An accounting error made fall term will force the ASUO Programs Finance Committee to recall, and possibly cut, a number of student groups’ budgets already approved for next year.
PFC will decide what budgets will get a second look and what cuts will be made starting Tuesday night, the day after regular budget hearings end.
The problem occurred in the days before Thanksgiving break when PFC had to calculate the cost of incorporating groups that had previously gone to the student ballot for funding into its budget — a total of more than $1.2 million.
The 10 groups, including OSPIRG and the Career Center, couldn’t go to the ballot after the U.S. Supreme Court changed the way student groups are funded with its Southworth decision.
With only one night to convert projected 2002-03 enrollment numbers into incidental fee fund totals, ASUO Accounting Coordinator Jennifer Creighton accidentally calculated the cost of funding those groups for one term, not three.
The enrollment numbers came from EMU Director of Student Activities Gregg Lobisser right before the mandated Nov. 15 deadline, which forced Creighton to work fast and produce a fee total before PFC’s Nov. 16, 8 a.m. budget meeting.
The error made the groups appear to cost about $536,000 less they actually did, and PFC used the figure the next morning to set its 68 percent increase for the entire programs budget.
With the error corrected, the programs budget increase, known as the benchmark, tops 90 percent, more than allowed after the fall ASUO Special Election that decided the total budget can’t increase by more than 80 percent.
Usually, PFC can’t increase its budget by more than 7 percent per year. The ballot measure granted the committee a one-year exception.
“We thought we had a nice cushion” between 68 and 90 percent, PFC Chairwoman Mary Elizabeth Madden said. “Sometimes something little gets overlooked. Sometimes something little costs several thousand dollars.”
She said PFC caught the error earlier this week when members noticed they were already pushing the 68 percent benchmark.
Although the recall process starts Tuesday, Madden said no decisions have been made about what budgets will be recalled and where they will find the 10 percent to get back under the 80 percent benchmark. She said a budget may receive a total decrease, or PFC may cut from specific line items in a budget.
“People are just thinking of ideas,” she said.
Creighton took full responsibility for the error, but added that it didn’t help having the deadlines for the special election, enrollment figures, fee totals and PFC benchmark to the ASUO Student Senate all hit during the same week.
“There were just too many deadlines pushed together,” she said.
Creighton and Madden said the ASUO wants to move forward the deadline for enrollment figures, which is set in the ASUO’s Clark Document, and Lobisser agreed.
Lobisser sits on a committee of administrators that projects the coming year’s enrollment, but he is responsible for delivering to the ASUO numbers that affect student fees.
“It really is a bit of a crystal ball effort,” he said.
Lobisser added that after the fourth week of fall term, around Nov. 1, enrollment figures stabilize and the group can make a solid prediction, so the deadline could be moved forward by a week.
He said he delivered the figures right before the deadline this year in part because the group didn’t realize that timing would be an issue.
“I think the special election complicated things this year,” Lobisser said. “Certainly we can back it up a week.”