It has been called one of the most important student government positions in the university. However, the search to seat the perfect Government of the Student Body finance director has run into problems.

The GSB finance director is a student with a great deal of power — power over nearly $1.2 million in student money over the course of next year.

The person nominated for the position is appointed by the GSB president and approved by the Senate. In the past, these seating bills have been passed by the Senate without any debate. However, at Wednesday night’s GSB meeting, the Senate not only debated the seating bill for more than an hour and a half, but the bill was eventually withdrawn because no end to the debate was in sight.

John Hamilton, business senator and proposer of the bill, said he withdrew the bill because he did not think it would ever come to a vote.

“There was a lot of debate going on, and we were going nowhere really fast. I think we can just wait until next semester to fill the position,” Hamilton said.

GSB President Adam Gold said he wanted to fill the position of finance director now because he did not want to have an interim director over the summer, which is what will now happen.

“I wanted to get the administration going. I wanted to get people in place before summer and be ready to go at the start of next semester,” Gold said.

Gold chose David Schoof, a graduate student in community regional planning, to fill the position as finance director. However, Schoof’s appointment was questioned by many at the meeting because of his lack of GSB finance committee experience.

Schoof, who has never served on the finance committee, was chosen for the position after an interview process with six other candidates, including five students who served on this year’s finance committee. Many people present, said they felt the experience on the committee should be a requirement for the job.

Steve Elliott, the 1995-96 finance director, said that he did not believe Schoof was an acceptable choice for the position.

“I believe you need experience to become finance director,” Elliot said. “We’re talking about $1.2 million of students’ money; that’s something that needs experience.”

Elliott said if Schoof was the only person who applied for the job, then the appointment would have to be approved. However, because of the number of finance committee members who applied, Elliott said, he was not a good choice.

Gold said Schoof is the best candidate for the position because he has real-life experience, including organizing the Cy-Ride budget last fall.

“David was responsible for providing a budget for Cy-Ride that had an $81,000 federal budget cut. He managed to balance their budget without cutting any of Cy-Ride’s routes. To me, that’s far more finance experience than sitting on any committee,” Gold said.

Gold said he does not weigh serving a year on the finance committee that heavily because it is nothing that cannot be learned in a month.

“If I thought it would be bad for the students to appoint someone with no finance committee experience, then I wouldn’t have done it,” Gold said. He said he was looking for someone with innovation and intelligence to understand the process and someone who had real life experience, which he said Schoof has.

Dan Mangan, former GSB president, told the new senators the role of finance director is to work with the president and help him carry out his views. For that reason, he said, it is important to seat the president’s choice for the position.

“If you have someone that you want to be finance director, then you run for president. This is the president’s job, this will be his employee working for him, and you should respect his decision,” Mangan said.

He said the Senate should not disregard Schoof because of his lack of finance committee experience. “I didn’t have any experience when I was elected as GSB president — none at all. People can learn the job.”

Elliott said no one who has not served on the committee can understand completely the job of finance director.

“Just because you learn the nine pages of rules does not mean you are ready for the job. You do need experience, and you do need to have some kind of background about what happened the year before,” Elliott said. “You don’t get that kind of knowledge from sitting down and reading a book.”

Gold said he will appoint an interim finance director for the summer and next fall another seating bill will be proposed to the Senate to seat a finance director. As of now, Gold was not yet sure who would be this summer’s interim director.

“I understand that the Senate was just looking out for the students’ well-being, but I would never seat anyone who I felt could not handle the job,” Gold said.