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The Trouble With OSPIRG

The debate surrounding OSPIRG's role on the UO campus may have died down, but it hasn't stopped the organization from violating the ASUO Constitution.

Hit a bull's eye enough times, and the target just isn't much use anymore; the easiest target to hit is always the biggest. At the University of Oregon, perhaps the most frequent sitting duck (so to speak) is the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group, known to most students as OSPIRG.

While the organization lost funding in 1998 and a massive controversy erupted when an attempt was made to refund the group during the winter term of 1999, the question of OSPIRG's role on campus has not been at forefront of discussion this year to date.

However, trouble may be afoot for OSPIRG once again.

OSPIRG is unique from all other student groups in that instead of submitting a line item budget to the ASUO Programs Finance Committee (the PFC,) which allocates $2 million worth of incidental fees to over 90 student groups), it goes to the ballot every two years to seek the popular support of the student body. In off years, their budget is submitted to the PFC for approval, and each year that this has happened, the organization has been rubber stamped on the good faith of the student vote.

One of the chief criticisms in 1998 was that the money allocated to OSPIRG on a biannual basis was unaccountable to students; the lump sum subsidy was sent directly to Portland and little, if any effort was made to demonstrate if and how that money returned to the campus where it originated.

This argument was persuasive enough to that year's voting populace to deny the group funding for the first time in 27 years.

The next year, when the unsubsidized Committee to Re-Establish OSPIRG was founded in its wake, the state group that is supported by the student money issued an estimated budget to explain where the money went to. The statewide budget, divided into nine areas (see the graphic on the page 11), includes one particularly questionable item.

According to OSPIRG itself, three cents out of every incidental fee dollar is put toward fundraising.

According to Senate Rule 9.13(b)(B), "Incidental fees shall not be allocated for ... Fundraising, the purpose of which is to generate funds for a purpose that could not otherwise be funded by incidental fees." Though OSPIRG's money is not allocated by the Senate, in light of current rules, this is a problem.

The Clark Document is the governing charter that recognizes student governments such as our own to collect incidental fees from enrolled students. OSU, Portland State, and all other public universities in the state of Oregon finance student governments like our own under the power of the Clark Document, though none so large as the ASUO.

This year, the Oregon State Board of Higher Education modified the Clark Document to require student ballot measures to adhere to the same standards that all other ASUO programs must follow. Technically, until this year, a loophole existed whereby OSPIRG would be allowed to allocate funds in such a manner that no other group (providing they did not seek their primary funding by the popular vote) would be.

In years past, this had not been an issue. According to ASUO President Wylie Chen, "The Clark Document was just changed to bind all ballot measures to the Green Tape Notebook, but prior to this year the ballot measures were not bound by ASUO rules."

For the purposes of this article, several attempts were made to conduct an in-person interview first with Chapter Chair Erin Pursell and then with (state) Board Chair Merriah Fairchild; the Commentator was eventually successful in obtaining a brief e-mail interview with Ms. Fairchild.

When presented with this incongruity, Fairchild dismissed the notion that student fees were being put toward fundraising. "A. Fundraising is not Fee money," she wrote. " B. The fundraising that we do do [sic] starts and ends with the Environmental Federation of Oregon, the [sic] money you see here is from the EFO for the EFO, it just happens to be part of the student budget." Regardless of whether the use of the fee was in conflict with the Constitution prior to this year, the PIRG's leadership seems confused as to the use of the fee. Fairchild asserts that no incidental fee money is put toward the organization's budget, yet the graph to the right appears to contradict her statement. Indeed, on OSPIRG's web site, the sentence "How the Approximate $2.88 per student per term of the UO Incidental Fee that goes to OSPIRG is spent, by program area" precedes the explanatory pie chart. Either the information provided to the students of the University is erroneous, or Fairchild's statement is; either way, OSPIRG directly contradicts itself.

This information can be obtained at: http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~ospirg/qanda.htm Additionally, the Environmental Federation of Oregon Fairchild mentioned, a coalition of 28 Oregon environmental groups that raises money for "Oregon's leading environmental groups," requires that for a member organization to receive fundraised benefits, they must first put money into the EFO; that could only have been Fee money.

While this has yet to come up, "the following year it may be an issue," Chen said. Fairchild on the other hand did not address the issue at all, and Chen indicated that he had not heard of it from OSPIRG.

The second and more pressing issue is the constitutionality of OSPIRG's practice of going to the ballot every two years. Section C of the Clark Document states: "Multiple-year funding commitments can only be approved for students provided by agencies or programs external to (not managed by) the EMU, ASUO and Athletic Department or for capital projects." The reason for this is simple; the three aforementioned administrative bodies are the only three areas which receive incidental fee dollars.

Student fees go to the Athletic Dept. to subsidize student seating at sporting events, money is allocated to the EMU for the use of all students, and as previously stated, the ASUO funds all manner of student groups that are generally open to all who pay the fee.

The problem is that OSPIRG, while not receiving its funding in the traditional method that other groups do, is no less under the jurisdiction of the ASUO, and for them to be receiving multiple year funding commitments is in violation of the Clark Document - a violation not just of ASUO regulations, but of state law.

The first year of OSPIRG's funding supposedly complies with the law; for the group to receive its funding for a second consecutive year, it would not.

"Everything was approved and nothing has actually been broken as of this year," Chen said, "because it has only been a year of funding." However, this issue was overlooked by last year's Constitution Court when the measure went to the ballot. The ASUO Executive also passed along the measure, though Geneva Wortman and Morgan Cowling would have been less likely to hold up the measure on constitutional grounds; their legacy stand as having called a quasi-legal special election which could have refunded the group. Regardless, the measure placed on the ballot during the regular elections of 1999 still did not comply with the law.

Conceivably, the ASUO as a governmental body would face losing its privilege to collect student fees were OSPIRG to receive a second year of funding in this manner.

To defend against this possibility, at the February 17 Student Senate meeting, the Senate voted to move the second year of OSPIRG's budget into the jurisdiction of the PFC, alongside the rest of the ASUO programs. The two Senators who voted against this move were Shantell Rice and Emily Owens Sedgwick, Chair and Vice-Chair of the PFC, respectively.

This highly unusual move solves the problem for the time being, though it does not address the fact that the money was allocated incorrectly to begin with.

Now that OSPIRG is, at least for the time being, subject to the the PFC, the possibility exists that it could be required, like all other groups, to submit a line item budget and obtain its money through the ASUO Comptroller's office via purchase orders. This is not what happened. Instead, the Senate approved the budget as is, and the issue is more or less at rest.

The year following, however, the group must comply with the Clark Document, now that this is out in the open. "They would have to, from now on," stated Chen.

When asked what the implications of going to the ballot yearly would be, Fairchild would only say "I don't know."

The primary debate has never centered around OSPIRG's purported goals - improvement of the environment, advocation of consumer rights, etc. - but rather around the legitimacy of their organization.

These recent developments only reinforce the longstanding arguments against the PIRG, and yet the OSPIRG continues to feign indifference to the rules that everyone else must abide by.

William Beutler, a junior majoring in English and Journalism, is Editor-in-Chief for the Oregon Commentator