6 November 2018
Travis Boren
The UCCS Student Government Association (SGA) has spent nearly all of their carry forward fund for the academic year.
The carry forward fund for the SGA gave them roughly $63,000 to use for the 2018-19 academic year, and have spent almost $48,000 this year based on a tally of the bill amounts on the SGA document portal on their website.
There are only two bills that did not pass approval by both the SGA Senate and the SGA President Sierra Brown.
The first was titled SB06-18/19 Global Medical Brigades. The bill was written by Saya Hamad and sponsored by Senator at Large Justin Jones and Senator of Multicultural Affairs and Speaker Adeowula Remi-Afonja. It asked for $3,255 and passed the Senate unanimously, but was vetoed by Brown.
Brown published a statement justifying the veto, where she said that the money that the Global Medical Brigades was asking for should not be limited to just the executive officers of the club.
“With what is written in the bill, there is not a clear statement as to how this will benefit all of their club members or students by solely paying for their executive members,” said Brown in the statement.
The Global Medical Brigades latter submitted a second bill that asked for $13,020, which was approved 10-2 by the Senate and approved by Brown.
“There are no veto guidelines and that is for a reason within our documents,” said Brown via email. The Senate can overturn any veto with a two-thirds majority vote. “My partial stance on veto is if I don’t feel as though something is going right in regards to the distribution of funds or with the passing, then I have that right to veto.”
Brown said she is happy that the Senate did not overturn her veto, and members of the Global Medical Brigades spoke at the Oct. 4 senate meeting as a member of the public, accepting the veto and expressing their intent to submit a second bill.
The second bill to not pass was titled SB10-18/19 UCCS Club Tennis Ball Machine. The bill was authored by Mark Macapagal, the club tennis treasurer, and was sponsored by Senator at Large Stephen Holmes and Senator of Business Connor Price. The bill asked for $4,334.58 for club tennis to purchase a ball machine for practice. The bill failed because of a tie-breaking vote against it by Remi-Ajonfa.
Senator at Large Breana Arnold was one of the votes against the Club Tennis ball machine. Arnold voted against the machine over concerns with the lack of tennis courts on campus.
“It was pretty expensive, and only they could really use it,” said Arnold. “They said it would be stored at the rec center, but because we don’t have courts on campus only they would be able to use it.”
Arnold said that the bills being presented at the Nov. 1 Senate meeting totaled roughly $25,000.
According to Brown, it is difficult for the Senate to budget for a whole year because of the difficulty in guessing which clubs and organizations are going to need money and because Senate memberships change.
The exact amount the Senate has approved this year at the time of publication is $60,469.22, which averages to $6,718.80 per bill. The least expensive bill gave funding for Pause for Paws at $651, which was written by Arnold and sponsored by Senator of the Arts Dan Boyd and Senator of Letters, Arts and Sciences Lisa Hinton.
Brown said that she wants the “CarryForward” to last all year long.
“I also wouldn’t want to discourage students from asking for potentially more money on their great projects and initiatives solely because we want it to last longer,” said Brown.
Brown said that both her and the Senate follow the process that is outlined by the SGA system, that she is not sure how a better system would operate and that she is uncertain if a different system would be beneficial.