Tempe USG President Cassidy Possehl says her opening address at the second regular session. The Tempe USG met on Aug. 26, 2014 passed bills. (Photo by Shiva Balasubramanian)The Possehl Appropriations Act, passed earlier this month, aims to create a clear-cut process for clubs and organizations to receive the funding they need for meetings or events to fix some of the issues that arose last year.
To apply for appropriation funding, organizations must submit a budget and an explanation of why they need the requested funds through OrgSync.
Vice President of Policy Nick VandenNieuwenhof said he experienced first-hand last year the problems with the old appropriations process.
"Last year when I was a senator, a lot of the clubs and organizations were really unhappy with how hard the process was," he said. "We are trying to make the process easier, and we've worked on ideas where we have received a lot of input from these organizations."
Co-Chair of the Appropriations Committee Sen. Erik Kausin said part of last year's problem was overspending.
"We've worked on revamping what we had in the past," he said. "One thing we had to correct was a mistake with overspending last year, and the second was to reaffirm what we had worked on over the summer."
The new act will make the process more open and accountable, Kausin said.
Clubs and organizations will now have more information going into the appropriations process about what will happen if they are denied funding.
"We now have standards for how much organizations can receive," Kausin said. "Now clubs and organizations will know why they were denied funding or only given half (of the money they requested) and we will give the reasons why and how to fix their applications."
The act will also help to stop requests for excess funding during the general appropriations cycle.
"Before we had organizations ask for everything they needed at one time," Kausin said. "Organizations would typically over-ask in order to receive half or partial funding, and now we ask for a timeline and a mission statement to know how the funds we give out will be utilized."
At Tuesday night's Tempe USG meeting President Cassidy Possehl discussed the opening and closing of the two appropriation application cycles, general and events.
"You can't open two cycles at the same time," she said. "If we had both cycles opened the organizations could have opted into the general or events cycle."
This would have confused the process, so Possehl said she wants to keep the events cycle closed until after the general cycle closes on Sept. 5.
Possehl said the process is continually being made easier, and the only limitations is the software being used.
"We have to function within the limitations of the software we have now, and OrgSync isn't that flexible," she said.
Reach the reporter at jshanco2@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @joey_hancock
