After unearthing an accounting error that all but nullified a term’s worth of funding decisions on some of the most important services the ASUO funds, the student government’s leaders are expected to approve a budget tonight that will provide only bare-bones funding for every contract the ASUO administers.
The Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee budget includes allocations to pay for child care services, lawyers to serve students, and the agreement that allows students to present their ID cards in exchange for free Lane Transit District bus service, among others.
Even the amount spent on football tickets will decrease, but that is mostly because there will be only six home games in 2010, as opposed to seven in 2009.
Because of the tight budget, the ASUO expects to stop offering The New York Times for free, and has already cancelled plans to extend the hours for a lawyer to help students fight University disciplinary action. The new budget will also force the ASUO to ask LTD to allow it to pay less for next year’s bus pass program than the 79 other organizations with agreements do.
“We need to slash budgets,” ASUO contract negotiator Hailey Sheldon said.
The austerity originated when the ASUO’s contract negotiators realized they made their budget decisions for the coming year based upon a false assumption: that ASUO spent about $120,000 more on contracts than it actually did. That money, it turned out, actually came from about $100,000 raised through a tax credit program and $20,000 from the University administration.
That presents a problem for the ASUO, which has long avoided increasing overall committee budgets allocations by more than 7 percent.  Paying for all the services the
ASUO intended to in 2010–11 would have increased the $3.5 million budget for contracts by about $280,000. That would have been an 8-percent increase, whereas the new proposed budget is a 5.6-percent increase.
“I know it’s legal under state law, but I don’t think it’s consistent with ASUO budget practice,” contract negotiator Ben Eckstein said of the 8-percent increase.
To avoid it, contract negotiators decided to cut all services from their contracts that their funds didn’t provide in 2009–10.
The ASUO Senate must now vote on whether to adopt the budget, after which the ASUO faces difficult deliberations with LTD. ASUO negotiators hope they can persuade LTD to allow them to pay $15.12 per student per term, last year’s rate, rather than the current rate of $15.96.
The ASUO hopes LTD needs the ASUO’s money as much as the ASUO needs LTD’s services: ASUO funding makes up more than a sixth of LTD’s fare revenue.
“These costs are just them, in hard economic times, demanding a higher cost from us,”
Alex McCafferty said, another contract negotiator and one of the likely candidates to run for ASUO president.
Andy Vobora, an LTD director who negotiates the ASUO contract, said LTD probably would not settle for less than the current rate unless the ASUO can promise to
eventually pay the cost at that rate.
“I’d have to explain to (Lane Community College) or everybody else in our program why the U of O is being treated differently,”
Vobora said. “What our offer is is, ‘That’s the rate that they need to pay to get the group pass.’”
Vobora said LTD would also consider asking to reduce the late-night hours on the 79x route, which the ASUO pays extra for, to fund the overall service.
 
DFC reduces overall 2010-11 budget, funds all-night library
While the ASUO’s contract negotiators struggle to rein in the increases requested for contracts, the ASUO’s Department Finance Committee has actually reduced its budget.
The committee, upon whose budget the ASUO Senate will also vote tonight, allocates money to University departments that require partial funding from the ASUO — Campus Recycling and the marching band, for instance. It is the smallest budget the ASUO controls.
The budget reduction, a little less than $4,500, resulted from the University’s decision to wean the Career Center off funding from the ASUO.
Removing the ASUO’s roughly $108,000 contribution to the center from the ASUO’s ledger allowed the finance committee to find permanent funding for the Knight Library’s all-night hours, which have been funded through temporary infusions from the ASUO since fall 2008. It also allowed the DFC to increase its contribution to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Education and Support Services by more than $30,000.
The final budget for the committee will be $973,424.
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