From merope@Radix.Net Tue May 1 14:02:02 2001 Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 14:02:01 -0400 (EDT) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show, 5/1/2001 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: RO X-Status: Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Monday 30 April 2001: Richard Harrison calls the question on Joe Zsedeny's appeal of Tim Stowell's ruling that his motion was out of order. Holly Timm doesn't think there is a need to call the question and [lord be praised] actually cites a source for her statement. She notes that Tim should have "immediately stated the question at issue,given his reasons if he wished or thought necessary and then asked if his decision should be sustained which should be followed by the vote." She points out that Tim was online at the time and could have easily followed proper procedure. Richard says he knows this but figured he'd "get the show on the road". He notes this did not work very well. Teri Pettit asks Holly if there is a proper procedure for the person appealing the Chair's decision to state their reasons for the appeal. Holly quotes another section of [presumably RRoO] which states "An appeal cannot be debated when it relates simply to indecorum, or to transgression of the rules of speaking, or to the priority of business, or if made during a division of the assembly, or while the immediately pending question is undebatable.... Whether debatable or not, the chairman when stating the question on the appeal may, without leaving the chair, state the reasons for his decision." She asks whether or not Joe's appeal is debatable. Joe presents evidence that Executive Orders made by the President of the United States can be nullified and/or revoked by legislative action. Joe notes, that in line with Holly's findings and his research into executive orders, "evidence clearly shows that executive orders can be reversed by legislative action. The same has to hold in any parlimentary body for if it didn't the name parlimentary would be an oxymoron. It simply would not be parlimentary in nature as this Board is clearly defined to be in the Bylaws." Tim Stowell asks Joe the basis for his appeal. Tim notes that he only reads Board-Exec mail at work [nifty demonstration of his priorities: gossip over business], and does not get Board-L mail until the evening. He suggests that several of his colleagues are "retired or living the leisurely life," whereas he is not and thus cannot conduct Board business in a timely fashion. Tim announces that John Smallwood has been selected by a majority vote of the Advisory Board [secret vote #3] to fill the vacant SE/MA CC rep position. Joe tells Tim that the basis for his appeal is Tim's assertion that the motion is out of order because it refers to overturning an executive order. Joe also notes that Tim has failed [as usual] to substantiate his ruling with a source and asks Tim once again to provide a source for the ruling. He also points out that in case Tim considers parliamentary and executive actions on the national level to be a model for actions by the USGW Advisory Board, he has already demonstrated that they can be overturned. Teri suggests to Tim that it might be a good idea for him to reverse his subscriptions and read Board-L at work instead of the secret list. She notes "BOARD-L by definition is where Board meetings are held, and you are the Chair of those meetings. It is very hard to hold a proper meeting when the Chair can only be present at night." She also tells us that Board-Exec is not run under parliamentary procedure and does not have a chair [!! yet they conduct votes there???!]. She suggests that perhaps because Tim does not read Board-L in a timely fashion this causes him " to typically introduce new discussion topics on Board-Exec even when they are not sensitive,"" contrary to the policy that he announced when he took office. She also suggests that he consider unsubscribing from other mail lists if this is impacting on his ability to properly chair the Board meeting. Teri notes that if people have problems with the phrasing or content of Joe's motion, the correct way to deal with them is via discussion and amendment. She notes that "Just because you see problems with the motion doesn't mean it is 'out of order'." Tuesday 1 May 2001: Tim notes that his email subscriptions have been working just dandy and notes that Teri is the Board member who requests that votes not be held on weekends in order to accomodate her ability to access her email. [Of course, she is not the chair of the meeting and her presence is not crucial to the meeting.] He does say that he will take her suggestions under consideration. Tim notes that "Since so many members of the Project look at the US government, Constitution, Bill of Rights and so on as a model of how they think the Project should be governed," he went off and did some of his own research into Executive Orders. He says such Executive Orders issued by the President cannot be overturned by Congress, although he thinks that some courts can overturn them. [He fails to cite a source for this assertion OR his earlier ruling; Joe Zsedeny has provided evidence that EOs can and have been nullified/reversed by legislative action.] Tim notes "I'm not the President but then neither are you all the Court nor Congress. You are more like the President's cabinet - at least that was the idea I believe