Can anyone explain this to me?

I don't want to spend too much time on this since most probably do not care, but I'd like those who read this to mull this over and give some feedback.

It is indisputable that the Open Meeting Law applies to the ASUN Senate and its committees. The law provides that public bodies can take action on items only when the public is noticed through an agenda that contains "[a] clear and complete statement of the topics scheduled to be considered during the meeting" and "[a] list describing the items on which action may be taken." NRS 241.020(2)(c)(1)-(2).

The idea here is that the public should know what it is their representatives will be doing. When a public body takes action beyond the scope of its notice, it violates the law. (More on the clear and complete standard and scope provisions available here.)

The Committee on Government Operations had an item on its agenda, and the Senate has the same item on its agenda for its meeting this week, which reads as follows

Senate Bill 77-__ To Establish the ASUN Revised Statutes.

On its face, the item appears to be quite vague. However, using the commonly understood legal meeting of "revised statutes," it would appear that the Committee was considering creating a codification of ASUN law. Codifications themselves are never used to make substantive changes to law.

In addition to considering whether to create a codification of ASUN law, the Committee did the following:

• Made substantive changes to existing law regarding compensation of ASUN officials, senators, and employees
• Created new law governing the Speaker of the Senate
• Created new law governing the Secretary of the Senate and that officer's compensation
• Changed the title of an official publication of the Association
• Made substantial changes to existing law governing the Vice President of ASUN and the Unity Commission
• Changed the number of programmers and assistant programmers in the Programming Department
• Changed the number and name of assistant directors in the Homecoming Department
• Made a change in the name of the Executive Schedule for officer compensation ("level" to "tier")
• Changed the terms of office of clubs commissioners
• Changed the terms of office of programmers
• Changed the compensation scheme of elections officers
• Changed spending limits on election campaigns
• Changed removal procedures when Student Union is closed due to catastrophic emergency
• Changed funding obligations ASUN scholarships
• Changed requirements on ASUN Archives to keep digital copy of the archives
• Created brand new law on the following programs and services, including compensation and discussion of Federal labor laws and minimum wage laws
• Legal Services
• Sound and Lights
• Inkblot
• Advertising Department
• Campus Escort
• Administrative support
• Created new law governing the relationship of ASUN to student publications

So where exactly in "Senate Bill 77-__ To Establish the ASUN Revised Statutes" does it say that the Committee and Senate would discuss and take action on all of that? Never mind the fact that the committee made substantive changes to law it has no jurisdiction over. If someone can answer that for me, I'd much appreciate it. I'm particularly interested in obtaining the view of Sen. Brandon Bishop, the Senate's parliamentarian and member of the Committee.

Oh, by the way, there wasn't a single ASUN member, other thnt the senators on the committee, who was present to offer testimony on this bill.

GSA is receiving ASUN funds

My suspicions that GSA was receiving money from the ASUN Bookstore, even though an agreement to provide for that revenue sharing was not renewed in 2008 (first reported here), is now confirmed with official sources.

According to the annual financial statements of student governments prepared for the Regents, GSA received over $24,000 from the bookstore in fiscal year 2009. Why GSA received this money, given the fact that the revenue sharing agreement was never renewed, is beyond me. Any enterprising ASUN senator want to look into this, perhaps a member of the Budget and Finance Committee?

UC Regents raise fees 32 percent; NSHE next?

University of California system regents raised fees by 32 percent today (link). It's only a matter of time before Nevada students see similar fee hikes. Nevada is still plunging deeper into recession (when do we start calling it a depression?) and we rank among California, Arizona, and Michigan as the states most in fiscal peril, according to the Pew Center (link).

As the ASUN senators are considering what to do with ASUN President Eli Reilly's $75 per semester fee package, they might want to start thinking of the tuition and fees battle that is on the horizon. Some have called Nevada's budget crisis worse than California's. If that's so, similar double-digit fee increases are not out of the question. Now that to me sounds like something students care about.

Senate tables JV2017 plan

Thus spake Balathustra

This is the smart thing to do. The plan as written was half-baked and seemed to have been drafted by a certain someone with a real hard-on for ‘leadership development’. I wonder who that was.

I hope the plan will become more student-focussed with, you know, students working on it. Good on the Senate for taking the initiative to exercise their power in a responsible and useful way.

