The Union Senate rejected a fourth proposal for the Student Union's government operations budget last Sunday, as the Senate, Treasurer and Executive Board remained in a deadlock over many aspects of its composition.After three hours of debate, the Senate was unable to reach an agreement. It passed a $2,000 resolution to ensure the continuing function of essential government services and tabled the discussion of the budget until the next meeting.

"I've never seen such trouble getting a budget passed," Student Union Vice President Alex Braver '09 said.

The Senate discussed a first and second version of the budget at the Feb. 3 Senate Meeting and had agreed to table discussion on it to address a number of disagreements between senators, as well as the Senate and the executive board.

Student Union Treasurer Choon Woo Ha '08 proposed a third budget last Sunday (see table.) The plan accounted for $700 and $1,000 in funding for the update of the course evaluation guide and the Novus guide for first-year students. Ha said at the meeting that that funding for the Novus guide would cover a new online version of the publication instead of a print version. A number of senators stated that they would support ceasing the publication of the Novus entirely.

In the third proposal, the Senate received a total of $12,862.23 compared to the $12,526.23 and $14,876.23 it was alloted in the first two budgets.

"I really think the budget is good as it is, and I don't know how I'm going to change that budget around anymore," Ha said. Because of the continuing resolution, "technically the government is shut down right now," he added. As of now, he said, he did not foresee any changes being made to his proposal.

Ha said that he formed the new budget because he realized that he had forgotten to account for funds for the course evaluation guide and the Novus guide.

Last week's tabling of the decision provided him with the opportunity to rethink the budget and allowed him to institute a necessary reform he had been thinking about for some time, he said.

"I'm going to try my best to persuade them," Ha said.

Many senators objected to the third budget on the grounds that it did not guarantee the budgets of specific committees.

Some had reservations about the size of the E-board's social fund. Director of Campus Life Christina Khemraj '09 had earlier informed the Senate that she intended to spend a large portion of that fund on an experimental party to gauge the impact of guaranteed funding and large-scale publicity on social events and to gain lessons about social programming on campus.

Ha proposed shifting the $1,000 budgeted for the Novus guide to the Senate discretionary fund, but would not respond to many senators' requests to delineate committee budgets because he said that policy would enable the Senate to allocate its own funds. The Senate then rejected the fourth budget proposal.

Braver suggested that a request by Ha to present committee budgets earlier could have caused some confusion. "There are a lot of projects that senators and e-boarders want to do and they require a lot of money and its money that we frankly may not have," he said.