Four high-ranking members of UW-Madison's student government may have broken organizational bylaws by voting to substantially increase salaries for positions they later filled, according a Student Council member.
In a complaint filed Monday with the Student Judiciary, council member Maxwell Love alleges that current Associated Students of Madison Chair Tyler Junger, Vice Chair Tom Templeton, Secretary Kurt Gosselin and Student Services Finance Committee Chair Brandon Williams voted to increase stipends by more than 15 percent for the positions they now hold. Last year, all four were members of committees that voted on the budget.
According to the bylaws, accepting an increase of over 15 percent would ""constitute malfeasance in office and be grounds for firing, impeachment or removal from all offices and positions held in ASM"" if the representative had served on a committee that approved the increase. Love's complaint also asks that the four be forced to forfeit stipends earned above those increases for their positions, which end in two weeks. The four were budgeted to receive a total of $6,050 more than a 15 percent increase, according to data from the complaint.
""I'm trying to bring to people's awareness the fact that we have current leadership that are violating the bylaws when it comes to stipends,"" Love said.
Gosselin said the bylaw should be nullified because the Student Council also voted to approve the SSFC salaries in September. This, he said, would violate Wisconsin statute 105.02, which says state employers cannot provide false employment information.
Gosselin added that even if state law does not apply, this year's SSFC members, like Williams, were formally exempted from the bylaw so they could start receiving payments of $20 per meeting. In addition, Gosselin said Love's interpretation did not match the spirit of the bylaw.
""These stipends were approved en masse,"" he said. ""It's not like people on the committees went to individual stipended positions and said, ‘I'm going to run for this, let's increase it.'""
Love said he finds that argument hard to believe.
""It's just such a big thing, and there are two different bylaws that talk about it, and we just spent a month talking about these bylaws,"" Love said.
Gosselin said he found the timing of the Love's complaint ""ironic.""
""This is coming up now on day two of the ASM elections. I have no doubt in my mind that this is part of an MPOWER strategy to politically smear other candidates,"" Gosselin said.
Love, a member of the MPOWER slate, said his decision to speak up now was not politically motivated.
