Patrick Higgins

SGA selects Higgins as Speaker
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The Student Government Association Senate picked its Speaker for the 2004-2005 year last night, voting for Patrick Higgins, former chair of the Ways and Means Committee and SGA presidential candidate, with a 22-18 vote.
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Higgins ran against former Associate Speaker Chris . . . Read More...
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Bustamante won with 295 votes, while Patrick Higgins came in second.

Patrick Higgins and Timothy Daly
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"Tim and Pat, it's as simple as that."
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So runs the slogan that Timothy Daly and Patrick Higgins are running together as trustee and president.
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Higgins has been a member of the SGA Senate for two years.Last year, he chaired the Finance Committee, supplying Registered Student Organizations with supplemental funding.

This year, Higgins is the chair of the Ways and Means Committee, which budgets the Student Government's money.

Higgins sees problems with how student government has been running this year.

"We're not telling you what's happening," he said."We've lost connection."

Higgins notes that he told many students on campus about the Alcohol Task Force's recommendation and was dismayed that they had not heard about it before.

"It took us [the SGA] until second semester to respond to it," he said."We need to be more pro-active."

He was also disappointed that there was only one SGA representative on the Alcohol Task Force.He believes the Task Fore "didn't get to the heart of the problem."
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Higgins said there is a huge disconnection between the Office and SGA, noting there has only been two motions in his two years supporting the Office.

He believes it is important that students fund the office, but he would like to see the University also take on some of the cost.

On the International Student Fee, Higgins believes that the International Student Fee was the "total wrong approach."
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Overall, Higgins and Daly believe that the student experience at UMass needs to be changed most.

Patrick Higgins chaired this committee and stood and answered questions for 26 minutes to ease any questions that the Senators might have had.

"I was so excited [that it passed unanimously].I think it was a great budget, and I think that the groups are really going to have an opportunity next year to do a ton of great programming," Higgins said.

He went on to say that he thought the advocacy agencies would be helped out a lot by new computers and additional support services provided by the SGA.

"I felt like we worked out a lot of problems.Some people still had some questions about some [Registered Student Organizations] that they are involved in, but that's always the case," Higgins said.

There was some discussion during the meeting about Sigma Lambda Upsilon, which received only a $25 budget.Higgins noted that at the time, there were only two active members and one was graduating.He said he felt that they would come back to Ways and Means during the appeals processes, but he said they did not.

Ways and Means Chair Patrick Higgins focused on the money collected from parking fees.

"All those funds that they collect from your tickets, sit in an account, unsupervised," he said.

Higgins said the money should be used to pay for parking services and renovations to lots.Currently, this is illegal for the five UMass campuses to do.

If they were to repeal this law, it could potentially take away some money the University uses for scholarships.

Some Senators referred to this as a slush fund.Higgins disagreed.He was most concerned about the lack of monitoring for the account.

"Do something about it," he said, as if speaking to the State Legislature in Boston.

Pozmanter argued with Higgins.

Next week, Patrick Higgins, chair of the Ways and Means Committee, will be presenting the SGA budget for next year.

SGA selects Higgins as Speaker
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The Student Government Association Senate picked its Speaker for the 2004-2005 year last night, voting for Patrick Higgins, former chair of the Ways and Means Committee and SGA presidential candidate, with a 22-18 vote.

Seamus Brennan, former chair of the Administrative Affairs Committee, will be the new Associate Speaker, after winning with a 23 to 17 vote.

Higgins ran against former Associate Speaker Chris Eckel, who acted as Speaker for five weeks this semester after Jared Nokes vacated the spot to fill in as interim SGA president.
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"I know many of you are thinking, 'You've run for president, what are you thinking?'" Higgins said."When you've been here for so long, you want to advocate to the highest level.You want to be that go-to person."

Higgins said he wants to help new senators get acquainted with Senate business faster, and have their interests listened to by the Speaker.

As for Brennan, he said he wants to make sure the Senate minutes are more detailed.In order to do this, he said he would like to bring a computer down to the Senate floor to type the meetings as they progress.

Debate over the candidacy of Brennan, a freshman, focused on some typos he made as Administrative Affairs Chair.In response, he noted that he will triple check his work in his new position.
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SGA selects Higgins as Speaker

"I cannot stress to you how important this document is," Patrick Higgins, chair of the Ways and Means Committee, said during his presentation of the proposed budget for SGA next year.
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"Unanimously, they signed this budget as the best budget they could submit," Higgins said in his 27-minute presentation.

Higgins went through certain key points of the budget to help the Senators understand the 17-page packet they received last night.This budget is the plan for the $1,383,885 they expect to have from 17,085 students paying an $81 Student Activities Fee in addition to other revenue.

He highlighted several increases in the budget.
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The final increase that Higgins pointed out was for increasing the funding to Registered Student Organizations by $40,000.

"As a rule we tried to make sure that each group could do something, get their name out on campus," Higgins said.

Overall, he broke down the spending for the Senators.Agencies got 43 percent of the budget, Student Governance got eight percent, RSOs received 13.8 percent, campus-wide programs 13.9 percent, Short Term Reserves 5.9 percent, and for Administrative Overhead, 15 percent of the budget will cover that "so that the RSOs don't have to see it," Higgins said.

Higgins estimates that even with increased RSO spending, the SGA will be financially strong until 2007.

The Senate will vote on it next week.Higgins pleaded with the Senators to ask him questions by visiting the SGA office or contacting him by phone or e-mail.He said he would make an appointment with anyone who asks to go through the budget line by line.

A motion was brought before the Senate by Chair of Finance Patrick Higgins and Thompson, stating that due to the Programming Board's inactive status, the funds should be placed into the long term reserves under the S-1 Budget Act.

"Three years ago the point of the Programming Board was to buy capital items for RSO's (Registered Student Organizations) so they wouldn't have to buy their own.Two years ago it was a sub-committee of the finance committee and allocated money to RSO's.Now for the past year it has been programming events," Thompson said.

"The Programming Board has no purpose and no mission statement, so we feel that until the charter is fixed, the money should be placed in the Long Term Reserves fund.It's not safe to leave $40,000 hanging around while we wait for a new charter," he said.