GSB will vote on Daily’s funding

Wendy Weiskircher

The Government of the Student Body will discuss a second round of finance committee funding recommendations tonight, and the results of the Iowa State Daily investigation will be presented.

Budgets of eight student organizations, including the Daily, were divided out by the senate last Wednesday, and sent back to the finance committee for review.

Charlie Johnson, speaker of the senate, said he does not expect any major controversy on the committee’s recommendations.

“I don’t foresee anyone really objecting to the allocations that the finance committee recommends at this point,” said Johnson, vice president elect. “If the senate wants to talk about a few more things, they can, but I don’t really see it happening.”

Jeremy Peterson, business, who made the original motion to send the Daily’s budget back to the finance committee, said he does not foresee any problems, either.

“I don’t see much objection to the bill on the senate floor,” he said.

Peterson asked for the Daily budget to be discussed because of two posters advertising position openings from last April that did not have “Funded by GSB” on them, a violation of the funding regulations.

Greg Tew, vice speaker of the senate, said the recommendations must be approved by the time the senate session ends before the April 10 inauguration, or the groups automatically would be zero-funded.

Tew, who made the motion to amend Peterson’s motion to include an investigation on the Daily’s budget, said the investigation was a compromise so the student newspaper’s account would not have been frozen.

“That was completely not feasible, [because] the Daily wouldn’t be able to print any papers,” he said. “I think the finance director did a good job in his investigation.”

Alex Olson, vice chairman of the finance committee, said senators may vote to send a group’s budget back to the finance committee for additional consideration and a new recommendation. However, he said all changes were minor.

Olson said the biggest change was in the budget of GSB, which was reduced from about $142,000 to $128,000. The budget originally was figured to provide out-of-state tuition scholarships for the GSB executives, but both executive-elects are from Iowa, he said.

“I don’t see any battles,” said Olson, off campus.

The GSB Senate will meet tonight at 7 in the Campanile Room of the Memorial Union.