Last Monday’s Student Services Finance Committee meeting was classic Associated Students of Madison: one step forward, two steps back.
SSFC member Brad Vogel introduced an excellent proposal limiting salaries of student leaders in segregated-fee funded organizations to $1,000. Unfortunately, this rendered Monday’s council session a violation of the student government’s own open meetings policy. A bombshell of a proposal, Vogel’s legislation never made it into the publicly-available agenda set forth 24 hours before the meeting. Subsection 1.04(B)(I) of ASM’s own by-laws states, “ASM bodies must post an agenda outside the ASM office and notify members and those with business before the body via e-mail of a meeting 24 hours before a meeting of the body.” While this clause appears to have been satisfied, subsection 1.04(B)(III) was clearly failed, “Every public notice of a meeting of an ASM body shall set forth the time, date and place of the meeting, in such form as is reasonably likely to apprise ASM members thereof, identify all bills, resolutions, main motions, or other legislation that will receive a vote at the meeting by number …”
Vogel’s introduction of this proposal may have been allowable under certain loophole-heavy readings of these by-laws but that the legislation was voted on (and defeated no less) clearly renders Monday’s session in wanton violation of the open meetings policy.
Further muddying the situation, ASM has long insisted it is entitled to participate in shared governance. This is an entirely debatable matter and one with which we have often taken issue. But should ASM be right in this insistence, a string of thought would dictate it is, in essence, a government body within the state of Wisconsin. Should this be true, Monday’s SSFC meeting would not only be in violation of by-laws accountable to the student government’s own kangaroo court, but also state open meeting laws accountable to a court system not entirely comprised of résumé.
These open meetings rules make sense. Had this proposal been announced in advance, any number of bodies would have been able to effectively lobby for its passage or defeat. But instead it was dropped at a fairly quiet meeting, defeated before word leaked and never given due consideration within the public sphere.
