The Student Judiciary received cuts from its proposed budget of $50,885 to be reduced to $37,985 as a result of the Student Services Finance Committee meeting Wednesday night.
SSFC itself received a $100,710 allocation, up from its working budget this fiscal year of approximately $49,000.
The judiciary received the biggest cuts by erasing the pay for associated justices, reducing the stipend for vice-chief justice and also lowering the request for a stipend for the chief justice from $3,800 to $3,000 a year.
Another large cut came when the committee slashed all of the proposed $2,000 “slush fund,” as Chief Justice Jordan Green first described it.
SSFC Chair Aaron Werner said the decreases to stipends is justified because the judiciary does not have a regular schedule and can have as few as one case a month, making the burden of work significantly less than that of other Associated Students of Madison chairs.
The committee allocated the extra funding for itself by adding a full-time staffer who would serve as a liaison between the committee and registered student organizations requesting money, among other duties. The position would pay a $35,000 salary and $11,000 in fringe benefits.
Another addition stemmed from an added $1,500 SSFC student-secretary position, which Werner said is the “next necessary step” to ensure progress and smooth operation of the committee by taking minutes during the meeting and filing the plethora of paperwork produced by the committee procedures.
Another budget increase came from a request for training of members, which Werner said any committee member or group requesting money would agree is a good investment.
Though the increase appears oversized at first glance, Werner was quick to justify it in respect to the growing number of organizations asking for money and the increased budget requests.
“We need to expand to accommodate the needs of student organizations,” Werner said in an interview. “There will be countless benefits to the functioning of SSFC that will [improve] the campus and campus climate immeasurably.”
Werner then discussed the fact these increases should not be considered in the same light as the Board of Regents’ recent budget increases because as a “chair [he] will never see these benefits” and is not helping out his friends either.
The two branches of ASM have recently been in close contact because of a suit filed against Werner regarding his fulfillment of duties as chair, which is currently pending in the Student Judiciary. Werner said this move did not stem from a personal vendetta against the judiciary for accepting the appeal; he said the entire committee judged budgets on their need for money to provide services.