The 2003-04 legislative session concluded Wednesday night with the student Senate approving Student Government President Brad Golson and Vice President Jenny Byrd’s 38 executive staff appointments and the 2004-05 SG budget.
The Senate also appointed three senators to sit on a summer planning committee to work with the Union renovation contractors and appointed two senators to the joint committee on college council planning and revisions.
Spencer Sissell, SG’s director of finance, said the executive staff salaries totaled more than $37,400 — nearly $3,450 more than is permitted by the SG bylaws.
According to the bylaws, “no more than $34,000 may be appropriated in the Student Government budget for total salaries of the Student Government during one fiscal year.”
Sissell said the numbers were more than the amount permitted because the budget makers were not aware that the salary of Mary James, SG’s office manager, was included in the executive employee salaries.
He said he deducted money from the other executive staff salaries to fix the numbers problem.
“I went before the Senate Finance Committee an hour before, and I had to knock down all the salaries,” Sissell said.
He also said he had to fairly appropriate the salary of the legislative secretary, Evan Bergeron, between the executive branch and the legislative branch, because Bergeron receives Chancellor’s Student Aid.
The budget, which the Senate unanimously passed, also has several changes from the budget former SG President Allen Richey presented to the Senate in spring 2003.
Golson said the budget changes all of the executive staff assistant director titles to co-director titles.
“It was necessary to make the changes, to remove the hierarchy and show on paper how the departments work,” Golson said.
He said the change was made because a lot of the executive departments end up splitting the workload between the director and assistant director.
Golson said this is what happened between Jessie Gomez and himself when they were on SG’s Department of Special Projects. Gomez was director and Golson was assistant director.
Also, Golson and Byrd restructured the executive staff departments so they are grouped according to their mission.
Golson said most of the executive departments will fall under the the Department of Legislative and Administrative Affairs, Department of Programming and External Affairs or the Department of Student and Community Affairs.
He said the Department of Safety and Parking has been placed under Campus Affairs and the Department of International Affairs has been placed under Minority Affairs.
Golson said his administration wants to build a larger Minority Affairs department.
He said many of the applicants for the executive staff said they wanted Minority Affairs to not just focus on black students, because there are many other minority groups on campus.
“We are all minorities in some way,” Golson said.
Also, the applicants did not want to separate the two groups, he said.
Sissell said since the departments were restructured, he took their funds and allocated them in a different way than last year.
All of the funds that would have gone to the Department of Safety and Parking were appropriated to the Department of Campus Outreach, because the Department of Safety and Parking has been placed under it, he said.
Golson also said Sissell informed him the amount of funds allocated to the college councils has decreased because the enrollment of the colleges has decreased.
Other changes to the budget include paying SG’s Election Board members $25 a semester, Golson said. This is a result of the online voting in SG elections next fall and the amount of work they do during the election period.
He said the Elections Board works from the beginning of the filing process through the completion of the election.
Golson said he and Byrd wanted to compensate the board members for helping SG with the process.
“They are going to be doing more than sitting behind a poll and checking IDs,” he said.