Megan had in mind when she first proposed an ADVISORY board instead of a Board of Directors." [He's wrong on this one. St. Megan specifically proposed a "Board of Directors" and has been bitter ever since that the project webmaster at the time refused to call it that and instead called it the "Advisory Board". see http://www.radix.net/~merope/history/chapter4.htm for further info and a link to Megan's message on the topic. So our National Commander is ignorant of project history. What else is new?] Tim winds up his tirade with the statement "In the intervening time the AB seems to have evolved to the point, at least in its own mind, where it wishes to be the Supreme Court of the Project handing down from the mountain edicts of this and that, while most of the Project doesn't give a flying fig what the AB does or doesn't do." [Well, he's right on that, at least. Curiously enough, one of his edicts from the mountaintop is what they are talking about nullifying.] Babs Dore weighs in with her perspective as to problems with Joe's motion. She has no problems with the first part of the motion, which establishes an official Census Project. She notes that "The removing of the Census Project links left the project with NO official Census Project...To conform to the bylaws, as they now stand, we need an official census project...The above doesn't make either of the current Census Projects "the" official project but instead creates a "new" project in which members of both current Census Projects are invited and encouraged to participate and have representation within the guidelines of the USGenWeb Project." However, she points out that the remainder of the motion is problematic because it reverses both Timmy's Executive Order and Motion 00-10, since by doing so it has the effect of returning the original [and currently delinked] USGenWeb Census Project to its position as the official USGW CP. This nullifies the need for the Board to establish a new Census Project. She thinks these conflicting aspects of the motion may be grounds for it being out of order [hope Tim thanks her for saving his heinie on this one] and suggests that it be withdrawn and a new motion made which would contain only part 1. She sees a few ways to solve the conflict and still achieve Joe's desired result and will present those to the Board in a later message. [Can anyone say "three USGW Census Projects"? 'Cause if'n Linda don't get her way and Ron don't get his way, neither of them will endorse the Board-sanctioned "official" USGW Census Project and they'll continue with their own projects.] Tim calls a vote on the called question dealing with Joe's appeal. [Oh, he must have decided to read Board-L during working hours after all.] === Checks and Balances Corner: The problem with Joe's position on Executive Orders, of course, is that our Board is not analogous to the US government. I don't claim to be a parliamentarian, but I'm not even sure "executive orders" are permitted under RRoO. [Last year, when Tim dropped this little bomb on the project, there was an attempt to override it via a motion, and no concerns that it was out of order were raised then.] Certainly, the relationship between the President and Congress is not the same as the relationship between the NC and the Board [which appears to be undefined], or between the Chair of a meeting and the members participating in the meeting. Our system of government is not strictly "parliamentarian", and our Board/NC relationship has none of the built-in checks and balances of the President/Congress relationship. And of course, we have no Supreme Court-like structure to prevent or remediate violence to our bylaws done by the NC and/or the Board. The immediate problem is of course that neither the Board nor the National Commander has any idea what they are doing, they have no qualified parliamentarian to guide them, and they are all apparently reading out of different books. Not a system that inspires confidence or which promotes effective professional functioning of the organization. Tim seems to clearly see himself as "in charge" with the Board serving as his "Cabinet", and at least one Board member supports him in this [Maggie Stewart]. Other Board members seem to think that the NC should merely chair the meeting, answer the project's email, make public announcements, and otherwise let them direct the project. [Many of the rank and file peons just wish they'd all shut up and go away.] I know from discussions with several of the original bylaws committee members that the intent was not to create a powerful NC, but in practice that is exactly what they did. The fact that Tim's actions are supported by just enough Board members to block any effort to overturn them has given him free reign, and he's run with it. He has succesfully nullified every attempt to undo the illegal delinking and removal of the USGW Census Project and now he claims his Executive Order cannot be overturned without deigning to provide a source for this assertion. Then he conveniently "disappears" into daytime, where he reads the secret list instead of the official Board meeting list and conducts secret votes whereby members friendly to the Archives are clandestinely given vacant Board seats. It is crucial to a handful of Board members and Tim that Maggie's census project be the one accepted as the "official" census project. They have worked for exactly one year now to ensure