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USAC to create ad-hoc committee to ensure budget transparency

(Owen Emerson/Daily Bruin senior staff)

By Nicholas Yu

Oct. 14, 2015 9:42 a.m.

The undergraduate student government unanimously voted Tuesday to create a temporary committee that will research how to provide students with more information on councilmembers’ budgets.

Academic Affairs Commissioner Trent Kajikawa suggested three weeks ago councilmembers provide public line-by-line budget expenses at a council meeting because the only way students can currently access a commission’s budget is through Student Government Accounting, which is in charge of processing student government expenses.

“Students should not have to go through our requisition forms to find out what we are doing with student fees,” Kajikawa said of the documents of each councilmember’s purchases and allocation.

Several councilmembers believe their budget is not easily accessible and making them available would allow students to hold councilmembers accountable for their expenses. Other councilmembers voiced their criticism against creating line-by-line expenses, suggesting instead Kajikawa create an ad-hoc committee that would determine a realistic solution that would increase transparency.

Cultural Affairs Commissioner Amy Shao said councilmembers who control hundred of thousands of dollars each, such as herself and Campus Events Commissioner Lexi Mossler, do not have enought time to create line-by-line expenses.

“I wish my budget looked so clean,” Shao said about Kajikawa’s 14-line expense report for fall quarter. “(Producing line-by-line expenses) of each specific allocation could get very crowded.”

Mossler added she would not find it feasible to have each commission record each time they bought a colored pencil.

Other councilmembers such as External Vice President Zach Helder raised questions about the work and time it would take to create line-by-line expenses.

“There’s a certain cost associated with the labor and time it takes to make these transactions public,” Helder said.

Helder added the council should use student fees as efficiently as possible and consider the extra costs required to make these budget reports more detailed.

Theodore Nguyen, a fourth-year mathematics of computation student, said he thinks students would be able to evaluate each councilmember’s use of student fees if budgets were publicly available to students.

“Right now, (councilmembers) spend our student fees and no one knows how it is being used,” Nguyen said.

General Representative Danny Siegel, Community Service Commissioner Zach Dameron, Transfer Student Representative Ariel Rafalian, Financial Support Commissioner Ruhi Patil, Facilities Commissioner Ian Cocroft and Kajikawa will sit on the committee.

Kajikawa said he hopes the committee will come up with a new method to increase budget transparency that can be implemented during his term.

“I have around eight months left, so let’s take a step back, and see what we can do to increase interacting with the student body,” Kajikawa added.

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Nicholas Yu | Assistant news editor
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