Budget Committee looks to gain oversight

Operations and Budget Committee discuss oversight power.

By Amanda Wysocki

Published Feb. 19, 2009

The Missouri Students Association Operations Committee discussed extending more oversight to the budget in legislation Tuesday night.

The first piece of legislation discusses giving the MSA vice president the ability to do line item transfers within the budget of up to $2,500 without Operations approval. Currently, any amount over $500 has to be approved by Operations.

MSA Vice President Colleen Hoffmann and Budget Committee Chairman Matthew Sheppard were unsure of when the $500 limit was established and would like to make the line item transfer process easier, Sheppard said.

"A lot of the transfers we have been doing have been exceeding $500," Hoffmann said. "We just need to be more efficient and do it in an expedited way. We also still need to ensure transparency."

Operations Chairwoman Amanda Shelton said she feels the issue needs to be researched more.

"Initially, I think changing from $500 to $2,500 is a very large jump," Shelton said.

Another part of this legislation stated that the Operations Committee would be working to change the role of and extend more oversight to Budget Committee.

The two clauses discussing that caused much debate at the meeting and were eventually stricken from the bill.

Sheppard and Shelton discussed this issue with others at Monday night's Budget Committee meeting, Sheppard said. The controversy arose because many of the people present at the Operations Committee meeting had not been at the Budget Committee meeting to see how the origin of the issue began.

"There wasn't anything going on behind anyone's back," Sheppard said. "I asked Amanda why Operations has control over line item transfers and she said she really didn't know, so we thought maybe we should have open talks about why Operations controls this."

Shelton said she was surprised by the legislation.

"There had been no prior discussion on some of the concerns that Matt had relating to the budget committee," Shelton said. "Because we had no communication over the issue, it came as quite a surprise."

Several Operations committee members were upset over the inclusion of this in the legislation.

"It's not anything saying we are taking the power away, just saying that talks will happen," Sheppard said. "It was really just some people blowing things out of proportion."

Sheppard said he felt that misunderstanding of how the budget process works caused some of the problems.

"It was turning a small issue into a large one when it didn't need to be," Sheppard said.

Sheppard said he would eventually like the change the role of the Budget Committee in order to prevent some communication gaps.

"Having multiple committees responsible for financial matters causes communication gaps," Sheppard said. "Ideally, I would like to see the Budget Committee become experts in the financial area."

Hoffmann would also like to see the Budget Committee have a role for longer than two months out of the year.

"I think the conversation between Operations and Budget needs to come to a compromise and have open dialogue," Hoffmann said. "We're not taking away Operations' power by any means, but we want to make it benefit everyone."

Shelton said she would be open to discussing the role of the Budget Committee.

"I feel that there are quite a few compromises we can make, especially in improving communication and sharing information," Shelton said. "I don't think we have a concrete plan yet, but there are some avenues we can pursue in upcoming weeks."