that Ron's project, the original one, never gets taken back. They have not been too particular how they have accomplished this, and their tactics have _permanently_ damaged the credibility of the office of the NC, the Board as a governing body, and USGenWeb as an organization. Now there is the very real likelihood that we will end up with no fewer than _three_ census projects. I can hear the hoots now. Utter Disgrace Corner: Now I truly have seen everything. Our Esteemed National Coordinator [choke] has posted the following message to the State Coordinators' mailing list under the subject line "cen$u$ spam": "It may interest you to know that your CCs are being spammed by SK Publications asking for them to link to their for sale CDs. http://www.SKcensus.com/census/ (two letter state abbreviation) As this is a commercial site trying to sell census images - and goes against the grain of what we are trying to do - put the stuff up for free, I encouraged the CC not to link to the site for his county. At least not from the main page." Now, for those of you who don't know, SK Publications is John Schunk's company. SK Publications has been donating, for years now, books and census scans to the USGenWeb Project. If I remember the agreement properly, transcribers are _given_ books provided they agree to give their transcription to the Archives, and if someone buys a census CD, the scanned images are also given to the Archives. [John is also a KS SC, and as I recall, maintains excellent web pages. He also coordinated the recent pledge drive to fund our doomed service mark applications.] But it seems our National Commander isn't aware of that. As you might expect response to the latest Tim's pearls of wisdom has been fast and furious: "This is John Schunk's company. Since every image on all the S-K CD's is donated to the USGenWeb Archives, at his expense, linking to his site where he sells the CD's seems like a fair exchange...The USGenWeb Bylaws specifically state that it is OK to link to an outside vendor who sells genealogy material relevant to the county. When the person selling the material is probably the single biggest donor to the USGenWeb Archives, it seems not only acceptable but even common decency." ---Teri Pettit "Don't it just boggle your mind that the National Commander could even think this way???? John has been nothing but generous with his support of the project. Tim is making a mockery of the NC position. I would seriously concider new management!" ---Pat Smith "As you stated, the USGenWeb is about putting "the stuff up for free." Since that is exactly what SK-Publications is doing, they deserve not only a link, but a prominent one....I believe that we should take advantage of the offer John has made, and coordinate the effort to get the census data online as quickly as possible. To do that we must give SK-Publications exposure." ---Carol Askey "Ever since SK offered free books for the Archives Census Project, John has played a big part in getting the majority if the census transcriptions online by offering free books to volunteers. If it wasn't for his generosity, we wouldn't be able to offer as much online as we do now....It's a courtesy to link to his page and encourage more folks to purchase census cd's which are then placed online." ---Linda Lewis "I agree whole-heartedly with Carol, here, and would encourage all of us to take a look at what John has done, and is continuing to do, in getting this census data into the Archives and available for free to all...just because you perhaps have a "problem", "feud", "disagreement", "difference of opinion"...whatever ... with someone, it does not give you carte blanche to cast outrageous aspersions on him. "Cen$u$"? "Spam"? Please." ---Shari Handley Tim's response to this? Well its one of his usual non sequiters: "Perhaps Connie, Nebraska SC, will correct me if I am wrong, but is this the same Archives that saddles SCs with FMs that are not cooperative, that are down right rude to CCs, demanding that files be sent to the Archives?" Yep, right. He utterly ignores the fact that he has just mightily dissed a man who has been very generous to online genealogy and to USGenWeb for a long time in order to attack some nameless persons in the Archives he doesn't get along with. The man is an utter disgrace. The sad thing is that, as has already been pointed out to me by a reader, by the time the election rolls around, all will be forgiven, people will forget all about this, and they will vote the idiot right back into office. In Other News Corner: Netslaves.com, which bills itself as "The undertakers of the new economy" has a very interesting review of CMGI'S most recent SEC filing. Things are not good over at the MyFamily.com/Ancestry.com/Rootsweb.com sugar daddy; they have so far lost 3.79 BILLION dollars. Read all about it here: http://www.netslaves.com/comments/988657852.shtml [and thanks to a reader for sending this in to us!] === "Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." ---Elbert Hubbard This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net ------- Daily Board Show, (c) 2001 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. From merope@Radix.Net Wed May 2 14:16:11 2001 Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 14:16:10 -0400 (EDT) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show, 5/2/2001 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: Look sharp!...