Overappropriation of funds or overtaxation? Take your pick.

Just a quick note about some figures that Shane put together (here). The total balance forward of all accounts in ASUN realized this fiscal year was $204,801.56 (I'll call this $205,000). The balance forward is basically any money left in an account at the end of the previous fiscal year.

Last fiscal year, ASUN collected about $1,326,000 in student fees (taxes). About 15.5 percent of what was collected was unspent. The table Shane put together demonstrates the balance forward as a percent of this fiscal year's allocations. I don't know what an appropriate figure is under governmental accounting theory, but the idea of government spending is to go from all of the money (all that is taken) and to go to none of the money; basically, be good stewards of the public's money and to not overtax and hoard the public's money. Now, since ASUN is not allowed to run a deficit, some underspending is natural, but 15 percent seemed awfully high to me. Turns out, it probably is.

According to the Nevada Governor's Executive Budget, for this biennium the balance forward statewide was 5.7 percent. The Washoe County School District's balance forward was 3.7 percent of revenues. The University of Nevada, Reno's balance forward last biennium was 0.2 percent--infinitesimally small in comparison to ASUN. Given these three examples that use the same accounting principles that ASUN does, fund accounting, 15 percent is a very large number.

Even when making a more relevant direct comparison to the student governments in the state, 15 percent is high. In FY08, the largest was 24 percent at Nevada State College; however, that is explained by the fact they were created in 2007 and were still building a reserve. TMCC was next at 17 percent. Most, however, were below 10 percent. Some governments overspent their fee revenues: UNR GSA, at 14 percent overspending, was the largest. ASUN's reported figure in that fiscal year was 5 percent. CSUN's figure (UNLV's undergrads) was 13 percent. The average for the NSHE as a whole was 6 percent.

Given the ideas behind governmental accounting, an increase from 4 to 15 percent is alarming.

[Updated historical figures to apply to only student fee revenues.]

It's not a [g]reek conspiracy

In response to our friends and fellow bloggers over at UNR For Liberty, I thought I'd respond to this post about how it is the campus's social elites and special interests who control the ASUN Senate. Those elites and special interests? The Greek community. My response in a nutshell: so what?

To me it seems natural that a constituency that votes in higher numbers than the rest of the population (I don't have hard data readily available) would elect more people to the Senate. Wait, I do have data. In 2006, a survey was conducted to determine who votes and what determines whether they do (link). I'll round to 1,000 for simplicity of calculation. 1,000 students voted in that election, out of an undergraduate population of 12,000 (again, rounded). So like 8 percent of the eligible voting population voted. Of those who did vote, nearly 30 percent were self-identified as Greek members. Using John Russell's figure of how large Greek life is on this campus (7 percent), and assuming the proportion was the same in 2006 as it is now, then it's pretty apparent that Greeks outvote non-Greeks by more than three times their actual proportion.

Now, Russell is right that the Senate is composed of a disproportionate number of Greeks, but is that really a problem? What was the proportion of Greeks to non-Greeks who were in the election? I'd be willing to bet a similar proportion exists in both the Senate and in the candidate pool at election time. If more Greeks run, isn't it natural that more will get elected?

Russell's data also indicates the strength of a voting block. Greeks vote for other Greeks. Hardly a news flash there. While they aren't large enough in numbers to fix the outcome of an election, they certainly will have a measurable sway on the result. UNR START? Nice idea, but it didn't work out as a voting block. Why that's the case is anyone's guess. Could've been a message that didn't resonate with enough people, ineffective campaigning, lack of numbers. Whatever it was, the idea of an organized political party in ASUN was fascinating, and in fact anticipated among those who drafted the new constitution and election code. Common platforms are nice because they let people easily distinguish many disparate candidates. But back to the subject at hand.

All of this indicates that Greeks are more involved in campus affairs than your average, non-Greek undergrad. Big whoop. Same is probably true for those who live on campus versus off campus (I didn't examine the data for that correlation, but it's all right there). There's probably the same kind of correlation when looking at club members, too. Now, true, it is a problem that more non-Greeks aren't running and getting elected, but that reflects on ASUN's outreach efforts and the interests of less connected students to become involved, not on the Greek community. Can you really fault them for being more civicly minded and connnected to their campus than most other students? I wasn't Greek and I managed to get elected and re-elected. Being Greek definitely helps, but it's not the be all and end all to getting elected. Campaigning and getting your name out there more than anything else is what matters.

