The Government of the Student Body lost an estimated $700 in student money allocated to it from the GSB Regular Allocations Account.

At its Wednesday night meeting, Chief of Staff Kari Hoefer reported the student body will lose $700 that was allocated to be paid for registration costs to the Big 12 Leadership Conference, because senators who signed up for the conference backed out.

Hoefer, sophomore in art and design, said three senators made signed commitments to attend the annual leadership conference that will be held this weekend at Baylor University.

She said of those three senators, Vice Speaker of the Senate William Rock and ex-officio Ames City Council member Nathan Johnston were registered to attend.

Another unnamed senator backed out for undisclosed reasons, she said.

Johnston backed out of his commitment to attend because of an Ames City Council forum to be held at the same time as the conference, Hoefer said. The forum is for candidates running for City Council seats, and Johnston is one of the candidates.

Rock said his reason for backing out of attending the conference was not wanting to drive alone twelve hours to attend the conference.

“I understand [the senator’s reasons], but I would have liked to see more people registered,” Hoefer said. “It’s a poor showing on out part not to show up for a conference that deals with issues in the Big 12.”

She said she will make attempts to see if GSB can reclaim a portion of that money from the conference.

According to the GSB Constitution, all branches of GSB government must formalize a budget and have it be approved by the senate and the finance committee.

“GSB approves it’s own budget by requesting it from itself during the regular allocations process, and that’s where the $700 comes from,” said GSB Finance Director David Boike.

“GSB basically lost money it gave itself to spend, but that money does come from students,” he said.

James Paul, freshman in engineering, said he was disappointed to hear GSB lost the student money.

“I think they need to be more responsible with their spending of student money in the future,” Paul said.

GSB is also facing possible money problems with the Senate Discretionary Account.

According to last year’s GSB budget log, the senate had $10,000 to spend on campus groups per session.

However, according to this year’s budget the senate has $3,000 less to spend this year per session.

Boike said this year’s Senate Discretionary Account started at $7,000, or $3,000 less from last year, because budgets had to be cut in order to pay off a debt GSB incurred last year through a miscalculation in the amount of student fees GSB was to collect.

“Yes, we did have to cut the amount of money we gave student groups to fund this year to pay off the debt, but we also had to make cuts in GSB as well,” he said.

As a result of GSB spending from the account so far this academic year, it currently stands at about $4,600.

“The senate is spending more compared to last year, but it’s the two effects compounding each other which could cause future problems in funding groups from the account for this session,” Boike said.

He said it’s up to senate to decide how fast it wants to spend money from the account, but he said he will not let the senate spend more than what is in the account.