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Tuesday 1 May 2001: Teri Pettit asks how Tim Stowell can claim his system for reading email works when the Board so often has issues awaiting action from the Chair. She also notes that she has never requested that voting not take place over the weekend, only that voting periods overlap with at least one business day, so she is not precluded from voting. She reminds Tim that she is not the Chair of the meeting and her presence at the meeting is not required for its smooth functioning. She notes "The Chair is the only person with a need to be fairly regularly present in order for meetings to proceed in an orderly fashion." Tim questions the use of RRoO as the source for statements about executive orders, saying "You do realize that RRO is not the only authority?" [its only the authority the Board has agreed to use for the last two years.] He of course cannot provide a reference for his statements, but claims to have read two different web sites that showed 1) "Executive Orders and that some of those had been amended or disposed of with further Executive Orders." and 2) "some diatribe from some right wing folk unhappy with former President Clinton's EO's and wishing to pass legislation concerning reigning in the power of the President." [Clearly neither of these provide any sort of support for his position and just as clearly, he cannot provide a legitimate source of support for his position. He probably didn't even bother picking up a copy of RRoO.] He defers to "Barbara Dore's more eloquent response" that the "motion seemingly cancels itself out" and says "Therefore in any case it would be out of order." [Saved by Babs!! We saw that coming.] Regarding Joe Zsedeny's motion establishing an Official USGenWeb Census Project, Teri notes that the intent of the motion is laudable, but the Board needs "to have serious discussions about how to achieve that goal within the Bylaws." She herself has problems with the use of the word "Official" as part of the title of the proposed census project, since that wording is not contained in the bylaws. She also notes that the phrase "The elected AB representative will act as the coordinator between the two census projects" is at odds with the bylaws, "which treat Project Coordinator and Advisory Board representative as two separate positions, with different rules for terms of office and selection procedures." She notes that the purpose of the motion is to find a way to include members of both census projects into one official USGenWeb Census Project and notes "I think the motion needs something that makes it more clear exactly who is eligible to join the USGenWeb Census Project, and exactly how it is to be reconciled with Motion 00-10 and/or Motion 2000-F-1. This is probably not best done by simply declaring the prior actions "null and void"." Teri notes that the question has not been restated by the Chair, so they cannot yet vote on it. She notes "it is Tim's prerogative to restate the question, and perhaps in the light of discussion he wishes to rephrase the basis for his decision to be that the two parts of the motion are potentially contradictory, in lines with the analysis made by Barbara." She also notes that it is very important that the Board know exactly what it is voting on, since "To rule that a motion can be declared out of order because two parts of it may conflict with each other is a harmless precedent. But to allow a declaration that Executive Orders issued by a National Coordinator can never be overruled or revised except by another Executive Order to stand would be a profoundly dangerous precedent to set." Tim restates the question: "I hereby withdraw my previous ruling of out of order regarding this motion and because of the impassioned pleas of not only Board members but members of the Project as well. As Barbara has previously pointed out - the third section if passed along with the first section of the motion would negate the first paragraph of the motion - which it seems would put the entire motion into a circle chasing itself. The two parts being contradictory, it is the new ruling of the chair that this motion is out of order in it's present wording." He asks the Board to vote on whether they agree with this new ruling. Barbara reiterates that the two parts of the motion in question conflict with each other. She notes "Part 2 changes the status of the incorporated census within the USGenWeb Project. With that status change Part 1 would create a second census project in addition to the one who's status is changed "within" the motion itself." She notes that part 1 has merit and if it were to pass on its own, the Board could then work out the problems with part 2. Joe notes that motions should be amended once they come to the floor and that is how he chose to proceed with his motion. He points out that the real issue currently under debate is "whether motions made will be arbitrarily ruled out of order." He notes "This Board is charged by our Bylaws with the conduct of the Project's business. The Chair is charged with facilitating the Board's work using accepted parlimentary procedure, currently Roberts Rules of Order. Throughout RRs it is stressed that the rules were written to permit orderly conduct of parlimentary business and not to be used to obstruct. In my considered opinion to obstruct has been, in this case, the goal." He urges his fellow Board members