Erik Paulson's Blog

Now, why does Madison stand a good shot at being a candidate city? First, Why not? It’s as good as any other city, and it’s doubtful that Google has candidates already in mind, unless they’re just looking to see how ridiculous cities are willing to go, to give them something to chuckle about at the Googleplex. Given that they haven’t announced any real criteria, or even how many networks they’re looking to build, at best we can make a few guesses from what they have said. In the end, for all we know they’re going to go with the city that the roommate of some engineer’s cousin thought has the best set of burger joints.

Demographically, we’re about perfect: right in the middle of the population size they’re looking to target, education and income levels above national averages, which means Madisonians are more likely to be able to want and afford faster Internet access, and our particular geography on the isthmus makes us a bit denser than other cities, which means less fiber build-out. Without a doubt, our biggest asset is the University – it more than anything else in the area can be the source of new applications that need the high bandwidth. Many technology-enhanced learning proposals would make much more sense if there were more parity between off-campus network bandwidth and on-campus bandwidth. The UW is also such a disproportionately large employer, has many jobs that can telecommute, and can be nimble enough to believably say that its employees actually will telecommute. (The State of Wisconsin would be great too, but no one would believe it if it said it was going to drive applications or change work patterns that true high speed Internet might make available.) As much as possible, our application should talk about what we want to do with a high speed network, and not just hope that someday we’ll figure it out.

I don’t want to be too down on the local high-tech scene, because I think there are some great people who I consider friends here doing great work, and it’s only getting bigger and better, but it’s not really big enough to be credible. Certainly, we should mention it – but it’s not our lead. Epic is big, but it’s not a real driver of other technology companies. We don’t read enough about new companies “founded by former Epic Engineers.” Getting more people to quit Epic and start their own companies (with the knowledge that if they fail, Epic will still be there and they could go back) is something the region should be focused on for economic development.

MUFN is a big deal and should be emphasized. MUFN, the Madison Unified Fiber Network, is a “Middle Mile” network. (Borrowing agan the highway analogy, this would be like the East Washington Ave or Stoughton Road of network – not a lot of people live on them, but they’re vital for connecting an area. They feed smaller networks, and connect to larger networks.) MUFN was never intended to be a way for consumers to connect directly to the Internet. To quote DoIT staff who worked on MUFN, “The primary focus of the partnership is… for public sector gateway institutions, and the UW’s interest is in enhancing network connectivity for many units that are located on off campus locations in the metropolitan area.” I’ve never seen the full MUFN proposal, but there was a summary document from the school district that has some good information, and the “Fact Sheet” for MUFN from the BTOP program submissions from Wisconsin has some good information.

MUFN is only half of what we asked for, though – there is a companion request for the “Madison Broadband Initiative“. It’s a “Last Mile” proposal, ie it would actually connect consumers to the Internet. To quote, “The purpose of the Madison Broadband Initiative (MBI) is to provide free, low-cost or competitively priced broadband service to anchor tenants and vulnerable populations through fiber deployment and a Wi-Fi mesh network.” It wouldn’t cover the whole city, only some parts, like the northside and southside, where MadCityBroadband doesn’t currently provide service. (MadCityBroadband would operate the network to consumers.) The full application is here. I don’t think we’ve heard back from the Federal Government on whether or not MBI has been funded yet – we just heard back on MUFN, and they’re meant to be partner programs, so I think we’ve got a good chance on MBI. MBI is interesting for the Google app because it’s an opportunity for a partnership with Google. Google is only interested in fiber, but wireless can and should be part of a subscriber’s service, so it’s a way for Google to offer better service to their customers without having to build out a wireless network of their own.

Obviously, having the Google office in Madison helps, but I doubt it’s a big enough deal to make a serious impact.

