UMSU builds on policy of openness, accountability

Degrees is not such a sore loser, after all

Tessa Vanderhart, Staff

According to UMSU officials, information provided to the Manitoban for an Aug. 24 story about Degrees was wrong: rather than losing $6,606 in the 2003-04 year, UMSU now says that the restaurant made a profit of $13,760.

Little information was available about the surplus, and according to Rachel Gotthilf, UMSU’s recently hired director of internal administration, this deficit of financial information was due to the poor records inherited from previous administrations. The Union is currently on the path to correcting the lack of adequate records.

Gotthilf said that the error in reporting the Degrees finances was the result of interpreting a budget sheet inaccurately and recording the wrong number. This led to erroneous statements in interviews with the Manitoban. to incomplete data.

After it was realized that Degrees’ finances were incorrectly related to the Manitoban, UMSU examined the council reports, only to find that there was a page of expenses that had been missed, and had to be printed off after the fact.

Cathy Antsey, the executive director of UMSU, currently has updated and complete financial records, according to Gotthilf, but no such records survived the administrative transfer last spring when Anstey was hired: only limited financial information is available before February 2005. However, files can be pulled from past council reports, which can lead to errors in transferring data.

Building on the policy of being open and accountable, UMSU executive is currently examining ways to improve their accountability; the executive is attempting to reexamine UMSU’s finances, with some interesting results.

Amanda Aziz and Cathy Van Der Kerkhove were elected in the spring of 2004 on a platform of openness and accountability. Citing UMSU-financed computers, rings, cellphone bills and parking passes, they vowed last September to clean up UMSU’s act: “little things that you would think would be fairly obvious,” said Aziz.

“UMSU, when we first took office, was a place where the executive never got involved with any of the finances, the numbers, or — frankly — I would say didn’t really care about the way things were reported. Starting from the beginning of the year, trying to make sense of this massive organization, we spent all year trying to figure out how to create an accountable system of financial [records].”

As a result, the position of director of internal administration was created this fall, and Gotthilf was chosen to fill it.

“Very bad records were taken before this year — [we want to ensure] that there are enough records being kept; that there is authority in this executive position,” said Aziz.

Gotthilf is currently looking into UMSU finances to gain a better understanding, but she — along with Anstey — is relatively new to the business side of the students’ union.

“The person who would normally know the answer[s] is the executive director of UMSU; because they oversee businesses. The reason Cathy [Anstey] does not know is that she was hired late into the school year; that why there is so much confusion. . . . All she can do is speculate . . . to try to guess what happened,” said Gotthilf.

Previously, UMSU was one of few students’ unions without a student official mandated to finances.

The changes to UMSU’s accountability largely focus on creating archives of UMSU records, which can be difficult to access, particularly to students who are not aware of what is going on behind the scenes.

Aziz also emphasized “creating a paper trail to make sure that each executive knows what is happening — that was something we didn’t have when we first came into office.” Without this, last year’s UMSU executive was only able to clean up financial issues that were immediately clear.

“Certainly you can’t jump into an organization that, I would say, was way behind its times in terms of being accountable to its members, and expect [it] to change overnight; but I think that we’ve done a fair amount of work, and gotten things to the point where I would say we definitely, now, are accountable,” said Aziz.

Discrepancies in the finances of the diner point back to an error in the calculations made by UMSU staff; a miscalculation was made regarding the finances of Degrees in its first year of operation, as Bar Italia — the restaurant previously occupying the third floor space — left debt tacked on to UMSU’s records.

This error, then carried on to the 2003-04 year in UMSU’s budget calculations, made the restaurant appear much less profitable than it should have. Furthermore, the absence of records left nothing for UMSU to verify the financial calculations regarding Degrees against, in the short term. Since then, a professional audit has been conducted, the results of which will be available to the public in the next few days.