Dear Senate President Gilkey,

I am formally requesting that my e-mail transmitted to you this morning titled "Gross Innacuracies" be posted on the Senate Web Page and subsequently distribute to the UO Senators because I feel that it would be of value to them. Thank you for the information, as I am not aware of formalities in procedure needed to accomplish this task.

Aaron Weck Programs Finance Member Junior, Biochemistry E-mail: pestlnce@gladstone.uoregon.edu

To whom it may concern at the Emerald,

As a member of the Programs Finance Committee I feel that you have done the students a huge disservice by printing biased and inaccurate information. The Executive is the one who makes the benchmark and we follow their guidelines for budget growth as does ADFC and EMU Board. The Executive also makes recommendations on every budget that we see. Many of their recommendations were used and many had budget cuts in them. They are in every way responsible for the outcome of any guidelines we had to follow to achieve our benchmark goal. If they didn't want a 0% benchmark then they should have not recommended it. Since they did, we are mandated to this and hold them to it as well. Also, every group was based on the merits of post-close spending as well as the Executive recommendation, the current years spending, their proposal defense (all information submitted to support their budget proposal), and the value of their programming to the student population. Most of the cuts this year were in adjusting administrative expenses to actual years spending of all the groups. Our big priority for the year was to promote programming and not more office supplies and long distance phone calls. I am very disappointed that your reporters did not pick up on this as the year progressed. Ask yourself this question, Do you care about where you spend your checking account? Would your parents give you 15,000$ for school then be happy if you spent it on going to Europe for 3 months. Would they give you more money? The answer is...No. This is fiscal accountability and responsibility. When a program does not use their money effectively and then wants more money, it is not likely to happen. If they were responsible programs, we gave them some or all of what they asked. So this could be considered a scorecard of how fiscally responsible the student programs are. I would be happy to show you the evidence for every one of the about 100 groups budgets where the changes occurred and why. The amount spent this year was almost 6% higher than the amount spent last year on the student fee as the PFC shuffled money from those groups who were not up to accountability standards to those who have an outstanding record. Within this increase the $60,000 for DDS, and all mandated OPEU raises were factored. The actual benchmark then is +3.5%. Much of the rest is accounted for in the new MCC position. If a group asks for money and then does not use it, many other deserving student programs suffer because they cannot get that money. With significant misuse and budget rollovers in the programming sector of the ASUO in prior years, we were asked by the Executive and Senate to make this area more accountable and have less rollover into surplus. This we did. If you look at the actual budgets given, and I am quite sure most people have not, you will see that programming will not be significantly changed for next year at all. If any group like DDS felt that the PFC recommendation would hurt their programming, they could appeal. Some did, including DDS, who we heard and changed their budget to approximately $63,000 from the reported $50,000. The Programs Finance Committee acted in the most unbiased and professional manner that is possible for a group of 6 college students (read our by-laws - http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~pfc). We set our standards by the Executives' guidelines and then held the programming sector including ourselves, Senate, and Executive to those guidelines. We are dealing with more than 2 million dollars here, it is not a joke job. We take it very seriously. It is also not a place for personal agendas or politics. We all made an agreement at the beginning of the year that there was to be neither in our Programs Finance Committee this year. We fulfilled this obligation as anyone who transgressed these guidelines would have been asked to resign. We asked all groups to meet the same high bar of standards students might expect from a program receiving between $300 and $250,000 dollars from the Students of the University of Oregon. Of course meeting a high standards level is not easy and if you think that the students do not deserve accountability for their money you should reconsider. I implore you to print this letter as an editorial to counter your unbalanced reporting. The numbers that you reported were false. I ask you to print a retraction of some of the misleading information you printed in your daily.

Quote and Answer from the Friday, February 11th 2000, Oregon Daily Emerald. The quotes are direct from the three stories printed on the above date.