So, are there strikes against Madison? Not a lot. The big one is “we’re as good as any other city”, which means that there are lots of other cities that could make a convincing case. If we have a strike, it’s probably our electricity fuel mix - Wisconsin relies disproportionately on coal for its power. If, as part of their network, Google wanted to open a large data center nearby, Wisconsin would be a less-likely choice, because when carbon is finally priced into the electricity bill, Wisconsin will suffer. It’s not clear that Google wants or needs to put a data center here, though.

In the end, if we don’t get it, does it really matter? Probably not. Hopefully, just by doing this, Google forces the rest of the industry to catch up. Google is good at that – does anyone remember how online mapping worked before Google Maps? In the first few years, it’ll be nice to have a leg up over other cities, and it’d be a temporary boon for the city to attract workers. (I’m sure there are people who would look at the availability of 1Gbs Internet access as a strong incentive to chose living in Madison, which would help our employers attract workers. If Google selected Madison and only covered the Isthmus, it’d probably spur some downtown condo sales, too) However, in the end, that high speed access will be the norm, not the exception.

As a final note, one of the most exciting things about Madison completing this RFI and collecting the supporting information will be to see how excited people are for more faster Internet access, and to talk about how by building this infrastructure, we’ll be unleashing a lot of economic potential that’s been just waiting below the surface – potential we’ve always known was there. It’s not like it’s a technical challenge to build what Google’s proposing to do. That invites the question – why haven’t we done this earlier? Instead of waiting for a white knight from the marketplace to save us, why didn’t we do this for ourselves? We briefly explored this on the BRTB, trying to find a way to build a fiber network for Madison. The reason we can’t? Republicans pushed through a law, straight from industry playbooks, preventing cities from building their own broadband network and offering it to consumers. It was supposed to make it possible for competition to come in, but it’s been six years, and nothing has happened. Instead, it’s just protected the profits of the incumbents, who are content to just enjoy the revenue stream. There’s good reason to believe that a “public option” for a fiber network would spur competition.

If, at the end of this process, we amass overwhelming evidence that high speed Internet access would create jobs and grow our economy, and Google doesn’t select us, will we shrug and say “Oh well”, or will we find the courage and political will and do ourselves what we say is needed?

One of the advantages of taking forever in actually finishing this set of blog posts is that the “what should Madison do” part got a lot easier, because we’re actually doing some of it.

Obviously, the first concern a month ago was just getting Madison to apply. That seems to be covered.

The next question is, what should be in our application? The answer to that is, “we don’t know.” Frankly, the only people who do know all work at Google, and they’re not saying. Dane101 unhelpfully blasted the Madison application process as “bureaucratic.” That’s not really fair, because for all we know that’s exactly what Google is looking for. In fact, we do know that’s some of what Google is looking for – detailed bureaucratic technical information that the city is in the best position to provide. That’s all that Google has clearly asked for, so in that sense, the bureaucratic answer had better be damned good, because that might be all that counts. (In fact, if you look at the questions Google has actually answered in any detail, they’re all bureaucratic)

Now, Google is also looking for community support, but what exactly does that mean? Certainly, there’s not going to be a community that says “Nah, we don’t want a company to come in and offer a service thats an order of magnitude better than our existing service, on their own risk”. Personally, I think the best thing we can do is to stress the UW as an application driver, and to get consistent messaging between the city, community groups, and citizens who are nominating Madison, but that’s just a wild guess, and I haven’t seen anyone with a factual basis for why their guess is better than mine.

My advice for the process is the same advice you give your friend – you know, the who’s having trouble dating, but you’re pretty sure he or she can and will find the right person with a bit of luck: “just be yourself”. So, Madison, let’s not stress what the application should or shouldn’t have in it, because we don’t know. Trying to read Google tea leaves is pointless. Let’s just put in our application whatever we’d put in if we ourselves were evaluating it, and if it works out, great. Google will either fall in love with us or they won’t, and there’s no point in trying to be someone we’re not.

