Promoting Advocacy Committee to a Standing Committee

[Scott Alspach]

Hi all,
I hope you've had a nice holiday break.

I'm writing because I'd like to submit a bylaws amendment, or ask for the RBC to submit an amendment, to make the 43rd's advocacy committee a permanent standing committee and the chair a member of the 43rd's board.

I sense a widespread desire from our membership to be more involved in policy discussions with allied groups and our elected officials and think that a permanent advocacy committee is needed to help make this happen.  

If possible I'd like to adopt this amendment at our January reorg so that we can have the membership vote on a chair for the committee at the same time as they do all of the others.

I'd also like to make it know that we will be considering this amendment and take "nominations" for the committee in advance so that nominees can have their personal statements etc. published before the meeting as we will for candidates for other positions.

Here's my first draft of a committee description, I welcome feedback on it. I wasn't sure if I should include something specific about this committee managing our resolutions process or platform discussion.

"The Policy and Advocacy Committee shall be responsible for organizing members in support of policies in line with the platform and adopted resolutions of the 43rd District Democrats. Where possible, the committee shall work in conjunction with and in support of community organizations with similar goals."

Thanks,
Scott

[Tara Gallagher]

Sounds good. Maybe “…organizing members to work in support…”

Can put the bylaws and resolutions stuff into standing rules; makes it more flexible.

Tara

[Heidi Bennett]

Hi Scott and all,

This is a great idea and I agree that the 43rd could be way more involved in policy advocacy at the local, county, state and federal levels.
I would hope that the committee would have representatives from the policy caucuses and others so that we can leverage their expertise.
I would support a revise to have the advocacy committee lead the annual platform review and submitted resolutions.

Cheers,

Heidi
Heidi Bennett
Land: 206-781-5566
Cell: 206-683-2250

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[Angyl]

Just a couple things to consider.

The Bylaws interestingly do address notice for replacement of officers at a general meeting, but appear silent on guidance for practices regarding communication and order of operations for introducing new voting roles and filling them at Reorg.

On this matter I would encourage taking a moment to consider the viewpoint of those outside the board and rules committee who might hear about this for the first time whenever the notice goes out. Will it feel to Members not in this conversation currently like they got enough fair notice to decide if they want to run or recruit someone to run for it?

Another question worth exploring that I raised regarding the potential residency requirement proposal at KCDCC is that of the reasons for urgency. This change appears to at core be about moving the role into a formal elected position with an Eboard vote. If there is already a candidate in mind, then the usual Appointment path would put the person in to the work, just wouldn’t come with the vote. So the reasons for the urgency on opening that voting seat seem germane to explore.

Coupling this with the matter of the Bylaws fundraising effort requirement raised concurrently, it might also come up that there were already several long vacancies of roles last term that were challenging to fill. Perhaps it might be worth considering something like rolling Fundraising back in to a different role if it is guessed that this is no longer a priority for the Body. A refactoring of priorities might be more well taken than an expansion, in context.

In the meta, I could definitely see a case for this role as an umbrella including managing the Resolutions process as well, as we’ve had quite a few resos that took up a very large floor time segment. Particularly since resos are included as an inherent factor informing the duties enumerated.

- Angyl

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[Tara Gallagher]

As for the order of operations, that is not in the bylaws, but recent precedent had the one by-laws amendment about officers voted on, then a vote for the position. This was in 2015? 17?-- when we changed from four vice-chairs to electing one VC. As you can see, in that instance it made rather a difference in officer elections in general whether this amendment was approved.

Tara

[Scott Alspach]

Thanks for the contributions everyone!

I think agree with Tara's point that leaving platform/resolution duties to standing rules will provide some beneficial flexibility. The chair of the policy committee would make an obvious choice to head up platform development and I don't think that needs to be required in the bylaws.

Angyl, thanks so much for bringing up the viewpoints of those who are "outside the loop."  My hope is that we have done enough to make it clear that this was a possibility to our members and give them a chance to express interest. The "Advocacy/Policy Committee" was listed in the email and form for folks to use to express interest in joining the board and I have had conversations with two people, who I did not know beforehand, who filled out the form and are potentially interested in this role. Do you think that is indicative that we've done enough?

We are also planning to send an email announcing that people can submit advanced self nominations and candidate statements to the board early next week, and my hope is that we can include this position with a disclaimer that the accompanying bylaws amendment must be approved before we elect a committee chair.

As for the urgency of doing this at reorganization, there are two main reasons. The first is that I think it is more small d democratic to give the body the chance to elect the chair of the policy committee rather than have the LD chair appoint them. I think chair appointments make sense for technical or other specialized committees (like RBC 😉) but for something like policy I think the membership should have their say.

The other reason I'd like to do it at reorg is just to get the committee and board off to a running start. The board could create the special committee and go from there, but that would put the committee chair in somewhat of an awkward position where they are involved in making plans for the year but wouldn't actually have a vote on them. This is probably less important, and we could certainly make due, but I think getting this chair elected at reorg would be a benefit to board and organizational cohesion.

The point about potentially refactoring away the fundraising chair role is a really good point, especially as I'm not currently aware of any potential candidates. I think I'll split that conversation into another thread with the relevant folks.  

-Scott

[Angyl]

To be clear, I’m not the one that has to be convinced of anything. Reorgs bring new PCOs and sometimes Members. This year KC’s work to contact and activate new PCOs for their Reorg was clearly effective, but the 43rd Board no doubt knows better than I do when the new PCO email addresses got rolled in and what has been done on other channels to assure messages weren’t going to Spam and such. I’m absolutely not qualified to evaluate the strength of communications about this.

However I can say I definitely do not see this position on the 43rd’s web site about board positions. I do not see it mentioned on the official Facebook Page. I honestly wasn’t paying a ton of attention at the holiday party because I was doing some deep cleaning at home, but I don’t recall hearing about it then either.

Over at King County last cycle we shifted to arguably over-communicating, especially about Bylaws. Even then we had some people that regularly claimed to have been under-informed, but have been reliably able to show receipts about over-communication thus addressing claims of shenanigans before they can even start.

So if some new PCO rises to bring a point about prior communication, I just want to advise y’all to have an answer you can feel confident in presenting to the public.

If you’re not super confident in that perception given the current state of communications on the matter, I’d suggest simply moving the election for the new role down one month, then anybody who participated in January has basically no excuse because they were there when the change was debated and voted on.

Alternatively, just present it to the Body in January and let them decide if they want to take it up as-is or have a larger discussion first about their views of the org’s priorities as stakeholders who are presumably going to be asked to submit their membership dues as well, which in theory would completely replace any vibe of urgency with a vibe of deliberative participation. If the change is well taken then great and it could clear quickly, and if not there’s space for correction.

- Angyl

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[frui...@tara-jamie.net]

Angyl makes a strong point. 

I understand wanting to get the advocacy committee up and running asap,  but in the interest of transparency and inclusion and general group involvement, it would be good to have the membership discuss what people would like to see, and maybe have the vote on a bylaws amendment in January and fill the position in February, or if necessary,  both the bylaws vote and officer vote in Feb. The discussion of the position and what the membership wants to see could sway some potential candidates.

Still should keep the bylaws description pretty general and develop standing rules.

Tara

[Angyl]

That said, eliminating Fundraising after someone has been elected to it would be aaaaaaaawkward so that might want some urgency on thinking through if it’s of interest.

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[Angyl]

OTOH, if someone shows up all “I am prepared with my ideas for the required Fundraising events” then, great! No problem after all it seems.

And if it goes without a candidate, there’s a PERFECT starting argument for eliminating it.

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