Editorial: Bringing up budget

The university likes to pride itself on being technologically savvy. We have state-of the-art laboratories and green buildings with bathrooms with motion sensor lights. The toilets in those bathrooms? They have sensors to determine how much water is needed based on how long the stall has been occupied. There's even a nuclear reactor on the campus.

But other, simpler technological steps haven't been taken. In the year 2009, 18 years after the release of the World Wide Web, the university's budget isn't available online. Many public agencies have taken this basic step toward increased transparency and accountability, but at the university, someone would have to trek into the bowels of Hornbake Library to view the budget.

After questioning university officials as to why the document isn't accessible via the Internet, the answer was simple and frustrating: It just isn't. So we decided to head over to Hornbake to get a look at the ravaged budget ourselves.

After speaking with a receptionist outside of the fortified Maryland Room, we were buzzed inside. The man inside told us that the current budget wasn't there. In fact, it hadn't been made available to them yet because it is being converted into a Portable Document Format file — not to be posted online, but one to be viewed exclusively in Hornbake Library, exclusively in the Maryland Room. Apparently, the arrival of the massive budget document was delayed because the person responsible for converting it to PDF was on vacation. If we wanted to see the current budget, which has been slashed twice in recent weeks, we would have to go to the comptroller's office.

So while there is technically public access to the budget, our experience shows that's anything but the case. The university is currently reeling from cuts, but we have no way of seeing what departments or services those cuts affect.

The director of the budget and fiscal analysis, John Blair, described the budget as a living document, constantly changing due to budget cuts. This is another reason why it should be online, where it could be updated as reductions occur.

Older budgets are available at Hornbake — in paper form. The working budget for fiscal year 2009 is a massive 875-page document housed in a black binder. The first three pages are missing, and there is no index or table of contents. Trying to find anything specific in it requires a mind-boggling amount of mental labor.

In July, university President Dan Mote asked students, staff, faculty and alumni to submit their ideas about how to make reductions. While more than 200 people submitted ideas, it was impossible for the impact of any of them to be judged because the budget wasn't available to look at. How are students supposed to make suggestions about a document they can't even view?

When contacted, Vice President for Administrative Affairs Ann Wylie said she would look into getting the budget posted online. That's good. But the administration needs to follow through. Simply converting this year's document to PDF is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't go far enough. The budget should be available for all to see online, not just for those who know where the Maryland Room is.