If we’re not doing something well, it’s that we’re not being very transparent in what our application will look like. There’s information flowing into the city, but not much coming out. We can’t, as a community, come up with a response if we never get to see a draft of what’s being included. If we’re looking for new and innovative ideas for what to include, the best way to encourage people to think of things is to let them see what other people are thinking, so they can riff off of those ideas. We should be completely fine if other cities “steal” our ideas, because ultimately, if they’re good ideas we want to see them implemented. Of course, maybe this will all change in a few days with the community meeting, but I don’t get the impression that the city is looking to make that meeting a two-way street.

I don’t want to say that there’s been failed leadership here, but I think it’s safe to say that there’s been muddled leadership from the city. Who, actually, is in charge? The IT director? Mark Clear? The Mayor should have put Rachel Strauch-Nelson as the lead on this project, because she does a good job of communicating, and has the time and authority over city staff to do so, unlike Alders.

This process has exposed some what I think are pretty serious weaknesses in how we respond as a community to these sorts of opportunities. For one, we have organizations that are supposed to jump at these sorts of things. Where the heck is THRIVE in all of this? They should be organizing a community response. The Economic Development Commission discussion was embarrassing. I once wanted to be on the EDC, but now having sat in on a couple of meetings, and read Brenda’s recap of others, I have to wonder, what is the point? The EDC doesn’t strike me as actually accomplishing anything.

The most impressive efforts have been by the local high-tech community, which is trying to organize itself to be able to respond, and is leading the charge with the Facebook page – but there’s that ambiguity in leadership again. We think we need citizen action to pull this off, but citizens need some coordination to make it happen. This is where government can and should play a role – what Tim O’Reilly is talking about when he says “government is a convener and an enabler–ultimately, it is a vehicle for coordinating the collective action of citizens.” The government is legally authorized and empowered to bring people together. That’s the broader picture of Government 2.0: It’s not just the government providing crime data so people can build Google Maps mashups, it’s envisioning a new way of thinking about government, where citizens create what they need. It doesn’t replace elected officials – it’s completely compatible with a republican form of government, with elected representatives who call on the citizen experts to assist.

I strongly suspect that some of the vocabulary might be a little bit different, but the Gov 2.0 underlying principals of citizen participation are already the norm in Madison and in Wisconsin, thanks to progressive ideas from the beginning of the 20th century. It’s other cities where they are just now discovering the value of active citizen engagement that makes Gov 2.0 so exciting for so many people. That said, it wouldn’t surprise me if there are some twists that we haven’t considered, and we certainly need the technology upgrades to bring those principals into the 21st century. One of the things I want to do while I’m out here in DC for the next few months is to meet up with the local Gov 2.0 folks here, and bring that back with me to Madison to get a “Madison Gov2.0″ group going. One of the results of the Google Fiber submission is going to be a collection of people who on March 26th are sitting around saying “now what?”. If Madison gets Google Fiber, or if it doesn’t, we shouldn’t let this group scatter back to the wind. Technologically, I think it’d be fun to get a some people together and say “let’s stop waiting and just build something for Madison” – maybe a new iphone bus tracker app, or a decent iphone problem reporter, or the start of an open 311 system. From a civic engagement perspective, I think it’s part of the way to have a larger conversation about what we want out of our citizens in governing Madison.

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I’ll have more to say about this soon, but this is really cool:

Think big with a gig: Our experimental fiber network

This is a great opportunity for Madison, and we shouldn’t let it pass us by. Unfortunately, outside of the City, I’m not sure there’s a group that can respond. We need to change that, too.

Keeping track of what all’s going on with Housing/Tenant Stuff in ASM in the 2009-2010 school year can be a bit confusing, so I thought I’d try and lay it all out there.

