KSA legal spending passes $250,000 mark

By Matt DiMera
[news editor]

Over the last month, the Kwantlen Student Association (KSA) has spent more than $112,000 on legal and professional fees.

Since Aug. 24, the KSA’s total legal spending has jumped to $253,497.17 from $141,420.58.

The KSA originally budgeted $55,000 for 2011 in their legal and professional fees line item. As of The Runner’s deadline, they have spent more than four-and-a-half times the budgeted amount.

KSA director of finance, Nina Sandhu, admitted that legal and professional spending is higher than normal. “That’s obvious to anyone who’s seen the budget,” said Sandhu.

“We have been consulting lawyers for a lot of reasons, there’s been a lot going on elsewhere with accounting and stuff,” she said. “When you consult lawyers they’re going to charge you, it’s just the way it is and we have a lot of ongoing stuff.”

“It’s all happened in the span of six months for us so in the beginning when all this stuff happened, we had to invest time into it and the money unfortunately,” said Sandhu.

Since Jan. 1, the KSA has paid money to at least eight different law firms, six of which were engaged after the KSA’s current board took office April 1.

“As opposed to hiring ten from the same firm, we just go with firms that specialize in the different directions we want to take,” explained Sandhu. “There’s no difference in cost, if anything it would be cheaper.”

“We’re working on it the best we can to figure out how we’re going to finance this, what’s going on, where can we cut from where can we not cut from.”

Sandhu hasn’t yet figured out where the money will come from, but she’s looking at the KSA’s options.

“We’re trying to really cut down on spending elsewhere, we have been trying to move in whatever excess money we have to legal and professional but as of right now I’m not going to give you a definitive answer of where it’s coming from.  Obviously the KSA is going to have to cover its cost somehow and I am working with accounting.”

While council is ordinarily responsible for legal decisions, at the Aug. 31 KSA council meeting, a motion was passed granting the executive board “absolute authority over all legal matters.”

There is no conclusive official list of legal matters or disputes the KSA is currently involved in. Legal issues are typically discussed in secret in camera sessions. However some cases have been discussed publicly.

In late August former general manager Desmond Rodenbour filed a civil claim in B.C. Supreme Court against the KSA for wrongful dismissal, breach of employment contract, and for defamation.

The KSA and Sandhu also recently filed a notice of civil claim in B.C. Supreme Court against the unknown publisher or publishers of the ksatruth.ca website, alleging defamation.

Earlier this year in an interview with The Runner, then-director of operations Justine Franson expressed concerns about the amounts of money past boards had spent on legal fees, saying there seemed “to be a lot of frivolous spending.”