to vote against the Chair in this matter Betsy Mills moves to appoint George Waller to the NE/NC SC representative position, Dick Marston to the NE/NC CC representative position, and John Smallwood to the SE/MA representative position. Tina Vickery and Richard second the motion. Richard asks to amend the motion to include a statement thanking all who applied for the vacant positions. Wednesday 2 May 2001: Maggie Stewart posts her "understanding" of what she found in RRoO at the library: "Our NC is equivalent to a chairman or presiding officer. Our bylaws say that the NC has decision making authority in the day to day business of the project. An Executive order is a ruling by the chairman. This can be overruled or reversed." She then notes that Joe's motion is out of order "because it calls for the Executive Order to be made "null and void"." [no, this makes no sense to me either. Note that she did not provide a source for this information, such as version of RRoO, page, or section numbers.] Tim notes that he did not plainly state the call for a vote and restates it: "The Board is asked to vote yes or no if the chair was correct in calling the motion out of order for this reason: the third section if passed along with the first section of the motion would negate the first paragraph of the motion - which it seems would put the entire motion into a circle chasing itself. The two parts being contradictory, it is the new ruling of the chair that this motion is out of order in it's present wording." He disallows such votes as "strongly disagree" and "not". Tim tells Betsy her motion appointing the new Board members will have to wait, since calling the question takes precedence over other items and will have to handled before other items can be addressed. Barbara quotes a section of RRoO that explains her vote on the call of the question [which affirms the Chair's decision, natch.] Voting proceeds and thus far, one member has voted to support the Chair's ruling and 7 members have voting against it. Betsy accepts Richard's suggested amendment to her motion. === Because Its The Law Corner: As it turns out, our bylaws state pretty unequivocally that "Voting records of the Advisory Board membership shall be posted publicly." There's littleleeway in this one [none actually]; the voting records of the Board must be posted publicly. Accordingly, earlier today I sent to each current Board member the following request: "I now formally request that the Board make public the voting records for the three secret votes held to select replacements for the recently vacated seats on the Advisory Board. Since the USGenWeb Project home page is not being updated in a timely fashion, please post these records to Board-L, or to another public forum available to the general membership, such as USGENWEB-ALL or USGW-CC-L." I also asked for the courtesy of a reply. Thus far, only Joy Fisher has responded; her response was one word: "reply". [Heh, it must have taken her 15 minutes of hard thinking to come up with something so clever.] We shall see if the remaining Board members can dig up a more professional response; I'm looking forward to seeing how they justify breaking the bylaws this time. In the meantime, the DBS urges other project members to also request that these voting records be made public, as mandated by the bylaws. Good News Corner: Google has announced that all the old Usenet articles going back to 1995 have been incorporated into its Google search. They acquired this vast archive when they acquired Deja.com [formerly Dejanews] back a few months ago. This will include all the genealogy newsgroup postings, including those from the now defunct soc.roots. For more information, see http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/deja_announcement.html === "...he wasn't a very heavy weight, intellectually. His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once." ---Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net ------- Daily Board Show, (c) 2001 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. From merope@Radix.Net Thu May 3 13:19:12 2001 Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 13:19:11 -0400 (EDT) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show, 5/3/2001 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: Reading tea leaves...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Wednesday 2 May 2001: Voting proceeds on the appeal of the Chair's ruling that Joe's motion is out of order. Thus far, one Board member has voted to sustain the ruling and 9 have voted to overturn it. Teri Pettit responds to this author's request that the Board post its voting records as required in the bylaws. She says, "It is my understanding that the phrase "Voting records of the Advisory Board membership" in Article VIII, Section 4 of the Bylaws has always been interpreted to refer to votes on Motions made in Advisory Board meetings...anything that materially affects the project must be voted on; the Board can't take official action without a motion being made...But selections between individuals is, in our society, something that is usually confidential. This is especially true when you are going to be working with whoever you select...The way that this desire for confidentiality has traditionally been reconciled with the need for a public vote has been, when choosing among volunteers for a position, such as Board Secretary, Committee Chair, or