To the disappointment of all, tonight’s Student Services Finance Committee meeting was cancelled due to yet another missed deadline.

Still, we are grateful for the break, for it allows us a chance to step back and look at SSFC’s recent action as a whole. Unfortunately, it is not a pretty picture.

As we have been predicting all year, SSFC has raised their portion of student fees by an outrageous amount. Next year, students can look forward to a nearly 100 percent increase in the amount they pay to fund student organizations.

As soon-to-be-poorer students, we believe it is essential that financial nightmare of this sort be avoided in the future. So while most of the responsibility for this budget lies on the shoulders of SSFC members, it is also time to change the process by which seg fees are allocated.

Currently SSFC makes budget decisions without context or limits. Each group presents their budget and has a decision made on that budget at the next meeting. This means the value of the budgetary increases requested by, for example, WisPIRG, cannot be compared to the value of the budgetary increase requested by the Multicultural Student Coalition, or any other group whose budget was decided toward the end of the hearing schedule. The inability to consider a budget in context with other budgets makes it difficult to establish priorities.

But a more fundamental problem is that there is no need to prioritize, because there is no limit on SSFC’s decisions. SSFC is free to raise student fees as much as they please (pending approval by Student Council, the chancellor and the Board of Regents). It is not necessary to decide which proposed increases are more essential or provide a better service.

SSFC needs to follow the example of the Associated Students of Madison’s Finance Committee. The Finance Committee sets a budget every year, and when all those funds are allocated, there is no more funding allowed. This forces the committee to carefully evaluate the value of each event or travel grant, for to fund one activity is to not fund another.

We propose SSFC adopt a similar system. Before any money is allocated, budget hearings should be held for every student service group. This will allow SSFC to compare and contrast the value of the proposed budgets and establish priorities.

A spending cap passed after the budget hearings would enforce those priorities. Having heard each group’s proposed increases, SSFC would agree on how much they will raise student fees, and then make budget decision with this cap in mind.

As it currently stands, there is no accountability in the distribution of seg fees. Students are getting taken to the cleaners by a process that provides neither a context for priorities nor the means to enforce them. While it’s too late to introduce priorities and accountability to this year’s budgets, SSFC and ASM can truly serve students by changing the budget process in time for next year.