Further amendments to the proposal

[Annabelle Backman]

Hello Bylaws Committee,

As I'm sure you're all aware, we have a couple of open issues with the bylaws proposal as it stands. Unfortunately, I believe the motion approved at Reorg prevents the Committee from proposing any additional changes, since we would be unable to provide the required "5 days notice of the proposed changes to the membership." (Source: 43rd Reorg video, at around 1:23:05)

Ideally, we'd be able to recommend an amended proposal, or failing that recommend the proposal and recommend a separate amendment to it. But I don't believe we can do that. As far as I can tell, we're limited to someone (i.e., not the Committee) issuing an amendment from the floor. Is that correct? Or is there something in parliamentary procedure / Robert's Rules that gives us a bit more flexibility?

–

Annabelle Backman

Vice Chair for Technology | Washington State 43rd District Democrats

https://www.43rddemocrats.org/

[Amy Madden]

Looping in our Parliamentarian, Scott Forbes, to seek his advice. Thank you in advance, Scott!

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "43rd District Democrats Rules and Bylaws Committee" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 43rd-bylaws...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to 43rd-...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/43rd-bylaws/CABRLSOuUwvVhYqnZLwdpDcpYZm0OnGa-CZkxX%3Dqp09VzHP5pkA%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Annabelle Backman]

Thank you for the clarification, Scott! And thanks, Amy, for pulling him into the conversation. 😀

–

Annabelle Backman

Vice Chair for Technology | Washington State 43rd District Democrats

https://www.43rddemocrats.org/

On Sat, Feb 16, 2019 at 8:12 AM Scott Forbes <sc...@scottforbes.net> wrote:

I think under these circumstances the committee can recommend the proposal for which five days’ notice was given, and then immediately recommend amending the proposal with additional changes that the committee agreed upon after the notice deadline—provided that the additional changes don’t exceed the scope of the notice. (That is, you couldn’t give notice of a proposal to amend Article 2 and then sneakily replace it with an amendment to Article 5 on the day of, but you can amend what you’ve proposed within the general scope of that “no surprises” rule. In this case you’ve given the membership fairly broad notice that bylaw reforms will be adopted, so I think your further amendments, whatever they are, would probably be within scope of the notice.)

[Angyl]

Scott, this is just a related personal procedural question from me but I'm including everybody because spreading knowledge is good.

I think I've seen some cases where a committee, or a Chair, basically tell the body what they're asking to be moved and someone in the body says "SO MOVED!' That might have even been how the KC Bylaws Punt got set up iirc. It seems like the "friendly amendment" notion people keep trying to invent, where it doesn't actually exist as a rule but the intent is that everyone has a shared non adversarial goal and are trying to get there properly and expediently without drama.

Anyway my question is, in any situation not just this one, is it a reasonable and technically allowable approach to just straight up say "we found some problems including possible legal ones with this proposal, so I'm asking the body to move to amend the following things, in order, per this (email/piece of paper/whatever), to better meet the stated intents" and then they say SO MOVED and SECONDED and off you go? Or is that a fiction we create and pretend to go with because it works?

- Angyl

Sent from ProtonMail, Swiss-based encrypted email.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/43rd-bylaws/CABRLSOvX3XnVBGFkaCuP2cHJ78uVNv486MhJ%2BcVmAhhCJFe_Pg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Angyl]

Forwarding to bylaws comm FYI if it helps

Sent from ProtonMail Mobile

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Scott Forbes<sc...@scottforbes.net>
Date: On Sat, Feb 16, 2019 at 7:40 PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: Further amendments to the proposal
To: Angyl <an...@protonmail.com>
Cc: Annabelle Backman <abackm...@gmail.com>,Amy Madden <amye...@gmail.com>,43rd District Democrats Rules and Bylaws Committee <43rd-...@googlegroups.com>

Hi Angyl,

The person chairing a meeting can’t make motions, so what they do instead is to “entertain” a motion (“the chair will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the previous meeting”). The typical response when the chair entertains a motion is for someone to say “so moved,” followed by a second—but procedurally this is no different than any other motion: The motion the chair entertained could be debated, amended, and so on. It just so happens that most of the motions a chair entertains are basic housekeeping stuff, so they tend to pass without any debate or amendments.

The chair (or the committee, or any individual) can also request Unanimous Consent for a motion, and if nobody objects then the chair bangs the gavel and the motion is adopted. (Did I send you a draft of the “How to Run a Meeting” training materials? Some of this is covered in there.) If anyone objects, then the floor is opened for debate and amendments as usual. This would probably be the best way to jump from the original proposal to the committee’s latest version, as long as it’s clearly understood that the floor would then be open for further debate and amendments on the proposed revision.

— Scott

P.S.: The committee’s mailing list is set up as a members-only list, so my replies to that address are bouncing. Feel free to forward if you think the committee would find it useful.