This would be a story if the senators disproportionately disbursed money to Greeks because of their Greek affiliations, but I suspect John Russell and his peers would have a hard time trying to prove that. To me, the Greek issue is a non-issue. Besides, where would this argument be if START had been successful in electing 10 people to the Senate, a near majority in that body? Sounds like an awful powerful voting block to me.

Back to square one on JV 2017?

After yesterday's University Affairs Committee meeting, it's time for the senators to step back, assess the situation, and pick up the pieces. Oh, and figure out just exactly what it is they did last night. I know procedure like the back of my hand, and I'm still not certain about what it is they did last night, and it certainly doesn't help when there are n ideas of what happened, where n equals the number of committee members.

First of all, I congratulate the senators on their resolute stand to take all the time they need to come to a reasoned judgment on this plan. As Sen. Mitch Bottoset said yesterday on The Voicebox on Wolf Pack Radio, this is an 8 year plan, so if it doesn't take effect for another year or two, it'll still be a success. This is a responsible attitude. So kudos to the senators. You made me proud. Also kudos to ASUN President Eli Reilly for realizing that his tact to try to shove this down the senators' throats was probably not the best.

From my notes and watching the meeting (I'll have to wait for the audio recording or video to be posted online for me to double check), my interpretation is one of two things "happened":

1. The Committee indefinitely postponed (killed) further consideration of the JV 2017 plan.
2. The Committee indefinitely postponed a draft resolution regarding JV 2017.

Option two probably was not proper, as the question of approving and reporting to the Senate the draft resolution was never before the committee. (This is why legislation is supposed to be introduced in the Senate first, not originate in committee.) Option one was probably not proper for the same reason. This is all complicated by the fact that Robert's Rules doesn't mesh well with a legislative body such as the Senate (and its committees). (Sorry for all the parentheticals, but I'm trying not to overly complicate this, which is hard because parliamentary procedure is complicated.)

UPDATE: After further review, based on Sen. Brandon Bishop's (erroneous) advice, and perhaps Chairman Teeter's poor planning, the Committee killed a draft resolution believing it was the only thing in front of it. More procedure, but enough. If the senators are interested in figuring out the procedure, they know where to find me.



The problem is committees are often dealing with original measures (stuff originating in committee) and not a tangible, written, already-introduced measure. These original measures haven't been written yet, so the committees deal with something in concept. The practical reality is committees often vote on concepts and direct its chair to draft the legislative language of the actual legislation. It just takes too much time for committees to write the legal text of legislation.

Another thing to keep in mind is parliamentary procedure is relaxed considerably in committees. Motions do not require seconds. Debate is unlimited (limiting debate or moving the previous question is not in order) and chairs can debate and make motions and often do because they drive the committee's business.

Procedurally, a few errors need correcting, and luckily the Senate now seems to be in a position to do just that. When the executive communicates to the legislature, it is typically in writing so that a record of the communication can be preserved in an accessible medium. JV 2017 is such a communication. The executive addresses the item to the legislature, the legislature takes notice of the communication by receiving it and reading it in open meeting (reading usually dispensed with by unanimous consent), and typically refers the communication to the appropriate committee(s) for any further action the committee(s) may deem desirable. This process seems to be misunderstood and is not applied.

The fix: have Eli transmit the plan under a cover letter to the Senate. Under the agenda item for receipt of correspondence, the Speaker notes the receipt of the communication and refers it. The documents referred then become the property of the committee(s). (UPDATE: This is further evidenced by the committee not knowing if it had jurisdiction and custody over the entire document. Not knowing, the committee did the best it could, which was to wait for the Senate to start over and try again.)

When a matter properly falls within the jurisdiction of several committees, the Senate has a couple of options of proceeding. First, it can concurrently refer the matter to the committees of jurisdiction. Each committee would consider the parts of the matter that it has the authority to consider. Budget and Finance would consider budgetary implications of the plan. Government Operations would consider the implementing legislation the plan may require. So on and so forth. Second, referral could be sequential, meaning that it goes to one committee first and if reported back to the Senate, then referred to the next, and so on. Third, the Senate (or the Speaker acting under Rule XI of the Senate's Rules) could create a select committee to consider all matters connected with the proposal. Each method has pros and cons. In any case, the Senate gets to decide this if it wants to; the Senate has only delegated some powers to the Speaker to increase efficiency.

