The Student Services Finance Committee met Thursday to vote on the Associated Students of Madison’s internal budget for fiscal year 2019, which included salary cuts to vice chairs of various committees.
There was some deliberation regarding the salaries of vice chairs on various committees by Rep. Jordan Galles, who proposed the salary cuts, and Rep. Jeremy Swanson, who opposed the proposed cuts.
Galles argued the description of the position for the vice chair only described someone who is an active member of the committee, and therefore did not deserve a salary. He motioned to reduce the $2,688 salary for the Sustainability Vice Chair to $0, which was approved.
“I don’t think we should be paying people just because they are involved in ASM,” Galles said.
Swanson said the vice chairs were “stepping stones into full chair-ship,” and aren’t required to keep track of records, minutes or other technical aspects.
Rep. Madden disagreed with Swanson and said it was poor reasoning to think that just because vice chairs don’t keep records means that their work is less valued. The Sustainability Committee is a more active committee, Madden argued, and does important long term projects.
With similar reasoning, the Committee passed a proposal by Rep. Jonathan Kim proposed to reduce the Legislative Affairs vice chair salary from $3,360 to $0.
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When current vice chair, Sydney Scott, was asked whether she thought her positions merited payment from student fees, she couldn’t answer the question, Swanson said.
“If the current vice chair doesn’t want to get paid or doesn’t think that her position needs to be paid then I don’t think we should be paying for this position,” Swanson said.
Rep. Dylan Resch proposed to cut the general ASM training budget from $1,000 to $0, noting that 33 percent of the budget was used by one person in 2017. Budgeting $1,000 to pay for “at most” two or three people was unnecessary, he said. The motion, however, failed.
The committee passed a motion to afford the Rules Committee Chair a salary of $1,707. Rep. Resch, who proposed the motion, said the constitution and its bylaws are complex and ASM committees tend to have a low interest in ethical processes.
“I can count on my hands the number of people who have read the entire constitution of bylaws,” he said.
In a vote of 11-0-1, the committee passed a proposed budget of $1,384,577. The budget will then be passed to the Student Council.
SSFC also confirmed that WABM met their eligibility requirements in a vote of 10-0-2.
A budget hearing for WABM will be held on Thursday, November 30th, and a budget decision will be made on Monday, December 4th.
