Students approved a ballot measure in last week’s election that makes it easier for the ASUO to manipulate setting the incidental fee.
Next year, the ASUO’s incidental fee-allocating committees will no longer be limited to an individual growth cap. Instead, its entire budget will now be limited to grow by no more than 7 percent each year.
In the past, for example, the committee currently dealing with contracted services could only grow by 7 percent regardless of other actions in the ASUO, but now that committee’s growth could be higher as long as other committees’ budgets decrease accordingly.
Ballot Measure 2, resoundingly passing with 61.3 percent of the vote, changes the growth cap of the incidental fee in the ASUO Constitution. Though four of last week’s ballot measures asked simple questions starting with phrases like “Should the University …,” Measure 2 actually implicated ASUO Constitutional amendments, adjusting incidental fee allocations in the four ASUO finance committees.
The measure was listed between the request for an advisory opinion about funding Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group and bringing back the EMU Post Office. It sets a growth cap of seven percent for the entire ASUO budget, rather than individually for the Department Finance Committee, EMU Board, Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee and Programs Finance Committee.
The election’s primary slates held two distinctly different opinions regarding the measure.
Students United supporter Demic Tipitino, a former ASUO senator, said he didn’t like how the measure was described.
“(It) was misleading to the general public, hinting that pressure would be on fees to decrease and not increase, which is actually the case,” Tipitino said.
However, Ben and Katie supporter Ben Bowman said passing the measure will allow the ASUO to be more flexible.
“It will ensure that the services students need and care about, like LTD bus passes and football tickets, can be paid for every year,” Bowman said. “With DFC’s budget decreasing every year and ACFC’s budget constantly bordering the 7 percent cap, it just makes sense.”
In fact, the situation Bowman described above is exactly what happened this past year. DFC has cut several large budgets in the last few years, working with the administration to fund them from University-offered services, rather than from the incidental fee. Meanwhile, the ACFC has recently seen massive increases in its contracts, largely because of increases in enrollment.
This measure will apply to next year’s budget, meaning any increase or decrease to the incidental fee will not happen until the year after.
 
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