October 3rd Town Hall motion

[Erik Raudsep]

I would submit the motion to create a town hall for October 3rd. An Avenue for public comment and have immediate response from the LNC.

[Susan Hogarth]

Do we need a motion, though? Can’t we just do it?

I am confused about the phrase ‘immediate response from the LNC’ - what do you mean by that?

I’d just like a session where members (and should we pre-vet them for membership? Is that an extra burden on staff?) speak. If a member asks a question, LNC members should answer as they find appropriate. Perhaps a 2-minute limit per member, so they can either speak for 2 minutes or ask a question for 15 seconds and have up to 1:45 of reply. 

That’s just off the top of my head. Other formats may work better. But we should have some structure, and I’m not sure we have to sort all that out via motions and voting. 

- Susan

On Sun, Sep 26, 2021 at 6:54 AM Erik Raudsep <erik.r...@lp.org> wrote:

I would submit the motion to create a town hall for October 3rd. An Avenue for public comment and have immediate response from the LNC.

--

Susan Hogarth
919-906-2106
Region 5 Representative

[Richard Longstreth]

Even if the ballot request receives enough sponsors today, I believe it would expire before the third. I believe that is why me Raudsep is calling for "immediate response from the LNC." 

I do think we need to look at having a town hall every so often if that is what the public wants but I think it needs to be scheduled and the execution determined more than one week in advance. This body has never had town halls and, while I admire the desire to have them, there are technicalities to figure out before doing something on that large of a scale. All who wish may always email or all call us already so not having one immediately does not hurt membership or silence their voices and only maintains the status quo. Further, prior to this term, public comment only generally occurred once a quarter at in person meetings.

I will not sponsor because of my previously noted conflict of interest. Personally, I would be against having anything scheduled at all since I cannot attend but if it goes to ballot, I intend to abstain due to the conflict of interest rather than be a no vote because this body and any sponsors are well aware of my previous plans. I do wish that if this body wants to start a new program in the form of town halls that we do it at a time when there are not previously announced conflicts of interest so that all members may attend, evaluate, and offer suggestions for improvement.

As a side note, I did vote in favor a cancelling the meeting on October 3 due to there being no business. If there had been, I would have abstained there as well, due to my conflict. As I've stated before, however, a meeting and a town hall are very different things. A meeting serves to execute the business of the party. If there is no business, there is no need for a meeting.

Richard Longstreth
At Large Representative
Libertarian National Committee
richard.l...@lp.org
931.538.9300

Sent from my Mobile Device

[Laura Ebke]

I agree with Mr. Longstreth on the timing issue, as well as the need for "rules of the game" if we're going to have town halls. The motion I see includes nothing in that regard (as Ms. Hogarth points out). A town hall, in my experience (and I conducted 40 of them in 4 years in the Legislature) requires some give and take and back and forth. Someone needs to be willing to enforce some "no filibuster" rules. 

I like the idea of having some "Ask the LNC" type of event from time to time. I do think we want to be careful about structure. Public comment is different than questions. If we want to schedule an hour (and I think we need to set some time frames for any event of this nature) for public comment, then we need to think about what the limits are for that comment (2-3 minutes each?). If we're going to take questions, then how do we manage that if there are a dozen LNC members on the call? I don't think anyone wants to hear every single one of us expressing our opinions about a particular topic.

Like Ms. Hogarth, I don't know that we need to have a motion to do this. I think we can just decide that we want to have a session. If no business is to be conducted, a notice of a time and access method would seem to me to be adequate. I do think that with any event, we should be clear what our "rules" or expectations are in terms of times limits and structure of the even will be. I don't think that we would be able to verify membership unless we did advance registration, and I'm not sure that we would want to use up staff time in verifying registration for a town hall event. Which makes it even more important that we define what the rules are and how they'll be enforced, and by whom.

If there's a desire by a group of LNC members to hold a public comment event on a night when we're not having a meeting, let's just set it up. 

Laura Ebke

Laura Ebke, PhD
LNC At-Large

Former NE State Senator
laura...@lp.org
Cell: 402-540-6510

[Ken Moellman]

I think that if it's an "official" LNC event we would need a motion to take official action, especially if we are using LNC resources (personnel, resources, etc). We should also provide some notice, especially to the 20k or so national party members. How about this....

Motion to conduct a membership feedback event on Sunday, October 17th, 2021 at 4PM Eastern Time, via Zoom in Webinar mode, in the following format:  

The Town Hall will be moderated by Tyler Harris, Executive Director, and additional staff as he deems necessary, and will last for up-to 90 minutes.  Questions/comments are to be submitted no later than 24 hours prior to the town hall event, should clearly address who the question is to, and should take less than 30 seconds to read, and may be paraphrased or combined by the moderator. Tough questions are encouraged, but should follow conduct guidelines. Prioritization of the questions shall be up to the moderator.

Immediately following the Town Hall event, a Public Comment event will be permitted for up-to 30 minutes, with 1 minute allotted per speaker, provided the speaker follows conduct guidelines. This event shall be moderated by the LNC, with the assistance of Tyler Harris and additional staff as he deems necessary.

Any use of the "chat" feature during the Town Hall or the Public Comment shall also be subject to conduct guidelines.  

Conduct guidelines are that a speaker should not use strong profanity, engage in personal insults, or use any other language that obviously wouldn't be acceptable in a public forum. Any violation of the conduct guidelines will lead to the member being removed from the webinar and not permitted to speak at future LNC meetings, until such time as the LNC votes to lift such restriction.

Ken Moellman

Libertarian National Committee

Vice Chair

[Richard Longstreth]

I believe that is the last Sunday for the judicial committee to hold a hearing and Dr Moulton indicated on bylaws committee that they do have a tentative plan to meet that day which I would want to attend as I'm sure many on this committee would. There is also a national bylaws meeting scheduled for mid morning that day.

Could we push to the 24th?

Richard Longstreth
At Large Representative
Libertarian National Committee
richard.l...@lp.org
931.538.9300

Sent from my Mobile Device

[Ken Moellman]

Sorry, I obviously wasn't looking at a calendar when I picked a date. I am open to any weekend really. 

Ken