Leaked CSU Audit Reveals $330,000 Deficit from Last Year

NewsMichelle Pucci — Published November 25, 2014 | Updated November 25, 2014 at 3:48pm

Article last updated Wednesday, 26 at 12:19 p.m.

The audit is a public document and is only supposed to be released on Nov. 27, the last day of CSU by-elections.

But the former and current presidents of the CSU say the hefty deficit is the consequence of a finance executive largely M.I.A.

Former CSU President Melissa Kate Wheeler defended her team, saying they made financial decisions based on information given by last year’s Vice President of Finance Scott Carr.

“Information was very difficult to attain last year from the financial office of the CSU,” she said.

“It’s not clear to me whether this was misinformation or a question of neglect, but certainly it’s unacceptable for the deficit to be so large, especially when there was a surplus on it at the end of the year,” she added, admitting she hadn’t seen the final audit and couldn’t make any definitive comment on the situation.

Information that was presented in the end was not really put through the executive board before going to council as it should have, according to Wheeler.

“I don’t think there were very many checks involved because it was given to us so last minute,” she said of the year-end reports. “Council and most of the members on my team did the best that they could with the information provided to them.”

According to current CSU President Ben Prunty, information was unavailable to last year’s president, general manager, board members and even finance committee.

Orientation costs, for example, were initially not expected to go over budget. Then they were reported as being $19,000 over, according to Prunty, who says the actual costs of the orientation in 2013 ended up being almost $90,000 more than expected, on a budget of $155,000. All of this occurred in the first quarter of the year.

“The council was told that we were looking at a surplus for the entire year, and not just that but they were told that it was one of the largest surpluses the union has seen in a long time,” he said.

Prunty says the council and president were basing their expenses throughout the rest of the year on the impression that they were still working with a surplus.

“The board had no reason to reduce spending elsewhere in order to make up for these losses, because they were told that the financial situation of the organization was in tip-top condition,” he said.

The Link could not receive the updated budget needed to point out exactly where the expenses went wrong. But a large amount of the deficit is likely to be tied to orientation expenses and an overall increase in annual expenses that wasn’t accounted for, including executive salaries. The latest accessible 2013-2014 budget update was presented at the June 11 council meeting and shows a $41,366 surplus.

Carr says he can’t comment on the deficit because he hasn’t actually seen it yet, but he says some unexpected expenses might also come from fees owed to MHPM, a project management firm hired by the CSU in 2012 to advise it on creating the elusive student space.

Last year, The Link also reported on back taxes that added to unexpected expenses. These taxes were charged for bringing international artists to perform at orientation concerts between 2011 and 2013.

The taxes carried over to last year’s executive and added up to almost $42,000. Carr said the amount would be paid through interest collected by the Student Space, Accessible Education and Legal Contingency fund.

Any money pulled from the SSAELC fund needs to be justifiably linked to student space or accessibility initiatives in order to pass—students are voting on a number of questions concerning the fund in this week’s referenda.

Wheeler says the finance committee was also occupied with lowering checkpoints on the amount of money that could be spent with committee approval. In other words, projects that would normally get funding through the committees designing them would have to seek approval at a higher level (i.e. the executives).

This is something Prunty says made it nearly impossible for him to receive funding for “Green Initiative” projects, even though he was VP Sustainability, forcing him to fundraise a major part of the money needed.

The current CSU made changes to the way finances are reported by requiring committees to update their expenses at least every financial quarter along with the mid-year report they are required to submit to the financial committee.

Carr ran in the last elections on a separate team along with Maylen Cytryn. They are now running for council positions in the current by-elections. The former VP Finance is running on a campaign to bring more transparency to the CSU and the financial office, and accuses executives of having “tunnel vision” in their projects.

Needless to say, some of Carr’s former co-executives are not happy he is running.

“There was tension,” Carr said. “There is still tension between certain members.”

Both Prunty and Carr acknowledged a tension between them. The two have had arguments at meetings, which resulted in one of them leaving or swearing, or both.

“Last year, no doubt I made mistakes,” Carr said. “I’m always the first one to say I made a mistake.

“We’re students doing jobs that someone with much, much more experience should be doing.”

Correction: The original article said Kyle Arseneau ran in the last CSU election on the same team as Scott Carr and Maylen Cytryn. Arseneau ran for a Engineering and Computer Science Association councilor position. The Link would also like to acknowledge that some information published and referenced to Melissa Kate Wheeler was given off-the-record. The Link regrets the error.