Totaling more than $27 million in student tuition money, next year's segregated-fee budget is now in the hands of Chancellor John Wiley, awaiting his final approval.

If approved by Wiley, the budget — which Student Services Finance Committee representatives presented to the chancellor yesterday — will be divvied up among the UW student body and added on top of next year's tuition.

Originally allocated by SSFC, segregated fees fund University of Wisconsin student organizations and various campus services, such as University Health Services, Memorial Union and recreational sports.

"The only way that I would overrule or override a recommendation of SSFC is if they violated the law of their own process," Wiley said in an interview before receiving the proposed budget.

Wiley added he would "respect" the decisions of SSFC — a committee elected by the UW student body every year — even if he disagrees with them.

"I think students have been delegated the right and responsibility to make decisions about how the allocable seg fees are spent," Wiley said.

This year, SSFC allocated $6.9 million to UW student organizations, representing a 4 percent increase from last year, and $20.6 million in funding to various campus services, representing a 12 percent increase from last year.

While the proposed budget is higher than last year's, SSFC Vice Chair Eric Saar said that with more than $800,000 in segregated fees being returned this year from various organizations, segregated fees will not increase too much.

"We're right at the rate of inflation," Saar said. "We could've found more ways to subtract from the budget … but, at the end of the day, it's pretty good."

Among the decisions Wiley will have to make will be the controversial budget of the UW Roman Catholic Foundation.

Initially denied funding eligibility, UWRCF eventually received more than $147,000 in funding after going through a series of appeals through the Associated Students of Madison, which oversees SSFC.

In the course of the contentious process, the UW administration presented committee representatives with a memo from university legal services. The letter stated the committee could not allocate funding for rent or maintenance of a building not owned or partially leased by the university — a criterion that UWRCF's building falls under.

However, UWRCF ultimately received funding for the budget item after the ASM Student Council questioned whether the memo was in fact a legitimate UW policy and if it was applied to all other organizations that requested segregated-fee funding.

Some committee members questioned the timing of when the memo was presented before a meeting where the UWRCF budget was slotted on the agenda.

Wiley said he did not yet know whether there were any legal issues regarding UWRCF's budget.

"I can't take forward [to the Board of Regents] something I know to be illegal," Wiley said. "So we will do a legal analysis of a few items of the proposed budget, and if they are illegal, I can't take them forward."

Other notable budgets Wiley will have to decide on include budgets for SAFE Nighttime Services and the bus-pass program.

After a dispute between SSFC and UW Transportation Services over how to fund the SAFEwalk and SAFEride cab and bus programs, the programs were split into three different entities.

SSFC agreed to fund the SAFEride cab program completely with segregated fees and split costs for SAFEride bus.

UW Transportation Services agreed to fund SAFEwalk.

The proposed budget for the bus-pass program — which provides UW students with free bus passes — increased from last year after Madison Metro proposed splitting bus route 80 into two separate lines.

One line would serve the southeast area of campus and the other the far west side.