A bill recently passed by the General Assembly will remove University financial information concerning private endowment funds from a state auditing Web site if signed into law by Gov. Tim Kaine.
The state agency of the auditor of public accounts maintains a Web site that details how public money is budgeted for all state agencies. It includes the "Commonwealth Data Point" database, which allows for a simple search of "key information about the Commonwealth of Virginia and the operations of state government," according to the Web site.
Virginia Sen. Walter A. Stosch, R-Glen Allen, proposed the bill that would remove data concerning the use of University endowment funds from the database. Similar legislation was passed last year, and this bill will make it official.
Stosch said "it is not a significant change," just a codification of the budget.
"A couple of years ago we set up what is known as a 'citizen friendly budget' ... and the auditor of public accounts found that the University was the only institution that commingled private and public dollars," Stosch said.
It is the University's record of private endowment funds that necessitates the change.
Private endowment funds are "not state funding and we should not have on our state database funds that are not state funds," Stosch said.
Stosch said it would be similar to puting local church information on the database.
University spokesperson Carol Wood said the information is offline but accessible.
"This does not impair accessibility to the information," auditor of public accounts Walter Kucharski said. "You just have to request [the information] from the University."
The reason for the legislation has to do with the security of donors and keeping their donations private, Wood said.
"We're the only school that reports that way," Wood said, adding that other schools' information pertaining to private donations also does not appear online.
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