While the Sept. 2 Student Government Association meeting started with an update on Saint Louis University’s H1N1 contagion, it shifted to be all about the money. Financial Vice President Robert Moehle presented the conclusion of his summer-long effort to resolve the budget crisis left by last year’s SGA.

When last year’s Chartered Student Organizations’ budgets were approved, they totaled to $896,600.21, which was $80,000 over-budget. While last year’s executive board had discussed an across the board percentage cut, Moehle felt that wasn’t the best solution.

“We get the money from the students and try to give it back to students as best as possible,” said Moehle.

He worked with three of the student organizations that receive the most funding, Student Activities Board, Great Issues Committee and Black Student Association to make significant budget cuts. GIC and BSA reached an agreement where BSA took a $22,000 budget cut for a Black History Month speaker, and instead agreed to work with GIC to choose a speaker in the spring.

Moehle was also able to convince SAB to cut $30,000 from its $240,000 allocation. Additionally, the full $896,600 did not have to be dispersed as most clubs had funds remaining in their accounts at the end of last year. In fact, only the Club Volleyball team had spent its total allocation. These cuts combined with a reduction in the spot funding account from $40,000 to $25,000 brought the budget back into the black.

As part of the plan to make the $25,000 last the year Moehle plans to overhaul the SGA funding guidelines, the rules of what can and should be funded. The financial vice president plans to introduce a bill to modify the SGA constitution next week.

Three CSOs, groups entitled to apply for yearly funding, came before the Senate looking for that funding, which for various reasons they had failed to apply for last year. The Asian Students in Action and Korean Student Organization budgets for $2,588.14 and $1,000, respectively, were quickly approved as the blame for the late presentation fell on SGA’s failure to communicate.

However, smoke.free.slu’s request for funding was met with debate. Unlike the other groups, smoke.free’s had failed to present a budget by the deadline and even after numerous overtures from the SGA finance committee. While some senators argued that the club’s new administration shouldn’t pay for the previous leaders’ failures, that fact that four members of the groups executive board had served last year was received poorly.

The Senate voted 21-13 to table the bill for smoke.free.slu’s budget indefinitely. This status means that while it’s not part of a certain meeting’s agenda, the bill can be brought back for discussion. Also, the group will not be able to apply for spot funding for the items listed in the submitted budget because spot funding items are required to be unforeseeable.

In order to simplify the budget process for the current year the Executive Board announced they had hired a new webmaster to design a CSO control panel for the budget process. Also, they added the budget requests for all CSOs to the SGA homepage.

“We pledged transparency, as a part of that we have taken every CSO that was allocated an amount, and [put the information online],” said Moehle.

Another initiative of the new administration is Special Project Funding. This fund allows SGA to fund initiatives that did not exist during the previous year.

“This is seed money for projects we want to start, we want them to get off the ground,” SGA President Michael Harriss said.

The need for this type of fund was catalyzed when University President Lawrence Biondi, S.J., told Harriss that students would need to find a way to provide student funds for exploring the 24 hour library pilot program.

Outside of budget issues, SGA handled several internal issues this week. Jamie James was appointed vice president of Diversity and Social Justice, a position created last year by last year’s Senate. Anelga Doumanian was also seated in a new position, vice president of International Affairs after being approved by members of the SGA executive board, International Services and International Student Federation.