USG proposes budget funds reallocation, strikes down rank-choice voting amendment

The 2022-2023 Undergraduate Student Government budget presented in a virtual senate meeting Tuesday night included a proposal for the reallocation of money from the green engagement and accessibility funds to the legislative fund and the prioritization of cultural assemblies. USG members also voted to restructure the judicial branch and communications department.

Newly established in Spring 2022 to provide financial support for sustainability and environmental justice student programs, initiatives and projects, the Green Engagement Fund will be cut alongside the Accessibility Fund if the budget is approved. At the end of the 2021-2022 school year, both funds remained mostly untouched. Funds will instead be reallocated to the legislative fund, which is available for use by USG senators and committees, including the committees for sustainability and accessibility.

Chief financial officer Brian Stowe, who led the budget creation, said one of the senate’s top priorities last year was sustainability, and the reallocation will help fund projects for senators passionate about sustainability and green engagement. 

Stowe also said the change will ultimately improve the efficiency of the funding process for sustainability projects, with more funds at disposal and “multiple people advocating for” projects.

“The reason this funding is being moved is because it does offer more flexibility and also offers the potential to have more funding for green engagement, and so having it on the legislative side also brings in more senators to know about green engagement and to advocate for it,” Stowe said. “I was on the senate last year, along with several other people [who are] very interested in advocacy. The Green Engagement Fund was unknown for a long period of time.”

Connor Castillo, the codirector of the Environmental Student Assembly and a rising sophomore majoring in environmental studies, raised his concern about cutting the Green Engagement Fund, as he said sustainability is one of the University’s chief goals. He said the fund’s recent establishment and the long-term nature of the projects it intends to sponsor makes judging its viability premature. Castillo also argued the Green Engagement Fund supports a unique kind of advocacy.

“There are other sustainability projects or issues that those senators could tackle that aren’t related to the Green Engagement Fund, which is really just there to enable individual students to create creative and innovative projects from campus using whatever background they come from,” Castillo said.

Vice president Nivea Krishnan noted that the reallocation of the green engagement and accessibility funds to legislative funds was also intended to turn focus toward issues that may not receive as much attention as sustainability and accessibility, which already benefit from the support of several campus groups.

The senate also discussed how the new budget addressed earlier concerns about inadequate funding from registered student organizations. Stowe said many of the issues have to do with organization and leadership. He said USG is working on measures such as avoiding funding directors “shifting through,” and regulating response times from the funding department so that every RSO should hear back about their funding status within 48 hours.

“A lot of this is going to come down to communication and just making it easier to apply for funds,” Stowe said. 

The budget creation process spanned many months. Stowe and other USG members met and discussed with every group requesting funding from USG. The budget also makes several cultural assemblies a priority, recognizing these groups frequently organize successful events and are continuing to expand. 

“Those are our biggest assemblies; they have the some of the biggest events that we have within programming, and just this upcoming year, one of the assemblies brought forward that their student population is growing and that their budget should be reflective of that because alongside the cost of inflation, if a larger percentage of student population is being now represented by that assembly, then it’s their responsibility to put on more events and put on microprogramming in accordance with that,” said chief programming officer Jillian Fallon in an interview with the Daily Trojan. 

USG also voted on nominations to the programming department committees, unanimously confirming them. Fallon said she worked with former chief programming officer Jessica Minsol Kim, cabinet members and graduate advisors to conduct the interview process and selection of committee directors, while the assemblies voted for their respective directors. 

The programming department aims to increase the collaboration between committees, organizations and assemblies in the upcoming year. 

“The goal of the programming department this year is not just to grow our connections within programming but to grow them across student government and within programming, that’s emphasizing a lot of collaboration within our organizations, our committees and assemblies,” Fallon said. “Within all of the committee interviews that we held, a lot of the candidates really communicated that, and they presented a lot of really interesting ideas about ways that they can work with other committees and assemblies.”

USG also approved an amendment clarifying term limits for judicial branch stipended positions, resolving a previous discrepancy. Stipended judicial officers will serve lifetime terms on the condition that they are not graduated, impeached, resigned or unenrolled. 

Other constitutional amendments restructured the judicial branch — reducing the number of election commissioners from seven to five — and cut the operations team of the communications department, incorporating its duties into the other four teams: creative, digital, media and public relations.

USG struck down a bylaw amendment seeking to implement a switch from plurality voting to ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting would ensure a candidate would not win without a majority voting for them, an event that has occurred in the past, said parliamentary secretary David Martinez.

“Ranked choice voting allows for the election of a presidential ticket by a majority of voters whereas the plurality voting system means that it’s possible to win without a majority of votes,” Martinez said in an interview with the Daily Trojan. 

Senators expressed concern, however, that ranked choice voting would be more confusing for voters, and that not enough strategies for voter outreach and education were in place to support the shift.

USG will hold one more meeting virtually over the summer before resuming in August for Fall 2022 and will continue to discuss the budget.