The Student Tenant Union was/is a GSSF-funded group for the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years. They recieved “eligibilty” in the fall of 2007, which meant they could recieve seg fees starting July 1, 2008. Unfortunately for them, no one was actually around in the fall of 2008 to start the group. (See the comment by Alex on that post.) Even more of a problem for the STU, no one was around in the fall of 2008 to submit a budget a proper for the 2009-2010 school year, and so the SSFC was forced to fund them at the minimal level, which is $4000. Later in the fall of 2008, Kyle Szarzynski took over the STU and it actually came to life a bit during the spring of 2009. Unfortunately for the STU, on July 1 2009 the $4000 budget took over. I don’t believe anyone is actively claiming to represent the STU, and its $4000 budget will simply go back into the Seg fee pot on June 30th, 2010.

The Student Tenant Resource Center was a “new” group, founded by Szarzynski, that applied for eligibility in the fall of 2009. They were denied, on the grounds that they were in fact the Student Tenant Union, and as the Student Tenant Union had incurred a number of violations, the STRC was responsible for the violations. Kyle disagrees and then some.  However, a few days later, they were denied eligibility again.  (Read the comments, not the story). I thought that they had appealed again, but apparently not, or at least I can’t find it online, and even then I’m pretty sure that everything has been resolved, and the STRC is not getting any GSSF money in the 2010-2011 school year. (They can, of course, get money from the 2009-2010 budget for travel, events, and operations, from the ASM Finance Committee)

The Madison Property Rating Website, ie the Tenant Rating Website, ie the Landlord Rating website, is an independent project separate from the STU/STRC. Originally proposed by Eli Judge, (see 2:00 into the video) ASM ultimately took the plunge and allocated funding for its creation in the 2008-2009 school year (I think about $8000) and put in about $2300 to run it in the 2009-2010 (July 1 to June 30th, 2010) school year. For the 2010-2011 budget that ASM is currently discussing, the operational money remains about $2300. Obviously, the isn’t up and running yet, but hopefully the final understandings can be reached in the University soon and ASM can actually spend the money, and the site could be up and running late this spring. Ideally, there’d be a good advertising push by the MPR Oversight Board, and people would start actually rating Landlords, so the website is useful in the Fall of 2010, when potential renters will start to actually need it.

The MPR website is somewhat of a duplication of a program by the STU, (see the comments) but the STU never actually spent the money allocated to create such a website, much less delivered an operating website, so concerns about duplications were resolved. I still have deep concerns that ASM hasn’t put enough money into the MPR operations budget to effectively run it, but until ASM gets it up and going we’re not going to know what it takes.

After watching the GSSF process fail to deliver Tenant Services year after year (after year) I thought there must be a better way to do this, so I proposed a line item in the 2010-2011 ASM Budget to just go out and buy Tenant and Housing support services. It wouldn’t start until July 1 2010 at the earliest, and more likely several months later. We’d create a list of services we want, and solicit bids through the state purchasing process, just like ASM does with the Rape Crisis Center. Exactly what services would be provided is a bit hard to say – we don’t know what they cost until we ask for bids, but we can’t know what we can afford until we know what they cost. The state can easily handle this sort of bidding process with a “Best Value” bidding process – ASM provide a menu of choices in its “Request for Proposals”, potential providers will tell us what they cost, and then ASM will rank bids based on the “Value” of items and their costs. Until ASM has a ballpark of what it will fund this at, it’s pointless to try and create a Request for Proposals, because if our budget is $50,000 we’re going to create a very different proposal than if we get a $10,000 budget.

I don’t know who would be the provider – obviously, I expect the Tenant Resource Center to bid, but I think Porchlight, the Salvation Army, and the YWCA are other area non-profits that would be interested as well, and I’m sure there are others.

The SSFC cut this line item when they edited the ASM budget. This line item has nothing to do with the Student Tenant Union, or the Student Tenant Resource Center. It might have something to do with the MPR website: until we actually start running the MPR website we’re not going to know exactly what the best way to run the website will be, and I could see the MPR website operations being transferred to our Tenant Services Provider. (Note that ASM would still pay for the initial construction – the $8000). More likely the MPR website will be run the way its currently set up to be: with a Oversight board, with some ASM Student Council members and the rest UW Madison students who may or maynot be otherwise involved with ASM.

