Discrepancies in the Government of the Student Body finance director’s salary, illegal requests from former GSB President T.J. Schneider for a bonus for one of his cabinet members and an informal request to approve travel expenses to a conference without prior senate review have angered three GSB officials.

Schneider has made several illegal and unethical financial requests this year, said David Boike, finance director, Tony Luken, liberal arts and science college senator and Dan Kline, outgoing off-campus senator.

The debate over the new GSB executives’ decision to re-appoint Boike to the finance director position stemmed from disagreement over Schneider’s request to Boike of some questionable line-item transfers in the GSB budget, Luken and Kline said.

Because Boike is an Iowa resident, there was $6,300 left over from the finance director salary allocation, officials said. Luken said when the current budget had to be drafted, it wasn’t known whether the person who would take the position would be a resident or non-resident student. Luken said the salary was set for a non-resident student, just in case.

Luken and Boike said when such discrepancies occur, the finance director line items the money from his salary account to a special projects account, which Boike did. But Schneider approached Boike with a request to line item $300 from the finance director’s salary to serve as a bonus for former Chief of Staff Rick Cordaro, the three officials said.

They said Schneider was angry when Boike refused this request. There was never an official request on paper, Boike said.

GSB has never given bonuses to its members, and such a precedent should be voted on by the senate, Luken said.

“We don’t do it because we already get paid for our work,” he said.

Boike said Schneider told him Cordaro deserved a bonus because he had done an exceptional job organizing and managing the cabinet.

“No matter how well Rick did, he already gets paid and we shouldn’t be lining our own pockets in this time of budget cuts,” Boike said. “It’s a biased decision by the president because he wanted to just randomly give his buddy a raise while not mentioning people in the legislative branch for their good jobs.”

Luken said Schneider’s action was absurd at the least and corruption at its worst.

Cordaro’s salary for this year was $1,648 and Boike’s was $14,334.

According to the GSB bylaws, the finance director can line item money under $500 without seeking the approval of the finance committee or the senate.

“I can transfer money from item to item within an organization’s budget, as long as it is under $500, but the transfer has to be in an already existing account,” Boike said.

Schneider had also made another illegal line item request from Boike, said Luken, Kline and Boike.

Schneider, along with five other GSB members, attended the Conference of Student Government Associations, according to GSB records. Luken and Boike said Schneider wanted to fly rather than drive, so he asked Boike to make four separate line item transfers of $300, totaling $1,200 so they could fly.

“I told T.J. that I wasn’t going to do it, because it’s illegal. A request of that size is supposed to go to the senate,” Boike said. “I told him he could go to the senate and he said, ‘They’ll turn me down.’ I won’t divide up a request in that way to slip it under the senate’s nose because it’s illegal and unethical. And, not only that, the senate is my boss.”

Schneider admits to talking about the two requests with Boike and Kline, but said he never officially made a request. Boike and Kline said Schneider never put anything in writing.

“It was more of a, ‘Hey wouldn’t this be interesting, but we aren’t going to do it,’ because I realized it was inappropriate. It was just a joke, and I would never honestly think about something like that,” Schneider said. “It seems a lot of people are trying to pigeonhole me.”

Kline said, as he has worked with Schneider on GSB for more than year, he could detect from Schneider’s tone of voice that he was not joking when he made the request.

“If he wants to refer to his action as a joke, then it shows his attitude to not only his office but ours as well,” said William Rock, off-campus senator.