Budgets and appropriations

One of the more nuanced items in ASUN is the difference between a budget and appropriations. The ASUN Constitution states that the Senate has the power "[t]o set a budget for the ASUN, but no money shall be spent from the treasury without appropriations made by law." ASUN Const. art. II, sec. 3(a)(2). This clause clearly indicates there is a difference between a "budget" and "appropriations made by law."

It may help to have some definitions. Black's Law Dictionary defines budget as "[a] statement of an organization's estimated revenues and expenses for a specified period, usu. a year." An appropriation is defined as "[a] legislative body's act of setting aside a sum of money for a public purpose." An appropriations bill is "[a] bill that authorizes governmental expenditures." And a budget bill is "[a] bill designating how money will be allocated for the following fiscal year."

Applying these definitions to ASUN, in its simplest form, a budget bill is one that sets an estimate of the amount of money coming into ASUN (revenues) and the amount going out (expenditures). A budget does nothing more than that. It does not authorize spending. That is what an appropriations bill (or several) is for. This distinction is important because the fiscal year 2009 budget was invalidated in Judicial Council Case No. AN-006 in part because proper appropriations were never made. That brings us to tonight.

The Senate is going to take up a bill setting the budget, which reads as follows:

Be it enacted by the Senate of the Associated students,[*]
That the budget of the Associated Students for Fiscal Year 2011 is hereby made effective as set out in Schedule A of this law.

[*] Could someone seriously fix the bill template to capitalize "students," as it is supposed to be?

So if this is all the Senate passes, ASUN cannot legally spend any money in the next fiscal year because no appropriations have been made by law. So what does a proper appropriation look like? I'll give a current example. Below is a properly drafted appropriations bill using figures in the proposed budget for next fiscal year.

Be it enacted by the Senate of the Associated Students, That the following sums are appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, for the Senate for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2011, namely:

SENATE

Compensation, Officers and Employees

For compensation of officers, employees, and others as authorized by law, $72,573.70, which shall be paid from this appropriation without regard to the following limitations:

office of the secretary

For the Office of the Secretary, $15,810.00.

fringe benefits

For fringe benefits expenses, $2,155.70.

Expenses of the Senate

For expenses of the Senate and its officers and employees, $6,000.00.

Travel

For travel expenses as authorized by Senate resolution or law, $6,000.00.

Hosting

For hosting expenses, $1,500.00, of which $500.00 is for summer training and $1,000.00 is for the outreach efforts of the Senate.

This Act may be cited as the "Senate Appropriations Act, 2011".

That is a proper appropriations bill for just the Senate. Repeat for each department, office, account, or other unit of ASUN. The appropriations process is one way by which the Senate can exert control over the executive on how to spend money.

If the reader needs more evidence that this is the proper appropriations process, look up appropriations bills from the 75th Senate Session here. One note, ASUN Public Law 75-2 is a special case because the budget and spending authorizations for that fiscal year were adopted under the previous constitution. That law was intended simply to make effective under the new constitution the prior authorizations. It was not meant as a model of a proper appropriations act for subsequent fiscal years.

N.B.: Changes to appropriations were not made by striking dollar amounts in the budget and inserting new ones (as has become the practice since the 75th Session), but were made by enacting new appropriations bills. See, e.g., ASUN Public Laws 75-23, 75-24, and 75-30. For an example of a rescission, see ASUN Public Law 75-31. For an example of capital spending, see ASUN Public Law 75-43. (I'd link to the individual files on the ASUN website, but they've been needlessly scrubbed.)

Stop pretending it didn't happen

To whomever had the brilliant idea to scrub the ASUN website of history:

Please stop pretending it never happened. Yes, I know the Senate repealed all legislation and reintegrated it into a comprehensive codification, but those documents exist. They happened. Repealing them doesn't make them go away; it just means they don't have present force or effect. By scrubbing the website, you're making historical research next to impossible to conduct solely on the web.

K thx.