The Tenant Support Services money could also be used to help fund some of Bryon Eagon’s ideas about Tenant/Landlord mediation

Even if the money for the Tenant Support Services doesn’t happen, there’s one idea that I want to have happen anyway, which is the Housing Fair. (I wrote about this for the Herald, too, because I hated my diversity piece and needed a last-minute substitution) It seems that the Legislative Affairs Committee is interested in taking this on as a project with one of their interns, which is fine by me. The fair is another example of something that we could outsource to Tenant Support Services Provider, but we can do it ourselves, too.

Finally, Legislative Affairs is going to get involved in Maniaci’s Lease Renewal Timeline ordinance. (See also the minutes of the Jan 25th, 2010 meeting). This won’t take any money, just lobbying by ASM.

I think that’s everything that’s going on.

The new semester starts in a few days. This past fall, some members have privately grumbled that they didn’t like that I showed up with ideas out of nowhere, and that they wished they I had let more people know ahead of time what I was thinking. Fair enough.

During meetings, I’ve made repeated mention of my ASM to-do list. Rather than just picking things off it each meeting and showing up with them, I’ll lay out what’s left on my list for the spring.

Over break, every ASM chair had to create a similar list of committee goals for the spring semester. Hopefully those lists/reports will all be made public soon. It’d be nice if the other ASM council members put something together as well, and got it out to the public. I don’t care how they do it – starting or using their own blog, a ton of Twitter updates, a Facebook note, a letter to the editor in either Herald or Cardinal, or just get Ken to post it on the ASM blog, whatever. Whatever you do, just don’t send it as an email only to the rest of ASM. That doesn’t help anyone.

So, here’s what I want to do this semester. It’s not super-ambitious; graduation is more of a priority for me than ASM. My goal is to finish things before 17th session takes over, or leave things with such a neatly-wrapped bow that 17th session doesn’t have much of an excuse for not doing something.

Of course, if something comes up, I reserve the right to add to this list during the semester. I apologize for the all of the jargon, but these are all outlines of what I want to do, not final descriptions of specific proposals.

To make it readable, I’ve broken it up into five different posts.

Funding issues – Tenant Services RFP, Creative Works fund, Centers funding stream, Print Media funding stream

Action items – Housing Fair, Graduate Student Town Halls

ASM jobs – ASM Foundation, Webmaster job, Chief of Staff, eliminate ASM Secretary

Bylaws and Constitutional Changes – United Council amendment, Term start date amendment, Stipend acceptance bylaw, First Meeting agenda bylaws, Vacant seat bylaws, overall scrubbing of bylaws

ASM Organizational efficiency – Integration of Shared Gov appointees, Consent Agenda, Data and Documents availability, Streaming broadcast of Council meetings, delegation meetings with Deans, and inviting the Chancellor to council meetings.

[This is part of my series of ASM goals for Spring Semester. Read them all here]

We need to think a little bit harder about how to integrate the Shared Gov appointees with the rest of ASM and campus. This does not mean we use Shared Gov appointees as policy tools by trying to tell them how to vote – instead, they should be resources. We need to keep in mind that the Shared Gov appointees work for campus and their committees, not for ASM, and putting too many burdens on the appointees isn’t likely to get us anywhere. I don’t have any great ideas here, it’s just something that could be better. (Off the top of my head, have a shared gov meeting where all the appointees break up into their clusters, then get Council/Leg Affairs/AcAffairs/Diversity to all attend that afternoon and just meet the appointees?)

It’s not a super-high priority for me, and I may not actually do anything with it this semester, but I would love to sign on with someone else bringing something forward.

I’d like to operate meetings under a “consent agenda”, to save time. This is real simple – in one quick vote, we get all the non-controversial stuff out of the way with no discussion and no waste of time. It could cut an hour or more off of council meetings, which god knows everyone would appreciate.

