Correction made on 4/19 at 1:40 pm: the use of “overspent” is incorrect, as the money would have been spent anyway as it is necessary for stipends, it just remained unaccounted for in budget presentations because of an error.
The Associated Student Government (ASG) House of Representatives unanimously voted to make an emergency withdrawal of 5,441 dollars from their operational reserves budget in late March. This decision came after ASG executives realized that they overspent $18,900 this year.
This withdrawal will not affect student fees and only reduces the amount of money ASG has saved for unexpected costs. There was a high level of importance to this reserve pull because they needed the funding to pay themselves and host the annual MAVawards.
ASG Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Hollar oversees the budget and stated he had no help from the previous administration and was misinformed on where the funds to pay their own stipends is supposed to come from. Consequently, Hollar was under the false impression that their operations budget was to be used entirely for events and “non-discretionary spending.” Before anyone realized the mistake, the money was already gone.
“[Hollar] didn’t receive a transition report from the last administration, which kind of led to this whole situation because the previous Chief Financial Officer should have [indicated which part of the budget stipends are deducted from] in the transition report,” ASG President Cy Shimamura said.
Transition reports are summaries of a position that all student organization leaders are required to complete before they are replaced. These have been mandatory for years, but there is nothing in place to hold these students accountable, especially if they graduate.
Regardless, Shimamura said that he has been checking in with his administration and other student organizations to guarantee that everyone writes their transition report. ASG Chief of Staff David Proctor also emphasized their goal to thoroughly train next year’s administration.
“Our plan is, at least with whoever wins this next election, to work with their team for at least a whole week or two, one on one,” Proctor said. “[We will do this] as many hours of the day that we can to make sure that they’re ready to take on these roles, because these are serious roles, and I think that people need to understand that.”
In spite of this financial mistake, ASG maintains that they have fulfilled their duties to the best of their capabilities. Proctor also explained how the ordeal has served as a lesson on the importance of cooperation and transition.
“We did a really good job because Cy, me and Jimmy had previous ASG experience, so we were able to go off what we knew. It’s definitely been a learning curve because we were thrown in, and it definitely showed what a lack of a smooth, peaceful transition [causes],” Proctor said.