[Bottoset] sucks. Hard.

I thought long and hard about writing (and posting) this entry. The (non)story doesn't deserve the attention. Neither do the people who are responsible. But to let it go without response would be even worse than staying silent.

The Sagebrush, which seems to have taken an interest to ASUN again (maybe they just didn't like those in the 77th Session), reported today that a couple of genius senators have introduced a bill to abolish ASUN. Okay, that's really being overly generous, because the bill does no such thing. The operative part of the bill:

Therefore, be it enacted by the Senate of the Associated students, that ASUN and all it encompasses be abolished immediately, and that fees stop being collected from the student body.

The evidence for this proposed enactment?

a. ASUN represents a small minority on this campus, as evidenced by a 10% voter turnout during elections.

b. Compulsory fees are unethical, and create pay for a handful of bureaucrats while wasting student money on pizza and frivolous expenditures.

c. ASUN has abused its authority, and must be stopped.

d. ASUN sucks. Hard.

This bill, just like the petition UNR SFL has been circulating, is destined for failure. Epic failure.

First, the Senate cannot abolish itself, much less the rest of ASUN. It doesn't have that power. Even the voters in ASUN do not have the power to force the issue. The only entity with the legal authority to abolish ASUN is the Board of Regents.

Second, as most (except the bill's sponsors) readily acknowledge, it's a joke. Third, the sponsors clearly haven't thought the bill through. What happens if it passes? Seriously. This more than anything else I'd like a response to.

One last little question. Doesn't supporting this bill, and especially voting for it, either explicitly or implicitly constitute a violation of the oath ASUN officers take to support the ASUN Constitution? Why is that not grounds for expulsion from the Senate? If being clearly subversive to the body you are bound to support doesn't qualify as an offense sufficient to expulsion, I don't know what does.

I hope a senator gets wise and objects to this bill's consideration or moves to indefinitely postpone this joke of a bill. To do otherwise invites ridicule.

---

Update: May 5 at 9:20 p.m.
Turns out the bill is heading to Sen. Bottoset's committee, Government Operations, for a hearing. This will certainly be interesting to watch unfold.

Disaster in Anarcho-Capitalist Utopia

An oil drilling company critically underestimates the potential harm from having its oil rig fail, and millions of gallons of crude begin pumping into the Gulf of Mexico. The drilling company immediately defaults.

Who cleans up the oil?

The Free Rider Problem

Over at UNRSFL, poster Keabag has posted a set of questions raised by Barry Belmont's Anarcho-Capitalism II lecture. Keagbag's 12 questions more-or-less center around the free rider problem, but I have seen Barry dance around answering direct questions about this apparent flaw in his philosophy on several occasions, and I'm curious to see if he will do so again.

The main problem with idealistic cities-in-thought (e.g., anarcho-capitalism, communism, pure capitalism) is that they gloss over the problem of members who are either not able or willing to make equal contributions to society.

Philosophies like Barry's tend to take a hard-line approach: people who do not contribute will face social pressure to conform, or else they will be excluded from essential functions of society (dating, selling, etc…), and that people who are incapacitated (the elderly, the severely handicapped, orphans) will either be taken in and cared for by their families, or else private individuals will raise the necessary capital to provide for those folks as an altruistic gesture. But this solution ignores the history of humanity that shows that even when private entities attempt to intervene to help those in need, there are still many who are unable to receive the assistance they need in order to maintain a reasonable standard of living.

I expect Barry would deny that such a result would occur in his idealistic system of government. Yet, even Ludwig von Mises, one of Barry's anarcho-capitalist heroes, argued that government was necessary for a limited number of functions, and it was because, as a practical matter, human self-interest is not sufficient for ensuring the smooth operation of society. Only governments, through their monopoly on the legal application of force, are in a position to solve market failures such as the free rider problem (even if they do so inefficiently).

It will be very interesting to see how Barry responds to Keabag's insightful questions. I suggest following the discussion.