!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In one fell swoop, the state authorities might have toppled the best laid plans of the ASUO’s mice and men. Those plans were all founded on the assumption that, next year, the ASUO’s relationship with the Lane Transit District bus system would be funded and administered independently of the institutional fee. But that change was always dependant upon the approval of the state Oregon State Board of Higher Education. And nobody seriously believed that wouldn’t happen.

Well, one ACFC member told me he had heard it did happen. I heard it at 6:15 p.m., long after anyone at the BHE or the University who could have told me more was gone, long after Sam Dotters-Katz leaves the office for the day and stops answering calls from jurnos on his ubiquitous iPhone. I haven’t had the time to verify the rumor and I don’t know how final any decision would be.

But, if this is the real deal, the ramifications are colossal.

Dotters-Katz has said the LTD question will, for better or worse, define his presidency. When the answer to the question was late night buses 6 days a week, he said students would “go crazy” for his proposals. But now, it’s up to question whether, within the strict parameters imposed upon institutional fee money and over the possibility of objections from fiscal conservatives in the Senate, there will be enough dough leftover to keep the late night busses running.

And the LTD isn’t the only program the OSBHE’s decision affects. The LTD’s contract will now remain under the oversight of the ASUO’s Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee, which is limited to increasing the size of its budget by seven percent every year. And the ACFC is responsible for other services–buying tickets to Ducks games, the Emerald, OSPIRG, Legal Services–all of whose budgets are teathered to one another. And the ASUO has also thrown its New York Times subscription on top of all that. And that means all of these contracts must compete with one another for any money on top of what they’re already getting.

Since LTD will need a great deal more than it gets already because of the increase in costs because its normal sources of revenue are shrinking, that leaves little room for other groups–and several of their bugets have already been heard, meaning everyone else is going to have barely any room.

When the possibility was suggested at the ASUO Senate meeting that the transportation fee proposal would not get off the ground, the words were “slash and burn.” There was talk having to buy far fewer tickets to accommodate the buses. And with several within the ASUO already skeptical of OSPIRG, that group could become the sacrificial lamb to appease the angry gods of finance.

Nobody’s going to be happy, least of all the Senators who will have to deal with three of their four budgets (the Department Finance Committee and EMU Board are also likely to ask for seven percent) allocating as much money as possible this year and see institutional fees soar.