We need to do a better job of getting documents and data out and available. It’s embarrassing that none of our minutes are posted. The archives of the student council email list server, and the coordinating council list server should be easily online. ASM should stop using “the server”, and instead access more data through the ASM website. There’s no better way to ensure the public has full transparent access than to insist ASM uses the same process to access documents as everyone else – to eat our own dogfood, as the saying goes.

We should stream our meetings online. Even if it’s crappy, it’s better than nothing. $99 buys us Adobe Connect. We stick a couple of microphones around the table, and it’s probably not too bad. (Even better would be talking WSUM into steaming the meeting for us, since they’re on the other side of the wall)

We should insist that all delegations meet with their Deans at least once a semester. This just seems like a no-brainer.

We should also get the Chancellor and Dean of Students to come to a meeting or two a semester, as a regular event, just to give us an update and to give council members  a chance to ask them questions.

[This is part of my series of ASM goals for Spring Semester. Read them all here]

Move the United Council (UC) relationship out of the ASM constitution and into the ASM bylaws. Let me be clear right off the bat: I’m not proposing changing anything with UC. Everything, from a day-to-day standpoint, will be exactly the same. We would mirror the constitutional language right in the bylaws. Changing the constitution requires an item on the spring ballot.

Right now, ASM council members are required to attend a UC event per semester. That’s fine by me. I’m indifferent to United Council. It’s got some good people, but I don’t think it’s a very useful ally in anything ASM wants to get done.

I have serious doubts about the future of United Council, and at some point after I’m long since done with ASM, the inflexibility of having the UC requirement be constitutionally defined could be a problem. For example:

a)    UW Madison could pull out of United Council. With no organized opposition, and a campaign for it, UC barely won a Yes vote with only 53% to 47% 51.8% to 48.2% the last time around. I hope they don’t do this, but since conservatives on this campus hate UC, never get a real victory on campus or have any real ideas, and seem content to be the Party of No, it does seem like a well-organized conservative effort to defeat UC in 2011 would succeed. That would be a problem for ASM, which by its constitution has to participate in United Council. If the relationship were in the bylaws, if Madison pulled out, ASM could amend its bylaws quickly to reflect the new relationship.

b)   The bigger problem is what happens if UC folds or changes into something else? Most of the other 4-year schools have pulled out, leaving most of the two-years and UW-Madison and a handful of other 4-years (UWEC, Stevens Point, and Parkside). If they lose a few more schools they’re going to have a real problem keeping everything going. If UC folds, then the ASM Constitution says “ASM most participate in an organization that doesn’t exist.”

The time to fix your roof is on a sunny day. I think UC and ASM is going to be a problem down the road, so let’s fix that problem now before it rains. And again, from a practical standpoint, everything continues to work the same way as before.

Fixing the bigger problems with UC is not a high priority for me, but I support other people working on it and would obviously like to see it work better. Some UC thoughts:

A)   ASM needs to figure out what it wants from UC, and clearly explain that to campus, if we want to spend any time with UC. This is complicated by the fact that UC doesn’t report to ASM, instead UC is responsible to UW-Madison students directly.

B)   ASM needs to figure out how to disagree with UC without pissing everyone off. The geographical regent representation bill was a terrible bill and it’s good that it was vetoed, but it was a priority for UC. ASM just sort of threw up its arms and let UC go for it anyway.

C)   UC needs to raise its fee. It’s been $2 for far too long (7 years?), and $2 doesn’t go as far as it used to. What they really should do is get permission from the Regents to increase it at 50% of base tuition percentage increases per year automatically.

D)   The maximum time between referenda should be extended, to at least 3 years, but 4 would be better. Right now, campuses have to revote every at least every two years on if they should stay UC member campuses, which means UC staff is spending a lot of time on the road assisting “Vote Yes” campaigns. That’s a total waste of time that could be better spent working on actual student issues. Every 4 years is plenty good, and if a campus got all hot and bothered it could call an early referendum at any time, just like they can now.

