With the University of Illinois Board of Trustee’s approval of the University’s operating budget for fiscal year 2009, it also approved that the University’s budget would be publicly available online.

State Rep. Mike Tryon, R-64, has proposed a piece of legislation which would require public access of state expenditures to be available online. The bill has been approved by the Illinois House of Representatives and is currently being reviewed by a Senate committee.

Posting the University budget online is preempting the state legislation, said Student Trustee Paul Schmitt.

University spokesman Tom Hardy believes this decision was made to provide the public with as much University financial information as possible.

“The University has a very high level of transparency in its budget process, which is conducted over the course of several months in public at several Board of Trustee meetings, and in the legislature with testimony presented in appropriations hearings,” Hardy said. Schmitt said he believes the University has had issues with transparency in the past, and points to the Illinois Press Association awards as an example. In 2007, the University received the association’s “Worsty” award for not observing the Illinois Open Meetings Act for their February 2007 Board of Trustees meeting, according to the Illinois Press Association Web site.

“I thought it was wise to put the budget in plain view for citizens to see,” Schmitt said.

He said he approached chairman of the Board of Trustees, Lawrence Eppley, about making this information available online. He said Eppley was surprised that the information was not already publicly available.

“We spoke with Chief Financial Officer Walter Knorr, who determined this would be a feasible thing to do,” Schmitt said.

Friday morning following the meeting, the 130-page budget document known as the “orange book” was posted on the University Administration Web site. This Web site also contains the annual report and pocket facts from the last five years.

Schmitt said the decision to propose online access to the budget at September’s meeting was made last-minute, and because of this it was not on the agenda. Rather, when the trustees voted to approve the budget for fiscal year 2009, their votes also counted towards the decision to make the budget available online.

“As a public university largely supported by the state and tuition payers, it is a responsibility for the University to be fully accountable to the public and the University’s practice has been to meet this obligation of full transparency,” Hardy said.