Quote: "Everyone after [the MCC] suffered," he (Wagner, the Director of the SBA) said. He said he thinks the outcome of the hearing would have been different had they presented their budget at the beginning of the hearing process. "It just seems like [the PFC is] locked now, because they committed to a 0-percent benchmark," he said.

Answer: Um, no. Um, also no. And no again. We used the merits of each group to determine the budget for that group. The benchmark is the bar (the guidelines we look at all groups by, as described in the above section) that ALL groups were equally required to meet before and after the MCC. The MCC happened to be the one exception this year and they should not be penalized for trying to bring diversity to this campus. This is an area that the PFC and the MCC felt our University has done very poorly and we as students should support. Their presentation and planning for this position was well thought out, the budget they proposed took the cuts to make this the priority, and the University will benefit immesurably from this. I feel that this person is reacting on an emotional basis and does not in this case have a good foundation for argument.

Quote: The Designated Driver Shuttle took one of the biggest hits when the PFC cut its budget by 30.18 percent from $72,282 to $50,876.

Answer: No. These numbers are wrong and the Emerald did not show up to their appeal. The number is about $63,000 now. This is to continue the program at the current service level accounting for the major lag during the summer months. They will go to ballot for a new van, and I wholehartedly support them in this. Please do support it, as they really do need one. We approved most the areas of increase that would allow them to maitain and improve the quality of the vans. We also reinstated the pay scales that they use to allow DDS to operate until a formal policy on pay from Student Fee dollars is in place.

Quote: The Student Bar Association's budget was also decreased by 30 percent. Paul Wagner, a third-year law student and president of the Student Bar Association said he feels that PFC members did not even listen to the presentation about the group.

"The whole thing has just been a complete sham," Wagner said.

Answer: The Student Bar Association had a huge rollover (on the order of about 30% of their budget), had done no programming or any spending at all as of the budget meeting (except draw their stipends), and had violated expenditure rules on 5 occasions last year. This is a grossly negligent pattern of spending. Also they had no justifications for these problems except to blame others (the PFC, the ASUO Controllers, being in Law School) for their financial woes. The discussion including their 10 minute presentation was about 30 minutes. We listen to every presentation carefully. I felt that they did not address the problems, and when we asked why? and what? and how? we recieved indignant responses as if we had no right to ask them for explanations. This attitude has continued into the public forum. Their budget for next year will reflect the actual spending of last year. They were very unhappy with this, and should have appealed the decision if they felt it was unfair. Every group has the right to appeal the PFC decision. The fact he felt it was a sham might reflect the anger he feels for being caught with his pants down. We on PFC expect groups to be accountable for their compliance with the rules, and their appropriate use of Student Fees. It in fact is not a sham. My suggestion is that they take their budget as seriously as we do.

Quote: "Since the dust has settled, several student groups are now left with less financial resources to maintain the programs they feel are essential to nurturing diversity and student involvement at the University."

Answer: Wrong. We had an overall increase of 5.9% Look at the PFC website for the numbers. Try and figure what groups are being described, I can't. On second thought...the only one I can think of is the SBA but this is addressed above.

Quote: "The MCC budget went without a fight, yet the ISA was forced to jump through hoops and still didn't get their request," Anoushiravani said.

Answer: The MCC had outstanding planning. The ISA did not in this case. And neither did the Executive.

Quote: "He said he also feels that too much attention is given to paperwork, instead of individual requests. "I think they rely too much on first impressions. We gave them the budget numbers they wanted, but they need to know what's behind the numbers," DeAlbuquerque said."

Answer: It is their job to defend the budget request they present, not ours. We do not hand out checks for fun or personal likes. Ex: Hmmm.. we like this group, so we will just give them the 1250% increase that they want. That does not and should not happen. This is a great deal of Student Money. We also look at every program and try to meet with them to get the idea of what they need prior to their submission of budget. The first impression is not part of the criteria for budget approval.