E)   Long term, what is the relationship between UC and Student Reps, which is the organization of UW Student Government presidents? This is an uncomfortable question.

F)    This is probably an incredible non-starter, but if too many schools pull out of UC and UC is in danger of folding, ASM should look for ways to directly assist UC – in particular, use some of our staff to help organize UC, or incorporate UC staff into ASM. (Some would probably call this ASM taking over UC, and that’s probably not that far off from the truth. It’s got some advantages – UC money is MRF money – Mandatory Refundable Fee money, which can do some things that seg fees can’t.)

Pass an amendment simplifying the student council term language in the ASM constitution. When we worked on fixing Freshman representation in August, we had a huge fight – not because people didn’t want to fix the Freshman eligibility problem, but because people wanted to fix more than just Freshmen. For example, it probably makes sense for most of the professional schools to elect their representatives in the fall, and to give transfer students the opportunity to run and vote in the fall as well. However, we’re stuck with the current language in the constitution, which says everything is elected in the spring, except the Freshmen.

The debate we had in August was very passionate, and a lot of people swore that we’d return to the issue and do something for transfer students and new graduate and professional students, but so far nothing has happened. I’m not sure why this is.

I don’t know what the right election process should be. We struggled with it on the ASM constitution committee last year, and in the end didn’t come up with anything better, and decided just to punt to the future, and fix it in the bylaws. However, with the current ASM constitution, we can’t fix it in bylaws.

So, I think the right approach is to punt again, but to give the 17th session the flexibility to come up with a better fix. What I want the 16th session to do is to ask the student body to approve an amendment, to make the constitution read:

“Student Council representatives shall serve for one year. No person may serve more than two full terms as a SC representative. Terms for representatives elected on a spring ballot shall start May 1. Terms for representatives elected on a fall ballot shall start November 1.

The student council may, with three/fourths vote, shift the election of a seat to a spring or fall ballot. In such a case the term may expire before one year has passed, but in no case shall a term be extended past one year”

That’s it. We’ll also immediately put the current setup (everyone starts in the spring except the freshmen, who start in the fall) into the bylaws. Then, once the amendment takes effect, next year the council can twiddle with moving more seats to the fall. However, anything the move to the next election will have to be immediately reelected – for example, if you move the law seat from the spring into the fall, no one’s term runs for 18 months while they wait for the next election. All that could happen is a term could be shortened. It takes a 3/4ths majority to move a seat around, because it has to be a damn good idea to move a seat, and it shouldn’t be used as a way to get rid of a representative the council doesn’t like.

There should be an explicit bylaw that allows a position to decline some or all of a stipend. Right now, effectively no grad student can serve in a paid position because it will force them to give up their RA/TA/PAship. The combination of the ASM job and their assistantship would push them over a 75% time appointment, which the University won’t allow. This isn’t a question of can a grad student find the time to put in the hours – some can, some can’t. The problem is that they can’t do them all on the UW’s dime.

We need to fix the bylaws the explicitly set the agenda for the first meeting. For two years in a row, ASM has had trouble electing a chair at the first meeting, so the bylaws should be fixed to deal with this possibility – the Vice Chair, if elected, should be able to take over the meeting.

We need to clarify, in the bylaws, how to declare a seat vacant. This may seem obvious, but it’s not. That’s why we still haven’t filled the special student ASM seat – the SEC should have declared a winner for that seat but never did. We need protection from a small majority being able to declare an opponent’s seat vacant, probably with some way for council to override the chair.  I don’t think it’s that complicated of a bylaw change to get right.

We should give a good scrubbing to the bylaws, and delete crap we don’t use, like the Foundation Hiring Committee, and fix the numbering and awkward language. This is a big pain of a project and it’s probably not going to get done, but it’s needed.

[This is part of my series of ASM goals for Spring Semester. Read them all here]

We need to figure out the ASM Foundation, and what the heck is going on with it. We haven’t appointed anyone to it because we don’t know what the ASM Foundation wants to do, so we don’t know what we should be looking for in an appointee.

