The spirit of quorum-killing walkouts has travelled from the halls of the Wisconsin legislature to the ASUO. Seven senators left before taking a vote Wednesday night to overturn ASUO President Amelie Rousseau’s veto of the contentious Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee’s budget.
After the 17 senators who attended the meeting authorized surplus and transfer requests from the six groups who attended, Sen. Max Barkley made a motion to recess for three minutes. Typically, this motion is made when senators need to make calculations or need a break from the proceedings; however, it soon became clear that the seven who left would not return that evening.
All seven who left voted against funding the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group at its earlier public hearing on Feb. 23, in addition to voting for a previous veto override vote that failed last month.
Sen. Kaitlyn Lange said those who left did so because they did not see the vote on a second override being different from the first.
“They have the votes … so we talked to (Constitution) Court today,” Lange said. “They said that we had two days to override and we’re using all of (those) two days.”
Lange said that according to the opinion they received from Con Court, after tonight at midnight the budget goes on to the administration as it stands — without OSPIRG.
Because of an email error in the Con Court, a discussion was released to all on the “Con Court decisions” listserv (a collection of a group’s email addresses), which indicated as much.
“The President only get(s) the budget — in my opinion — when the Senate evidence(s) inaction,” Con Court Chief Justice Andrae Washington said. “The Senate has made itself clear the budget veto is valid. However, in the absence of anything further … the budget likely stays as is and goes to University Admin.”
The official ruling was not posted on the ASUO’s website as of the Emerald’s press deadline.
­
[email protected]