposed budget

The 2013-2014 fiscal year budget for ASOSU was not approved during last night’s House of Representatives ways and means committee after several irregularities were discovered in the proposed document.

The proposed budget included increases in student pay, increased funding for the SafeRide program and additional funding for the Oregon Student Association. The budget also included an increase in the travel budget, but committee members later decided to drop that decision package in favor of increasing funding to the Human Services Resource Center to alleviate cuts to that department as well as making up for a $15,000 shortfall in pay increases due to faulty arithmetic in the original budget.

The proposed budget would lower the per student per term fee to $19.29, down from the current $20.42.

ASOSU was able to increase the expenditures for the other areas by eliminating one professional staff position, the administrative and logistics advocate, as well as a savings from not having a graduate research assistant as the graduate affairs task force director. Also, all task force directors budgets would be lowered from $900 to $750 per year.

Representative Matt Palm said the increases in SafeRide were needed because of long wait times during peak usage days and the need for an additional van to serve more students. He said the program would most likely see more usage in the coming year because of proposed changes that would not allow first year students to bring their cars with them to campus.

The committee will meet again to approve the budget tonight after corrections are made at 7:30 p.m.

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