Quote: "They are only looking at the numbers, not the issues behind them," Ying-Che Chen said.

Answer: Should we ignore the numbers for our own personal and political agendas? And do they not have the opportunity to explain the issues to us before and during their hearing. Also there was a curious lack of programs coming foreword to discuss with us how to design and get the budgets that they need. Our members hold regular office hours and very few groups attended them, or the mandatory meeting for budget planning at the beginning of the year. The groups who attended the mandatory meeting and met with their tag to discuss and plan their budget submission seemed to have significantly less problems than those who did not. Hmmm that's curious. Maybe the programs need to be more responsible about how they use their money and plan their budgets. I would speculate to say that at least half of all budgets were written the night before the due date. Many were late and missing. Financial budget planning is more like a grant proposal than asking mom and dad for spending money. This is a very serious matter and priorities are necessary. Many programs seem to lack fiscal responsibility as a priority and would like to blame the PFC for a budget that reflects this deficiency. The PFC and the Controllers are here to help all groups with their budgeting, accounting, and budget requests. We cannot force them to use these services, but we highly encourage it as it helps them grow and prosper. We may be activists, but we also must be responsible to the students who give up seven million dollars a year so that the University of Oregon may be the place WE want it to be. In a non-growth year asking for increases is generally not honored without great justification through financial records and budget adjustment support. This was made clear to all groups submitting a budget. It is trying if poor program organization causes problems, but we are not parents. By the way, budgets are comprised of numbers. All of us on PFC care about the issues behind the proposal and cannot use that as THE consideration for the funding requested.

Quote: ASUO President Wylie Chen believes the budget cuts are going to result in negative consequences for a large number of programs and University students. "These cuts are going to have huge effects on student programs," Chen said.

Answer: We increased our total budget by 5.9%. Read the numbers, please. There were no deep cuts. Our focus was preserving programming and adjusting administrative expenses to non-wasteful levels. I have a great amount of repect for the job the the Executive staff has done this year, but this comment may be in error because there is no basis in fact. Wylie and Mitra may be unhappy about not getting what they requested from their Executive budget submission from PFC or Senate. They may feel that not getting what they requested may affect students dramatically, but both PFC and Senate disagreed. I am also disappointed at the lack of support the Executive shows for members of governing bodies that it works with, especially when they have done so much to bring back accountability and do what was asked of them. The Executive does not want to take the responsibility in asking for fiscal accountability within the ASUO Programs. It is hard to ask for responsible behavior and does not make one popular. PFC is to be sacrificed on this "you are the hardass bad guys" altar, and that is clearly wrong. We have accepted all responsibility for our actions and decisions but will not accept derision from people who should be acting as professionals. The Executive makes the bar and places it with Senates approval, the PFC requires the meeting of the bar by Programs for the budget recommendations, and the Senate approves the whole process when completed.

If you want to see the real adjustments to budgets, go to the PFC web page and look at the current numbers link. You will see that the adjustments, with the exceptions of 0-fundings for non-submission, are very small in general, while the increases are large. Since the only programs who were represented were the disgruntled, it would be beneficial to remember that there were 90-some programs not unhappy with the budgets recieved. The Child Care Subsidy changes were requested by the Program. Student Bar Association is explained in the QA. The page is http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~pfc.

This e-mail is not meant to disrespect any party, but it seem to me that there are lots of opinions and not much fact running around about the budget process and I felt that it needed to be addressed. This letter has gone out to a majority of the ASUO, Student Senate, Programs, Publications on Campus, and central Administration. If you run a listserv please distribute it to all programs and students so that they can hear the truth and not just disgruntled opinion. Feel free to send me e-mail back if you would like more information or have a comment. I will always listen to another persons opinion.

Programs Finance Committee E-mail: pfc@gladstone.uoregon.edu

Sincerely,

Aaron Weck Programs Finance Member Junior, Biochemistry E-mail:pestlnce@gladstone.uoregon.edu