Supporters and organizers of a defeated bill to add a new student-funded office to the Government of Student Body decided not to reintroduce the issue to the senate as planned.

Two hours before the GSB meeting Wednesday, Public Interest Research Group supporters Chelsea Lepley and Drew Miller said they weren’t sure they should go ahead with their plan of calling for a motion to reconsider the defeated Public Interest Research Group funding bill.

“We have people who are willing to do that,” Lepley said, “but we need to decide if we have the votes required.”

The decision not to go forward with the motion to reconsider came after Miller, off-campus senator, and Lepley, the group’s campus organizer, met with members of the finance committee and decided the best route to establishing the group would be through regular allocations.

“The idea is, if we don’t make a push to make it a student-funded office, we’ll be able to get enough funding for a staff and an operating budget,” Miller said.

The group’s current submitted budget asks for $66,000 in student fees to be allocated to the organization. Miller said he estimated the group would be able to get $30,000 to $40,000 through regular club funding.

“It means that we’ll get the chance to be fully funded, even if we aren’t an office,” Lepley said.

While the group may not have been able to secure the two-thirds vote needed to become a student-funded office, Lepley said organizers are confident they will be able to get the senate majority vote needed to approve their budget request.

Casey Harvey, member of the GSB finance committee, said the group’s supporters made the right decision.

“I think that if they were to be pushed through as a student-funded office, controversy would have followed, and they might not have gotten a fair hearing from the finance committee,” Harvey said. “I think what we worked out is best for everyone. From the finance standpoint, we still get to take a thorough look at their request. And PIRG gets to prove themselves to be deserving of student-funded office status from what they’ve done without extensive lobbying of senators.”

The group had been seeking establishment as a student-funded office. Student-funded offices currently include six long-standing campus organizations that receive priority attention for GSB allocations. However, debate last week resulted in the bill falling short of the two-thirds majority needed for a bylaw change. The final vote was 15-11-3.

After the bill’s defeat last week, Miller pledged he would reintroduce the bill to the senate, despite heavy criticism from the GSB’s finance department and from some senators.

“I think that, with every bill, there are certain members of the senate who think it’s a bad idea,” Miller said. “But I wanted to give the author a chance to be there for the vote, and give the PIRG organizers another chance to better explain their position, which they really didn’t get a chance to do last time.”

But even then, Miller said he didn’t anticipate the bill to be passed. The point of reintroducing the bill was to get a clear majority of votes from the senate that Miller said he hoped would allow the group to pass through the regular finance allocations process more easily. “This will establish that the senate favors financing the group,” Miller said, “even though we don’t have the numbers needed to change bylaws.”