Personally, I really don't know which option is best, and this could be a matter of much debate among the senators. (UPDATE: Given that this took up much of the debate in the committee meeting, the Senate should probably decide this matter.) Some senators may be worried about confusing the public with concurrent or sequential referral. Others may be worried about not getting a diversity of committee views if they create a select committee. Just whatever they do, the Speaker needs to remain mindful of how the Open Meeting Law constrains what they can do based on how their agenda is drafted.

In the meantime, if there is a senator willing to introduce measures (whether the senator agrees or not) to approve of and implement the JV 2017 plan, that would give committees some legislative vehicles to consider and to amend. I've mentioned it before (here), but simply approving of the plan is not enough. The Senate will have to legislate the changes should the Regents approve of the fees.

Sen. Patrick Kealy, in an interview with The Voicebox after the committee meeting, said something very wise: "We need to focus on doing things right instead of doing things fast." Doing things right includes both the substance and the procedure. Botch the procedure, and it won't matter what the substance is. When senators who sit on the committee, literally moments after the committee adjourned, are confused about what they did, that indicates the need to follow the rules and procedure, not to cast them aside.

This proposal might finally give the Senate the opportunity to learn a thing or two about how it was designed to operate. Exciting! Don't be afraid to learn the rules. Once you do, this will become much more palatable experience.

[Updated at 5:01 p.m. to reflect review of video of meeting.]

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Power, authority and JV 2017

The ASUN Constitution establishes an executive branch with limited powers. The executive power is vested in the ASUN President and his subordinates that the Senate may create by law. The President's power, while absolute (in the sense that no other branch holds the executive power), does have limits. Expressly, the Constitution states the President's power extends to enforcing the laws as the Senate writes them ("The President shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed"). This is a limited view of executive power. It is what we had in mind when crafting the current ASUN Constitution. The President does have some constitutionally inherent powers that the Senate can't intrude upon, but most of what the President can do must be prescribed in the laws the Senate passes.

This structure has implications for ASUN President Eli Reilly's Joint Vision 2017 document. Under what authority did the ASUN President create this plan, attach ASUN's name to it (and thus imply institutional support where none exists), and lobby others (the Regents) as if ASUN was behind it? If you view presidential power as George W. Bush does, then you don't need a law authorizing executive activities. Unfortunately, that does not comport with the constitutional realities in ASUN.

Under the correct, limited view of presidential power, a law must authorize the plan's creation. Last I checked, no law authorized the ASUN President to create a plan, much less then attach ASUN's name to it without first consulting with the Senate. JV 2017 represents a lapse in lawful authority.

Now enter Senator Haley Anderton's bill to prohibit individuals from doing what President Reilly did. The bill would do two things: (1) require Senate approval before proposals are presented to the Regents on behalf of "any member of [ASUN] [1]; and (2) require a direct student vote on any proposal presented to the Regents that "could potentially increase student fees." This bill represents the first formal reaction from the Senate. But the mere existence of the bill, much less its passage, presents some problems.

If this bill were to become law, it would imply that, before the bill became law, the activities the bill prohibits were legal. Why write a law to prohibit something if it was never legal in the first place? This could have the effect of giving retroactive approval to Reilly's conduct here. That clearly doesn't seem to be what Sen. Anderton and others have in mind. Also, this bill probably can't apply to JV 2017 because the plan existed before this law was passed.

Current ASUN law provides adequate remedies to this situation, without necessitating the passage of a new law. There's the inherent constitutional limitation I discussed above. You could argue illegal spending in creating JV 2017 under sections 221 and 224 of the Association Budget and Finance Act. You could ask the President to point to which law authorized these activities, likely a difficult task. New law should be created only when existing law is inadequate. An example is when one can properly attach ASUN's name to something. But it isn't the case here; this case deals with views of executive power vis-a-vis the Senate.

I'm glad to see the Senate has sprung into action, but this bill has unintended consequences, and the senators should consider other reasonable options that won't compromise the Senate's position on this issue.

Footnotes.

[1] This language doesn't proscribe the conduct Sen. Anderton probably thinks it does. Do you really want to require Senate approval of any plan presented to the Regents on behalf of any ASUN member (i.e., any undergraduate student)?