On the eve of approval of the executive budget last year, a crisis paralyzed the A.S. Council: One councilmember dared to ask for the total number of photocopies made by his colleagues, to see if the amount set aside for the “printing” line item was reasonable. And no one had the answer.

Alas, such is the process when 30 relatively uninformed people try to get funding for their pet causes — and it’s about to start again. This year, however, there is hope that President-elect Harry Khanna will introduce some level-headedness into the mix.

As Khanna made clear during the election, the A.S. budget is in dire need of an audit. Now, he must follow through; the audit needs to be complete before the next budget is introduced, not afterward.

The problem is that photocopies are not the only item about which the A.S. Council is ignorant. No one knows what happened to hundreds of thousands spent on the Academic Success Program in recent years. Most are equally oblivious about what the council’s two Webmasters do for 28 hours a week at $13 per hour, since the site has undergone few changes since its overhaul in the beginning of the year.

Usually, the process works like this: The president introduces the first draft of his budget around fifth week, and then spends the next month in heated and largely unproductive debate. On Wednesday of 10th week, the council spends approximately eight hours rewriting the entire thing, anyway.

This year, Khanna is better off waiting a bit longer before starting, to make sure he has all of the necessary facts at hand. The students whose activity-fee dollars the council appropriates would surely appreciate it.