As Ted previously reported, the Commentator budget has been cut by this year’s Programs Finance Council. Knowing that the executive would recommend a ~11% reduction, the OC’s Board of Directors have wisely decided to focus most of the cuts on our administrative expenses rather than production costs– the organization’s first responsibility, after all, is to put a magazine out.

It appears that the PFC’s decision was based entirely upon the fact that the Commentator ended the 2005-2006 year under budget: we printed 12 issues, used color and glossy coating sparingly, and limited our print runs to what we believed would be the exact number people would pick up if distributed. In other words, we tried to not waste money. This sort of institutional frugality is completely at odds with the way in which actual government programs operate. If you’re funded by the government, your organization must, at every opportunity, maximize costs. This is the only way of ensuring that any future increases in service levels will have a chance of being adequately funded.

The unfortunate irony of this is that, had the Commentator printed an unnecessarily high number of copies last year (and thus acted irresponsibly in all but one interpretation of the word), the PFC would have had no choice but to increase our funding. When we recognized about halfway through the year that we would come in under budget we were urged by multiple people to artificially increase our print runs in order to bring our costs up to an acceptably high level. The thought of doing this was, quite frankly, repugnant to us.

So, instead, our funding was cut. This despite the fact that our current year’s spending is essentially on target to zero out our budget (and that the cuts do not even compensate for the two year increase in current service levels). PFC Co-Chair Micah Kosasa acknowledged that the current year’s spending is more likely to reflect future spending than the previous year’s, but nevertheless refused to take our current balances into consideration. Three of the committee members could not even be bothered to say one thing during the hearing– they simply give their Ayes when asked to. This uninterested attitude was perhaps best typified by Chair Oscar Guerra, who at one point was paying more attention to his cell phone than to a Commentator staffer responding to one of his questions.

This sorry situation is emblematic of the institutional inefficiency of government in general and the ASUO in particular. Programs have absolutely no incentive to cut costs or reduce waste, which of course is why the Incidental Fee will continue rising steadily. The question of whether or not to appeal the PFC’s ruling will, of course, be decided by the OC’s Board of Directors. There is a case to be made for fighting what was clearly a flawed ruling and there is also a case to accept the budget as is and further reduce whatever costs we can. In the long run, however, an editorially independent publication like the Commentator must at some point become fiscally independent as well. Because if the 2004-2005 budget process proved anything, it’s that some student politicians simply cannot handle the responsibility of funding a publication whose very job is to critique them.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 16:52 by Ian and is filed under ASUO, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.