Students will likely vote whether to raise ASUNM fee paid by undergraduates from $14 to $20 during the November general election.
The Associated Students of UNM Senate passed the Constitutional amendment during a meeting Wednesday night. If passed by students, it will increase funding available to student groups by more than $175,000. The bill also will reduce the amount of funding from student fees allocated to the Student Publications Board by about $13,000 per year, dropping it from 12 percent of ASUNM undergraduate fees to 6 percent. The board publishes the Daily Lobo, Conceptions Southwest and Best Student Essays.
When originally passed by the Steering and Rules Committee, the bill called for an 8 percent reduction of publication board fees. That would not have reduced the amount the board receives, about $46,000 per year, because of the overall increase in student government income.
But Sen. Grant Nichols, who helped Sens. Jason Shaffer and Evan Kist write the bill, recommended that senators amend the bill to reduce the percentage of the publications' funding to 6 percent, or about $33,248. Citing a stack of annual and semester reports for the publication board, he said the $13,000 would not be felt by the board and could better be used to fund student organizations.
The reports showed a rollover - money left over in the account - from last year's publication board budget of about $12,360. According to the balance sheets, the last three years have seen a total year-end rollover of about $86,000. According to general accounting office reports, the publication board has a reserve fund of about $380,000, enough to cover publication for an entire semester without advertising revenue, Nichols said.
He said that average rollovers would cover the lost $13,000.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
"They're operating right about at their budget," he said. "That's where a business wants to be."
Nichols said that the $46,000 amounted to a fraction of the publications board budget, but any amount would drastically effect student government.
"The heart of ASUNM operates with and entire budget of $48,000," he said. "We give them $46,000 - that's 100 percent of what we give to ourselves, but for student publications it's 7.1 percent of their budget. It's just not going to have a severe impact on them, but the $13,000 is going to have a greater impact on the organizations we're trying to help."
The student publications funding debate echoes an attempt last spring by Nichols and other senators to eliminate $38,000 of student fee funding to the Daily Lobo, leaving a small percentage for the other remaining publications. The ammendment failed when it went to student vote.0
Sen. Sara Shreiber warned that the already complicated bill might be harder to pass the student vote if the senate tried to do to things at once. The main part of the bill as described by the Steering and Rules committee was to increase the student fees, she said.
A handful of senators voted against the decrease.
"When we were approached with this bill, the reason was to increase the ASUNM budget," Sen. David Padilla, a member of the Steering and Rules committee, said after the meeting. "Now it's presenters are changing the percentage. We're just trying to be accountable for what we agreed on. The executive agencies have rollover, why should we argue the Lobo rollover?"
Sen. Lisa Marie Gomez agreed.
"We agreed we weren't going to cut the publication board's funding - they deserve to keep the money they have," she said.
ASUNM Vice President Steve Aguilar said last week that the bill was in response to ever-increasing budget requests from student groups that the Finance Committee is unable to cover. The $14 fee hasn't changed since 1977, he said. The prorated fees for part-time students will increase from $1 to $1.75 if the bill passes.
Based on 2000-2001 enrollment of 23,741 full-time and 46,860 part-time students, ASUNM's current funding of $385,029 would increase to about $554,144.
The bill will have to be signed by ASUNM president Andrea Cook and reviewed by the University's legal counsel before students vote on the measure.
During the same meeting, the Senate approved five presidential appointments.
They are: Paul Campbell, presidential aide; Timothy Maria Jr., elections commissioner; Adela Elena Ogden, elections commissioner; Victor Villa, elections commissioner; and Mark Chavez, crafts studio director.
