USAC budget report leads to concerns over slate politics

An undergraduate student government quarterly budget report will now be headed by an independent body instead of a specific office, following concerns of a slate bias skewing the results of the report and potentially creating a hierarchy between offices.

Some members of the Undergraduate Students Association Council voiced concerns about the Internal Vice President’s Office heading the report. They also said they did not approve of fourth-year mathematics/economics student Ken Myers, the former chair of the Bruins United slate and a current member of the Internal Vice President’s Office, conducting interviews and compiling information about office budgets.

Members of the Internal Vice President’s Office began to reach out to councilmembers in early October about meeting to talk about each office’s finances and produce a USAC-wide quarterly budget report.

Myers told USAC that he would go over each councilmember’s budget and compile information about how and why student fees were spent. Myers would then send councilmembers the notes he took at each meeting and have them put in edits if necessary to ensure that their reasons for spending money were accurate. The Internal Vice President’s Office also reached out to the Daily Bruin about the report and including a reporter in the process to make sure the report was unbiased.

Creating a budget report was one of the initiatives that Internal Vice President Avi Oved campaigned on during spring elections. Oved said he put Myers in charge of the report because of Myers’ previous experience dealing with financial matters and conducting similar reports.

The report is aimed at increasing the transparency of USAC and showing students how their fees are spent, while also including councilmembers in the process of explaining their own office budgets, Oved said.

After some USAC councilmembers refused to participate or did not respond to emails from Myers about meeting to talk about their budgets, Oved said he asked fourth-year economics student Jacob Ashendorf, the USAC budget review director and chair of the USAC Funding Study Group, to take on the initiative.

Following the change in leadership, the Funding Study Group will now conduct the report, though the Internal Vice President’s Office will still be involved in the process, Oved said.

“I’m not going to let petty politics get in the way of what I’m supposed to do,” Oved said. “In order to have everyone else jump on board, I’m willing to make changes.”

Of the 13 councilmembers currently on the board, six ran with the Bruins United slate during elections, four ran with the LET’S ACT! slate and three ran as independents. Oved is a member of the Bruins United slate.

External Vice President Maryssa Hall, a member of LET’S ACT!, voiced her disapproval of the budget report and Myers’ involvement more blatantly than some other councilmembers.

Hall said she did not think Myers or Oved can understand the complexity of her office’s budget and fully convey the purpose of her financial decisions in the report. She added that she thinks the report would be inherently biased because it is housed in one USAC office and because of Myers’ history as slate chair.

“No USAC offices should be serving as a check and balance for other offices,” Hall said.

USAC President John Joanino said he thinks the quarterly budget report is a worthwhile initiative, but having one USAC office take on the project and audit other offices made councilmembers feel uncomfortable.

He said he thinks councilmembers’ concerns about the report stem more from the “awkward” power dynamic it created rather than division over slate affiliations.

“It can’t just be boiled down to slates,” Joanino said.

But some councilmembers said that the conflict exemplifies the prevalent role of slate politics in USAC.

General Representative Sunny Singh, a Bruins United councilmember, said he thinks concerns about slate biases should not apply to this initiative, since the report would only relay the words of the councilmembers to students.

“I don’t think there’s room for slate politics in this,” he said. “If the budget review had comments and a rating scale on how well (money) was being spent, I would sympathize with concerns.”

Oved said he thinks councilmembers’ reactions to the report demonstrate the pervasiveness of slate politics in USAC and the way they hinder councilmembers’ progress and collaboration.

Student Wellness Commissioner Savannah Badalich, an independent candidate, said she thinks involving Myers in the report caused Oved’s initiative to suffer and that the report should come from a body that cannot be perceived as biased, since slate politics influence the decisions of councilmembers regularly.

For now, details about how Ashendorf and the Internal Vice President’s Office intend to move forward with the report are unclear. Oved said he plans to meet with Ashendorf, Myers and other individuals involved in the project this week to discuss how they should proceed.