The ASUO Constitution Court issued a stay Friday to halt the ASUO Programs Finance Committee’s budget recall process, placing the entire PFC budgeting process in limbo until the court makes a decision.
PFC is scheduled to present its budget to Student Senate on Wednesday, but at least one PFC member already has suggested the committee will have to push back its timeline.
Oregon Daily Emerald Editor in Chief Michael J. Kleckner filed a petition for review with the court Friday morning, asking justices to halt the recall process because PFC has no established procedures or protocols governing budget recalls.
“I was concerned that without a process, written and approved by the Constitution Court — as all PFC rules have to be — there’s no way for anyone to know whether it’s being done fairly,” Kleckner said.
PFC members have acknowledged that they have not written down any concrete guidelines for such a process.
“There aren’t any rules about recalls,” PFC senator seat No. 3 Mike Sherman said. “At least, I can’t find any in our bylaws.”
In the petition, Kleckner requests that the court “find it unconstitutional for the ASUO Programs Finance Committee to vote on or conduct recall hearings until such time as the rules and procedures governing recall hearings have been published, approved by the ASUO Constitution Court and distributed to all hearing participants.”
PFC voted to recall the Emerald’s and the Career Center’s student fee allocation Thursday. However, PFC’s vote took place before the committee actually voted on whether to discuss recalls. The newspaper’s budget was initially approved Feb. 6 at $123,370, a 2.81 percent increase, while the Career Center’s budget of $210,325, a 13.82 percent increase, was initially approved Jan. 27.
Kleckner said his objection to a recall is that no one can determine if PFC’s actions follow procedure because the committee has not provided criteria that define when, where or how groups can be recalled.
PFC already voted to recall four other groups’ budgets — Student Senate, PFC, Child Care Subsidy and the Multicultural Center. The Emerald’s and the Career Center’s budget recall hearings were scheduled to take place today, but the court’s stay forbids PFC from proceeding until justices can reach a decision about Kleckner’s petition.
Other student groups have had problems with PFC’s processes of reviewing budget proposals this year. Kit Douglas, campus organizer for the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group, said the committee failed to give OSPIRG members sufficient notice of their appeal.
“We didn’t ever receive any type of e-mail or telephone call that the appeal was happening,” Douglas said, although she did add that PFC allowed OSPIRG to switch the appeal to another day.
The committee has consistently maintained that public notice is given when the group posts notices of meetings on the window outside the ASUO controller’s office. PFC Chairwoman Kate Shull said she told all program budget managers last year about the window-posting system that gave groups their required notice. But Douglas said as the new OSPIRG leader, she was never informed about the policy.
Charlotte Nisser, general manager for campus radio station KWVA 88.1, said PFC’s sometimes ambiguous methods of operation caused difficulties in the group’s presentation of their budget proposal — and subsequent appeal. Nisser said KWVA was not informed about the proper procedures to follow, and PFC did not give the group enough advance notice of the date of its appeal.
“We didn’t know what to expect … I wasn’t told what the process would be,” Nisser said.
Constitution Court Justice Michael Harris said he needs to talk about Kleckner’s petition with the four other justices, and he promised that the court will reach a decision with “all due haste.”
He added that once the court decides to convene, the process will go forward as rapidly as possible. Unless justices decide to hold a hearing to collect more information, court deliberations will be closed to the public.