a replacement for a vacant Board position, that the Board members would be informally polled as to their preferences, and then if a clear majority preference emerged, a motion would be made that that candidate should be seated. The vote on that motion would then be public. I think it is fair to say that quite a few Board members feel that Tim Stowell acted prematurely in announcing the filling of the Board seats, and in describing it as 'by majority vote', before a motion could be made to fill those seats. The people that he announced were indeed the preference of a majority of the Board members, but we did not consider the expression of those preferences to be an official "Board vote", and we do not consider the vacancies to be filled until a motion has been made, seconded, and passed. Messages of objection have been sent to Tim, but as I'm sure you're aware, he tends to do what he thinks best and has little patience for what he perceives as nitpicking." Teri asks that if anyone substantially disagrees with her reply to me to please reply both to me and the Board, She is "uncomfortable with making a statement...that might be incorrectly perceived as the 'Board position." [Actually, where I'm concerned, the official Board response is no response. See below.] Pam Reid notes that the only "official votes" that are not posted to the web page are the ones accepting the resignations of the the members who recently resigned. She says she's tried to get the necessary information, but has failed. [This is not correct. The last motion posted is 01-06. Motion 01-07 -to move the mediation proposal webpage- is missing, as are the three motions to accept the resignations of Ellen Pack, Richard Howland, and Ginger Hayes. Also the voting records for the mediation panel are not posted.] Thursday 3 May 2001: Tim Stowell responds to this author's request, noting that Section 8 of the bylaws gives the Board full discretion as to how it chooses to fill vacant seat. He says "They could draw names from a hat, draw straws, throw darts, read tea leaves - whatever. The method of choice is up to them...Who voted for whom, who didn't vote for whom, who participated or didn't participate in whatever selection process or by what method is according to the section stated above left to the discretion of the Board." [Yes, but it in this case they apparently decided to vote, and votes, per the bylaws, must be published.] Tim also notes that his announcements that the seats had been filled by majority vote of the Board were not appointments, just announcements. He says "I apparently upset the Board for asking for a public rather than a private vote for the candidates with my post calling for a vote. In other words I had according to Section 8, overstepped the boundary of the selection process method. For that I offer my apologies to the Project." === Circumvention Corner: Its more than 24 hours since I formally requested that the Board release its voting records on the vacant Board seats as required by the bylaws, and thus far I have received replies from five Board members: Joy Fisher: one word: "reply" Betsy Mills: "The person you are emailing is not accepting email from you." Teri Pettit: Her response is excerpted above. Tim Stowell: His response is excerpted above. As usual, our Esteemed National Commander makes no sense, although he thinks he's being very clever. The passage he cites, Article VI, Section 8, does empower the Board to choose replacement Board members any way it chooses. Article VIII, Section 4 requires that "Voting records of the Advisory Board membership shall be posted publicly." Although Tim would like us to believe that Art VI, Sec 8 allows the Board to keep its voting records secret in this instance, in reality the two passages are not in conflict. The Board CAN choose replacements any way it chooses, but under Art VIII, Sec 4, if it chooses to hold a vote, it must make those records public. The passage makes no distinction among where they vote or what they vote on. In this case, Tim has indicated that the replacements were selected "by majority vote of the Advisory Board". Next time, guys, read tea leaves. Babs Dore: Babs sent me several passages from RRoO, much of which pertained to how very secret the secret meetings are. Most of it had no bearing on the issue at hand, but after a couple of readings, this struck me as the gist of her reply: "A member can be punished under disciplinary procedures if he violates the secrecy of an executive session. Anyone else permitted to be present is honor bound not to divulge anything that occurred. The minutes, or record of proceedings, of an executive session must be read and acted on only in executive session, unless that which would be reported in the minutes--- that is, the action taken, as distinct from that which was said in debate--- was not secret or secrecy has been lifted by the assembly." Babs seems to be making the point here that the votes must be kept secret just because they were held on the secret list. Wouldn't that be an interesting precedent to set? It would allow the Board to remove itself entirely from public scrutiny just by conducting all its business in secret and then claiming that parliamentary rules forbid them from revealing what they have done. Unfortunately, I think that when an organization's bylaws are in conflict with parliamentary rules, the bylaws prevail [someone please correct me if I am