At 3 p.m. this past Friday, the most crucial period of the spring semester promptly began for Student Association Comptroller Stephen DeSalvo.

In the SA office, located on the lower level of the Schine Student Center, DeSalvo sat across from me at his desk and officially closed the online budget submission system used by Syracuse University’s registered student organizations.

The organizations submit their budgets every semester with the hopes DeSalvo and the Finance Board will recommend they receive funding from the student activity fee account. This budget season marks the first time groups with large operating budgets, like University Union or CitrusTV, will submit their budgets online as well.

Now serving his second term as SA comptroller, making this his fourth budget season as the top financial leader of the student government, DeSalvo has mastered the ability to realize and predict the issues bound to arise when charged with efficiently allocating the holdings of the student fee.

This experience and pledge to be as proactive as possible are the factors that foreshadow DeSalvo executing the most successful budget season yet. This success is defined by encouraging groups to take advantage of the tier system, limiting the number of mistakes groups make on their budget documents and the actual ability to distribute most of the student fee money.

To make the tier system more effective, SA passed a bill in January that increased the amount of funding a group can apply for and are eligible to receive in each tier. Substantial carry-over balances of the student fee meant students currently enrolled at SU, and therefore paying the fee, were not able to take the fullest advantage of the funding. The recently enacted legislation will be especially helpful this budget season for the lower-tier organizations that have access to the least amount of money.

Budget document errors made by organizations are unfortunately a common issue every budget season. When organizations make mistakes in filling out their budgets, the Finance Board cannot recommend that group receive the money it requested. This results in groups making appeals to the board in a second attempt to receive funding and not as much money being distributed from the account as possible.

This semester, DeSalvo began combating this issue before any group could fill out a budget proposal.

He began weeks ago by revamping fiscal training. Leaders of all registered student organizations must attend a training, hosted by DeSalvo, before applying for student fee funding. After analyzing the mistakes groups were making on their budgets last season, DeSalvo focused on these problem areas and posted a PowerPoint presentation about the issues online to hopefully avoid as many issues as possible.

At last Monday’s general assembly meeting, Lucia Ha, the newly appointed assistant comptroller, commented beyond the prevention of mistakes. Ha said she hopes to make more groups aware they can make an appeal to be granted funding if they are denied, which is an equally important aspect of the fee-granting process.

Ha joins Patrick Douglas in the role of assistant comptroller, which is yet another example of DeSalvo’s proactive mindset. Elevating capable members of the Finance Board to his assistance allows for the possibility of well-trained and experienced comptroller candidates coming next session who will carry on the progress DeSalvo has so diligently put in motion.

DeSalvo’s ability to plan for the future while decisively handling issues that face him in the present are what make the Finance Board the most efficient facet of SA. But DeSalvo makes clear it is not as simple to attack problems and pass bills for the general assembly as it is for him and his board, as the assembly must deal with many more hurdles, such as working with administration, students or outside agencies before changes can be made.

Though this is understandably the case, all members of the organization can apply one philosophy to their own work, which fuels DeSalvo’s success: being proactive, not only reactive, is the key to student government success.

Rachael Barillari is the editorial editor and a junior political science and Middle Eastern studies major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at rebarill@syr.edu and followed on Twitter at @R_Barillari.

Published on March 4, 2013 at 1:54 am