Student Government President Andy MacCracken and Class of 2010 Senator Steve Dalton reached a compromise over recent legislation regarding the Clean Energy Revolving Fund, The Eagle learned Wednesday night.
The new bill, to be debated Sunday, would ban the use of student activities fees to fund the program. However, fundraising done by the SG would be permitted for use. Students would also be able to indicate that they wanted to donate money to the fund.
MacCracken said he would not veto the new bill, which will be brought before the Undergraduate Senate on Sunday, he said in an interview with The Eagle.
“There’s really no specific reason for writing a new bill other than to ... re-establish support from the Senate’s perspective and establish set policies in how it’s funded through the Student Government,” he said.
This comes on the heels of a legislative tug-of-war between some members of the Senate and MacCracken over how CERF will be funded.
CERF is a new program under the umbrella of the administration, in the office of the Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. Contributions to the fund would go towards renewable energy generators in an effort to help make AU carbonneutral. The fund is “revolving” in the sense that money saved from the university producing its own energy would then be used to fund other renewable energy projects.
The legislation
MacCracken vetoed the last bill regarding the CERF on Saturday.
Despite opposition of the veto in the Senate, the measure was allowed to stand since it did not garner the necessary two-thirds of votes needed to override the veto.
The vetoed bill, which was passed in the Senate Jan. 26, imposed stricter definitions of whether SG could contribute funds from student activity fees into CERF.
MacCracken vetoed the bill because SG should be able to contribute to CERF, he said.
“[CERF] is an idea that promotes an industry that is blooming within the United States, and we’re able to become a leader in that field,” MacCracken said. “I feel that there would be benefit to the campus community in general.”
MacCracken said he thought the Senate had rushed through the passing of the bill and called for fresh start for the legislation.
“We haven’t spent time to answer questions or even ask the right questions,” he said. “I believe we should take the proper steps and make sure every word in there says what we want it to.”
As a result, a new bill has been drafted and will be presented to the Senate this Sunday, according to Dalton.
Some senators thought the Jan. 26 bill, authored by Dalton, was unclear in whether SG had the ability to transfer funds if the body decides to support CERF through running fundraisers. There were worries that the bill would have prevented any money from transferring from the SG to the fund, even if the money was specifically raised for CERF. The vetoed legislation’s main purpose was to articulate exactly where the CERF money would originate.
“No money can be transferred by any member of the Student Government from any Student Government account to the Clean Energy Revolving Fund,” the bill stated.
This bill sought to close a financial loophole in the system where extra money in the SG budget at the end of the year could potentially be transferred to CERF.
“There is this loophole that I want to close,” Dalton said. “By not calling it [transferred funds to CERF] a donation or whatever at the end of the semester, at the end of the year you could essentially get away with it. I don’t think we should be getting away with anything. If it’s not allowable during the whole year, it shouldn’t be able to get away with it at the end of the year.”
The new legislation will allow SG to temporarily hold funds for CERF after fundraising, and then transfer the money into the CERF account.
The debate
The Senate was torn between support and opposition of the Jan. 26 bill, with one side claiming that CERF would impose “green fees” in the form of more bag taxes or otherwise, thus forcing a mandatory charge on students. This rumor is false, according to Drew Veysey, the director of environmental policy for SG and one of the students involved in creating the CERF fund.
“The Clean Energy Revolving fund has nothing to do with mandatory fees,” Veysey said.
A large amount of the debate last Sunday was devoted to clearing up these rumors and calling for agreeable means for supporting CERF.
Dalton, who also heads the Senate’s Budget Committee, said he thought allocating money to CERF was not proper, considering student activity fee money would be the major source of funding.
“Everyone who votes on the budget knows we barely have enough money to fund all the SG departments and organizations that we currently have,” Dalton said. “CERF is not one of those, which means that it is outside the bounds of SG funding. I think we should play by the rules and we should do everything we can to help CERF that is proper.”
Veysey, who also spoke at the Jan. 26 meeting, countered Dalton’s argument.
The Clean Energy Referendum of 2006 — a vote in which over 1,000 AU students participated to demonstrate AU’s concern with clean energy — was an example of the AU community’s desire for cleaner energy, Veysey said.
“Seventy-one percent of AU students voted to raise their own fees to pay for clean energy on campus,” he said. “The student activity fee is the students’ money, and if the students want clean energy, why shouldn’t they be able to put their SG’s money towards clean energy on campus?”
Dalton said his bill would not kill CERF. Rather, it would change the way it will be funded.
“It doesn’t limit the SG’s ability to fundraise for CERF,” he said. “It just says we shouldn’t make use of an inappropriate way to funnel funds. In fact, I’m sure that we could raise $5,000 for CERF by working with fundraisers, promotions.”
MacCracken defended his veto, saying that the original bill was too stringent in its financial constraints.
“I believe everyone supports the Clean Energy Revolving Fund,” he said. “But I do believe that this was passed in haste last week and didn’t get the proper second look to make sure that every single line in here did what we want it to do. And unfortunately, if the Student Government does a bake sale tomorrow to support CERF we can’t move the proceeds over there if this bill passes.”
MacCracken said that SG could have a fundraiser for CERF under the present bill, as long as it acquires the funds before the money moves into CERF.
“It’s my understanding, based on what I was told by Student Activities, that we have to have that money first, and as I said, we are unable to transfer that money.”
The resulting situation would, according to Veysey, “cut CERF off from Student Government funding.”
Over 20 members of the public came in support of MacCracken’s veto on Sunday, all appealing that CERF receive the funding from SG.
President of EcoSense Jennifer Jones said she thinks the SG should find a way to provide funding for clean energy.
“Students want renewable energy,” she said. “This is something that is important to students, and this bill would inhibit that. The bill prohibits potentially all funding from Student Government, and that’s not a good thing. This isn’t about raising fees for students; it’s about leaving the door open for SG to support clean energy on campus.”
Procedural issues
Parliamentary procedure was also a factor in MacCracken’s veto. Some senators said they were ill-prepared in voting for the original bill.
“We weren’t really doing our jobs as we should have,” said Megan Shea, a senator for the class of 2013. “We were in a hurry to just move on.”
After facing a long list of bills on Jan. 26, some senators may have overlooked some of the more contentious stipulations of the bill, according to Brett Atanasio, senator for the class of 2013.
“[The Undergraduate Senate was] like ‘OK, we’ve already done a million pieces of legislation already today, we might as well just get this done,’” he said. “And so they missed those two lines on the second page that are the source of all the controversy that has erupted since.”
The Senate skipped the first reading of the bill in order to speed the process of passing it.
“We waived first reading and went right into voting, and I think that’s where a lot of the confusion has happened, because first reading was meant to help everybody understand the bill,” Shea said.
Staff writer Tamar Hallerman contributed to this report.
You can reach this writer at news@theeagleonline.com.