wrong on this]. So, the votes still need to be posted, per the bylaws. Better Than Nothing Corner: Our Esteemed National Coordinator has issued a public apology of sorts for his apparently off the cuff comments regarding SK Publications and "spam". Claiming that he merely meant that links to commercial entities should not appear on the main page of any USGenWeb site, he now says that the message from SK Pubs may not have been "Spam in the classic sense" and that those who wish to link to them, thank them, etc. are encouraged to do so. He also says "If my post/decision from the other day has caused any member distress I apologize for that." === "The bedfellows politics made are never strange. It only seems that way to those who have not watched the courtship." ---Marcel Archard This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net ------- Daily Board Show, (c) 2001 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. From merope@Radix.Net Fri May 4 09:36:21 2001 Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 09:36:19 -0400 (EDT) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show, 5/4/2001 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: Interpret this!..its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Thursday 3 May 2001: Richard Harrison responds to this author's request to post the voting records from the three recent secret votes. He says "I agree with Teri the voting for replacement Board members should be done confidentially...This should also apply to consideration of grievances--whether or not a vote is actually taken on them. I interpret Article VIII, Section 4 the bylaws to mean the PUBLIC voting records of the Board members shall be posted publicly. I do not believe it precludes private votes where appropriate. I believe Miss Lindquist's request to be without merit. It might be different if the Board were doing something at all out of the ordinary or at all at odds with standard parliamentary procedure, but we are not. "Secrecy" is not necessarily a pejorative word." [You can interpret the bylaws however you wish. That does not change what they say. And the fact that secret balloting is allowed under parliamentary rules also does not relieve them of their obligation to publish the voting records.] Tim Stowell gives Joe's motion to establish an "Official USGenWeb Census Project" number 01-11 and opens the floor for discussion. [He does not bother to post the final results of his drubbing at the hands of the Board over his attempt to rule the motion out of order.] Joy Fisher moves to lay Motion 01-11 on the table until the motion to appoint the three new Board members has been addressed. Tim asks if there is any objection to this. Joe Zsedeny does not object. Tim gives Betsy's motion to appoint George Waller, Dick Marston and John Smallwood to the three empty Board seats number 01-12 and opens the floor for discussion. Betsy asks if she needs to split her motion into three separate motions so that "anyone who wishes to vote for/against one person (or more) may do so." She will amend the motion if anyone feels they should do it that way. [Note that although her post is under the subject heading "Motion 01-11" and motion 01-11 is appended, she is referring to motion 01-12.] Joy says she does not have a problem with a single motion Friday 4 May 2001: Barbara Dore seconds the motion to lay Motion 01-11 on the table. Maggie Stewart thinks they should split Motion 01-12 into three motions because they are three separate appointments. Holly Timm corrects Betsy's mixup with motion numbers. She suggests amending Motion 01-12 to allow voting on each individual appointment, rather than one vote to accept all three. === "The finest aspect of the parliamentary system of government for the executive in office ... is its penchant for systemic secrecy." ---Douglas Fisher This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net ------- Daily Board Show, (c) 2001 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. From merope@Radix.Net Sat May 5 11:44:30 2001 Date: Sat, 5 May 2001 11:44:29 -0400 (EDT) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show, 5/5/2001 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: When two wrongs make a right...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Friday 4 May 2001: Shari Handley agrees with Teri Pettit's response to this author on the issue of making public the Board's secret voting records. Teri Pettit also corrects Betsy Mills' confusion over motion numbers. Teri is also in favor of splitting Motion 00-12 into three part, noting "Even if none of us want to vote differently for the different positions, still the procedure should make it clear that we have that choice. Putting them all in one motion makes "all or none" the only possible vote, which doesn't seem like a very good way to fill Board vacancies." She is not in favor of splitting Motion 00-11 [regarding the Census Project". She notes "even handled separately it is still unclear how the terms of Motion #00-10 and Executive Order #2000-F-1 are to be reconciled with the goals of Motion 00-11." She suggests figuring out what the majority of "us" [not clear if she means the Board or the project membership] want to happen and word any subsequent motions to comply with the bylaws. Dick Marston [who is not yet "officially" a Board member] says it is his intent not to vote on his own appointment to the Board due to a