[90] in UA Senate
Re: UA budgeting principles
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew Lukmann)
Wed Oct 14 22:02:51 2009
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:02:41 -0400
From: Andrew Lukmann <lukymann@MIT.EDU>
To: Alex Schwendner <alexrs@mit.edu>
CC: "Alex Dehnert (UA Treasurer)" <ua-treasurer@mit.edu>, ua-senate@mit.edu,
ua-discuss@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <5d73465a0910141745v6ca68839pc96dd39f1c5c7e2b@mail.gmail.com>
If Alex's sentiments are shared by a number of other new senators... it
might be time to re-investigate the timing of future budget approvals as
well.
History:
In the somewhat distant past (6-7+ years ago) Senate was elected in the
Spring with the incoming UA P/VP. As a result, the incoming Senate and
the incoming administration worked together to compile and approve a
budget before the Summer. However, with a number of changes to the
living group constituencies, most importantly Freshmen on Campus, the
decision was made to move Senate elections to the Fall to allow freshmen
to vote (and run in) the Senate contest. From what I recall, the first
year of this change, the Fall budget was actually voted upon by the
outgoing Senate, allowing the administration to have a complete and
approved budget to operate on over the summer, during orientation and
during the Fall term. This, however, served to largely hamstring the
newly-elected Senate regarding financial policy until at least the
Spring budget was discussed in December. As a result, this was altered
(about 5 years ago) to the current arrangement where the outgoing Senate
(in the spring) grants an advance for the administration to utilize over
the Summer/Orientation which is disbursed by the ExecComm in lieu of
Senate. Then the Fall budget is taken up and approved by the new Senate
when it is finally assembled and called to order by early-mid October.
Problems:
It seems that in an effort to address problems of the past, we in past
UA administrations (and past sessions of Senate) have helped to create
new problems. It seems that even though the intent of moving Fall budget
approval to the Fall was to empower new Senators, this has been less
than effective. New senators are just beginning to find their way and
are reticent to question the wisdom of a budget handed to them by more
experienced officers like the President, Treasurer and (often) Speaker.
Situations are also encountered where the executive assumes that certain
budgetary line items will be approved and preemptively spends the money
(such as Athletics Weekend), effectively circumventing Senate's
oversight responsibility. Not having an approved budget until mid
October also hampers the ability of the Executive and it's Committees to
engage in activities and programming early in the term.
If other people in the UA agree that this is an important enough issue,
I encourage you to re-investigate the possibility of making changes in
the budget calendar and taking a closer look at the pros and cons of
different options. In the end, the balance will almost always be between
empowering the current (or most recently) elected representatives and
having an experienced enough group of Senators calling the shots that
they can serve as a meaningful check against executive overreaching or
"mission creep."
Yours in the UA,
Andrew L.
Alex Schwendner wrote:
> I would like to advocate that our budgeting goal should be to allocate
> more money to student groups. Here's why:
>
> Our goal, as the Undergraduate Association, is to make things better
> for undergraduates. When it comes to money, this means that we should
> see that money gets spent on the things which most benefit MIT
> undergraduates. This might mean that we spend the money ourselves or
> this might mean that we give it to student groups who can use it.
> There are plenty of student groups who do wonderful and amazing
> things. All of us can think of student groups which get much of their
> funding from the UA which have made our time at MIT more worthwhile.
> Our goal, as the UA, should not be to do awesome things, but rather to
> see that awesome things get done.
>
> Sometimes, of course, this will mean that we should spend money on
> projects conceived by the UA and sometimes this will mean that we
> should give money to student groups. However, there is a natural,
> institutional bias toward spending the money ourselves. We need to
> fight that bias. Since we, the UA, get first crack at the money, it's
> easy to think of cool things which we can do with the money while
> forgetting about the very real and very cool things which student
> groups will *not* be able to do without that money. We can see this
> "mission creep" in UA funding in the way that the money allocated to
> UA committees has increased in past years. Yes, the UA does more with
> the increased money, but it is not always clear that it's spent better
> than it could be spent by student groups. The standards which hold for
> receiving funding from the UA general budget should be analogous to
> the standards which hold for receiving funding from UA Finboard. I
> will note that while UA committees received basically everything that
> they asked for in the Fall UA budget, student groups which applied to
> UA Finboard received less than 30% of their requests in the most
> recent funding cycle.
>
> Therefore, during the Spring 2010 budgeting process, I intend to push
> for allocating more money for student groups. Projects which we choose
> not to fund from the UA general budget can seek funding through UA
> Finboard, from LEF or ARCADE, from the MIT Administration, or from
> other funding sources.
>
> Please discuss.
>
> Alex Schwendner
>
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 12:52 AM, Alex Dehnert (UA Treasurer)
> <ua-treasurer@mit.edu> wrote:
>
>>> As several people have pointed out, the UA spends quite a bit of money on
>>> events (about a third of last semester's budget) and focused projects (like
>>> PLUS --- about a tenth of last semester's UA budget). As Andrew Lukmann
>>> pointed out last week, committees are spending almost twice as much in Fall
>>> 2009's budget as in Spring 2007's budget.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, it is now a little bit late to make major changes to the
>>> Fall 2009 budget. Last week's meeting was intended to allow that, and we
>>> spent a great deal of time on it then. I also solicited feedback late Friday
>>> night (or really Saturday morning), and didn't receive any. Of course, you
>>> are well within your rights to amend the budget at this point. (Though
>>> Athletics Weekend has already happened, so I'd rather you didn't amend
>>> that...)
>>>
>>> However, the Spring 2010 budget has not begun being compiled. In preparing
>>> the the Fall 2009 budget, I (and I believe committee chairs and the Special
>>> Budgetary Committee) generally followed precedent as to events and amounts.
>>>
>>> In some sense, there are (at least) two options for guiding principles to
>>> take in producing the budget:
>>> (1) Many of the UA-run events are more useful than the events and
>>> programming (Finboard-funded) student groups would spend the money on
>>> (2) Alternatively, that events and programs such as Athletics Weekend or
>>> PLUS aren't worth taking the money away from those student groups
>>>
>>> We've recently been defaulting to the former guiding principle. However, I
>>> would encourage the Senate to seriously consider which is preferable and
>>> pass appropriate legislation indicating a preference.
>>>
>>> I would be *thrilled* to have such guidance, and would happily incorporate
>>> it into next semester's budget. (I warn you, however, that committee chairs
>>> will probably be asked to begin budgeting in about two weeks.)
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Alex Dehnert
>>> UA Treasurer
>>>