The ASM Webmaster job is a disaster. For the spring, we need to increase the hours and pay rate. We may have money in the budget that we didn’t spend on the press office in the fall, or we may want to eliminate one of the open press office seats and split the money between the remaining press office position and the webmaster.

While the next webmaster has a lot of fires to put out that the Brett just didn’t have time to resolve, the main goal for the webmaster this semester should be to prepare for the next webmaster in the fall – which we’ve put a lot of money aside for, with the idea that it will almost be a PA. What the webmaster should do this spring is inventory our data and how to start training the rest of ASM in getting information out on to the web.

It’d be nice to make the webmaster in the fall an actual PA – I’m trying to find out who told us we can’t have a PA on ASM funds. UW System never intended F-50 to mean that you can’t hire a PA because their contract includes tuition remission. If that’s ASM Staff’s interpretation, they’re wrong. If that’s the Vice Chancellor office’s interpretation, well, they’re wrong too, but that’s a harder fight. In that case, the easier approach would be to work out a deal with ODOS, where ODOS hires the webmaster PA and ASM takes over something else. It’s doable. I’ve written about what the position should before.

We need to define the “Chief of Staff” role, starting with a new name. (Chief of Staff is a punchline.) We desperately need more help at the Chair/Vice Chair level – someone who can work at that same level of authority, but that doesn’t have a specific area to worry about, like the current committee chairs. I know some people are convinced that this is some secret plot to backdoor in an ASM president, but the problem isn’t that we don’t have a President, it’s that there’s too much to do for two people, if they’re the Chair and Vice-Chair or President and Vice-President. We need to add a third.

I’d like to eliminate the ASM secretary position, and shift its duties to a combination of the professional staff, the webmaster, the chief of staff, and some ASM hourly staff. It’s crazy that we burn a representative on this job.

[This is part of my series of ASM goals for Spring Semester. Read them all here]

Have a workable plan for the Housing Fair finished. It sounds like there’s some interest in the rest of council on for this, which should mean we can get a lot of it worked out this spring, and passed on to the 17th session.

Host a Grad Student Townhall or two. They may be general-purpose, or maybe we’ll hold some townhalls on specific issues.

We’ve got the RA Unionization issue still out there. Nothing happened in the fall because the State is still writing the rules, but those will be done in the next month or two. This is going to be a bigger issue next year, when any RA organizing committees get started, but that part won’t involve ASM. What ASM can and should do this spring is to help to get facts out about the process, and to help shape those processes.

What’s happening right now with RA unionization is the State, through the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, is drafting rules for how the process of union recognition will work.  State law laid out the broad outline of how it will work, ie it will be “card-check”, but WERC is now responsible for putting together the exact details of things like “when can authorization cards start being collected”, “what does an organization have to do to be recognized as a group collecting cards”, etc. WERC will have a first draft of those rules done in late February, and then will hold public hearings on the draft. WERC is at least open to the possibility of holding hearings on campus, and organizing that is something ASM could do. Alternatively, ASM could collect feedback and pass it on to WERC through a general townhall.

Another topic that we may want to have a grad student town hall to talk about the grad school reorg, especially after the Faculty Senate/University Committee weighs in with their report. I didn’t push for ASM to do anything with the grad school reorg this past fall, and in fact counseled against it, because I thought there was too much hysteria around the whole thing. It was obvious that it wasn’t well-defined and needed more work, and the process was going to slow down. I thought the Faculty Senate resolution was unnecessary and hurt more than it helped. Similarly, I thought the best thing ASM could do last semester was to stay out of it.

That doesn’t mean that ASM shouldn’t keep track of what’s going on, and to be sure we need to watch carefully in the next few weeks. The report commissioned by the University Committee is expected by February 1st. After that’s out, I expect to see a firmer plan from the administration and cooler heads, and that’s a better time for ASM to get involved.