conflict of interest, requests that each of the nominees be voted on separately. He says "The approval of my appointment should not be a compromise in order to expedite the process, or to get at least 2 out of 3 acceptable new members." He thinks Holly's suggested format is acceptable. Tim asks Betsy to amend Motion 00-12 to split it into three separate motions, "Since the Board took three seperate motions to accept the resignations of the seats now being selected and since one of the prospective Board members has asked for the seperation..." Betsy moves "that the Advisory Board appoint John Smallwood to fill the position of CC Rep for the Southeast / Mid-Atlantic Region." Maggie Stewart seconds the motion. Tim gives it number 00-13 and opens the floor for discussion. Betsy moves "that the Advisory Board appoint Dick Marston to fill the position of CC Rep for the Northeast / North Central Region." Maggie seconds the motion. Tim gives it number 00-14 and opens the floor for discussion. Betsy amends Motion 00-12 to read "I move that the Advisory Board appoint George Waller to fill the position of SC Rep for the Northeast / North Central Region." Tim asks Tina Vickery, who seconded the original motion, if she objects to the amendment, and she indicates she does not. Tim opens the floor for discussion on the amended motion. === Jumping the Gun Corner: A couple of things are clear from some back-and-forth emails exchanged between several Board members and myself: 1) Tim did not bother to inform the rest of the Board that he subbed Dick, George and John to the lists; 2) the rest of the Board is not happy about it; 2) Tim doesn't give a damn that the rest of the Board is not happy about it. According to Tim's message to me, "In the past as Board members have been selected either by votes of the CCs or by the Board - they have been subbed to the list(s) prior to taking office so that they could get a feel for how things work within the structure of the AB...As each person of the current three positions was selected after each Board member in turn had had their say - for each position - each one was added to the various lists - with the instruction that until the Board officially appointed them - they would be asked to read but not write to the lists." Other Board members do not recall any instances of replacement Board members being seated prior to the passage of the motion appointing them to the Board [nor do I], and the policy of subbing newly _elected_ members to the lists prior to the start of their term of office is not being challenged. In the past, as also pointed out by other Board members, Tim has always announced that he has subbed new members to the lists, but this time he did not bother to do so. Its also clear that "each Board member in turn had their say" is a euphemism for "each Board member voted", since otherwise it would seem that Tim just went ahead and subbed George, John and Dick following some sort of informal discussion and consensus and prior to any sort of official or formal appointment process. He and other Board members seems to be carefully avoiding the word "vote" in this instance, and it has not gone unnoticed that neither he nor any other Board member will answer a simple direct question as to whether he called for a vote on these nominees and whether the Board then voted on them. [We know he called for a vote on one of them, because he did that publicly.] The Last Election Revisited Corner: The following is a quote taken from the USGENWEB-ALL list, where Chip Brown and our Esteemed National Commander have been bickering back and forth for days. Chip has alluded more than once to improprieties in the last election of which he has direct knowledge and in which he personally participated. Now he intimates that Tim had direct access to voting records _as the vote was proceeding_. "I know very well that you spammed everyone on your own before the election, but do you care to tell everyone what sort of info you were getting about votes as they were cast? (And who hadn't voted yet) I passed some of them on to you (I have no idea who else did if anyone, I will only incriminate myself...other than to say the gentleman running the election had absolutely nothing to do with it). Not hard to win an election when you know the areas you're loosing in is it? Let's say Joe Blow was ahead in State X...all I would have to do is send a few e-mails to State X knowing that I could sway a few people. Then our voting system allowed votes to be changed up until the final day. I would just keep spamming until I am told that I am ahead." In a response to this email, Tim did not address this rather serious allegation other than to suggest that Chip may have been breathing fumes and "dreaming up all sorts of wild tales." We are left to assume that an honestly conducted election is just another one of those meaningless formalities which our NC finds so irksome. We will also point out that the chair of the Election Committee, which also insists on operating under a cloak of secrecy, is a big supporter of our Esteemed National Coordinator. === "We would defend our open society by becoming an even more open society. Bureaucratic secrecy is not only corrosive of liberty, it is ultimately inefficient." ---John Alan Lee This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net ------ Daily Board Show, (c) 2001 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved.