The university’s internal budget is a “revolutionary document” in its transparency, according to the chair of the Board of Trustees.

The budget, which puts NIU’s Fiscal Year 2015 expenses at about $425 million and its revenue at $426 million, was approved without discussion by the board at a Thursday meeting. Chair John Butler told meeting attendees the budget and the process used to create it were more detailed than they have been in years past. The budget was created under Nancy Suttenfield, who has served as interim chief financial officer since Oct. 28, and Lisa Freeman, who was named executive vice president and provost May 16.

The budget features line items showing how much money is being appropriated to 13 university divisions, which has not been presented to the board previously, Butler said.

“I wouldn’t say we’ve asked for it in the past; it’s just not been a part of the dialogue and discussion in the past,” Butler said. “I think throughout the years the different trustees have wanted different levels of detail and we feel very comfortable that we’re receiving a good deal of information about what we consider to be the major university priority, which is fiscal sustainability.”

The most money — about $138 million — was allocated to Academic Affairs, while the least has been allocated to General Counsel with about $871,000. Butler said he was impressed by the way NIU appears to prioritize Academic Affairs.

The budget information given to the board also contains an explanation of how Suttenfield’s staff created the budget based on several guiding principles and enrollment and hiring assumptions, among other things. One of the guiding principles calls for the budget to be “organized and communicated in a way that clearly demonstrates to trustees, university leaders, faculty, staff and others the level of investment being made in strategic priorities from new or reallocated resources,” according to the Aug. 28 Finance, Facilities and Operations Board of Trustees subcommittee agenda.

At the subcommittee meeting, Trustee Marc Strauss said the budget principles and line items are a “great advance” over what was previously done with the internal budget.