Lane Transit District will decide today whether to allow the ASUO to pay a lower rate than every other organization with a similar deal for the contract that allows students to ride public buses by showing their ID cards.
The decision could plunge the student government’s budget into turmoil if it doesn’t go the ASUO’s way.
If LTD acquiesces to the ASUO’s request, it will allow the student government to pay $15.12 per student per term next year, rather than the $15.96 rate other groups pay. ASUO
Sen. Alex McCafferty, who heads the committee that allocates money for student contracts, including the one with LTD, said that at a Friday meeting between ASUO leaders and LTD director Andy Vobora, there was a “head-nod agreement” that LTD would accept the reduced rate.
Vobora suggested otherwise, saying: “There’s no agreement. Again, all we’re doing is discussing the details of their budget situation. We’ll either accept that agreement or we won’t.”
Vobora, who is also LTD’s spokesperson, said there had been no agreement, but that he and LTD’s general manager would meet today to decide whether to accept the lower rate.
At stake for LTD is more than $50,000 in revenue it would have made from the ASUO’s contract at the higher rate. That’s money the transit provider could have used as high state unemployment withers its major source of income: taxes on business payrolls.
That’s why LTD increased the amount it charges organizations to sign up groups of people for free bus service from $15.12 per person per three months to $15.96. The ASUO’s contract, worth more than $1 million, is the second-largest LTD has, behind the county’s schools. The ASUO’s money makes up just less than 3 percent of LTD’s budget.
But the ASUO is also in a difficult situation financially. Its Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee, which McCafferty chairs, had been prepared to pay LTD at the new, higher rate. Then, about a week before the budget was due to be finalized, the ASUO discovered a problem: The previous amount had been agreed upon under the assumption that the ASUO had spent about $120,000 more on contracts for the current school year than it actually did.
That was significant because the ASUO traditionally has never increased the budget administered by any one committee by more than 7 percent. That precedent used to be legally mandated, but a reorganizing in 2008 of the structure of the ASUO’s committees means that for the ACFC and two other of the ASUO’s committees, it no longer is.
Nevertheless, it is a precedent those in student government are loath to break.
Those in charge of negotiations at both LTD and the ASUO said they sympathized with the budget restrictions of their opposite numbers. McCafferty said there was “a 95 percent chance” that LTD would accept the ASUO’s proposal.
“We certainly understand the dilemma that the ASUO is in,” Vobora said Sunday. “We appreciate the effort that they’ve made and their interest in maintaining the program, so hopefully we’ll have an agreement tomorrow.”
If an agreement is not reached, it will mean problems for the ASUO. “I don’t know what action we would take should LTD decide not to accept,” McCafferty said. “Again, I think there’s a 95 percent chance that it will be accepted, and I’m not going to speculate on what would happen.”
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