"The IRS issued an audit in the Spring of 2000, in an attempt to review Amherst College's then student finance committee (SFC). The audit was not dealt with and has been passed from SFC chair to SFC chair," said AAS budgetary committee Chair Livia Angiolillo '04. "There will be significant fines and penalties due to the fact that we have delayed the process for so long."
According to Assistant Dean of Students Samuel Haynes, the pattern of getting extensions and not meeting them has resulted in the two year delay.
"I was informed by an auditor in June of 2000 that the student government organization (SGO) had not closed its books at the end of the year … [since then] there has been a legacy of extensions and not meeting deadlines," said Haynes.
Haynes noted that these are self-generated audits that are required annually in order for the student government to maintain its tax exempt status. "We don't expect to lose that status, we are working with certified accountants and we are making more progress than ever before to catch up," said Haynes. "Livia is working diligently and we should be all caught up by the end of the year."
Former SFC chair Will Johnson '03 acknowledged the delay and said the SFC did address the issue during his time as treasurer. "The process has been ongoing for a couple years. [The SFC] planned to do it second semester … we had preliminary discussions about paperwork [during the first semester]," said Johnson.
Angiolillo has compiled the numbers from last year and is working on the year before.
According to Angiolillo, the SFC had $304,320 to allocate at the beginning of Spring 2002. Of this total, $114,820 was allocated to the master general fund, which payed for things like the SGO budget, Keepers of the Word and ACEMS. An additional $147,056.30 was allocated to clubs, which left $42,443.70 in funding for both discretionary requests and appeals. However, $54,627.60 was granted throughout the semester as discretionary funding and appeals funding, more than $12,000 more than the SGO had remaining.
"These figures only account for the bills that were actually paid; many bills are outstanding still because they were never documented, paid or accounted for," said Angiolillo. "We are forced to continue paying for bills that are for a different year from this current year because there is just not enough funding from years past."
According to Angiolillo, in some instances expenses were marked as paid according to the books while in fact the bills have not yet been paid.
AAS president David Bugge '04E expressed confidence that the AAS will not delay dealing its resolution of this matter any longer. "This will be a difficult process, but the matter needs to be taken care of … we are going to get it done this year for sure," said Bugge. "It will take a lot of hours to sort through all the paperwork."
While the issue has been mainly the concern of the budgetary committee and the e-branch, the entire senate will become more involved as the process continues.
"We will let the senate know what's going on every step of the way. When we eventually have to pay the fines, the senate will have the final say on how its done and in what time frame," said Bugge.