GC OVER-RULES A COMMITTEE?
After a meeting of the Board of Review, the General Council left the impression that he can over-rule a unanimous vote by the committee he chairs and an overwhelming vote by the rules committee. It appears as if he over-looked Roberts Rules of Order (on line) article 24. His ruling does not seem to be correct. How can one person force his will on our organization?
From the information given to me, this incident occurred as a result of an e-mail proposal that was sent on time and was received late by only minutes Eastern Standard Time. Our National Office was on Central Standard Time. The e-mail in question contained both rule and code proposals. There seems to be some confusion as to when things are considered late. Proposals were to be sent in by midnight on a designated date. The confusion comes in because the rulebook is not clear what time zone is being considered. Also with e-mail there are certain server problems that may cause an e-mail to be delayed. In any event with convention date changes, abbreviated meetings and many other things that have occurred since the 9/11 fiasco, some leeway should have been offered but wasn’t. The rules committee voted overwhelmingly to accept them as being on time. Our appointed General Council claimed it was not a valid vote (No one can find what his ruling was based on using Roberts rule of Order).
In an attempt to resolve this e-mail dispute, the General Council (Bill Ferrara), suggested it be sent to the Board of Review, a committee, which he chairs and appoints its members. The committee after some discussion voted unanimously to accept what they thought was the entire late e-mail proposal. After the meeting the General Council told them that they really didn’t vote for what they thought they voted for. Only half were on time and the other half were late. Later in an open meeting, the Board of Governors were informed by the General Council that only a part of the e-mail was accepted as being on time. Then his own committee member stood up and said they thought and meant to vote to accept everything as being on time on time. The General Council became visibly upset when he suggested that his own committee was "stupid". This committee included Julian Krug, Camila McClain, Keith Russell and an athlete from BYU. It seems that the entire committee was under the same impression until the GC’s announcement. How can four good people misunderstand what they were voting for? How can the rules chairman’s first actions, the rules committee and the Board of review all be so wrong? How can the General Council stop the will (vote) of the members of USD? What was the best course of action for USD? In any case, that part of the e-mail that was accepted was acted on positively by the membership and the rules committee. It’s still hard for me to comprehend how only a part of the same e-mail could be accepted while other parts were not.
What was in the Rule and Code e-mail that didn’t get accepted?
The code that the General Council over-ruled cost every Region and Zone meet Director $500 to $1000. My understanding is that this would be a stipend for putting up with the costs and hassles of running meets. But what may have been the real reason for the GC to over rule the will of the membership is the code that held the President of USD to the one man one vote rule. The president can give out 10 votes to whomever without telling the membership who he gave those votes. It seems rather interesting that those same 11 votes accounted for around 15% of the vote at this convention. That could suggest that one person (the President) does have the ability to sway what direction any vote may take especially in a year when the turn out was relatively small. Could this be the reason why the committee was apparently over-ruled? After all, the General Council is appointed by and is only responsible to the President of US Diving. It appears the GC did what was best for the President and not what was best for USD. These two parts were not accepted probably because they were seen as a loss of power for the President and a loss of revenue control for the organization. Does this look like a loyalty issue?
In my opinion, the General Council may have been remiss in his duty to explain exactly what was being voted on. I believe that is part of his job description, as he is a lawyer … and our lawyer at that. Roberts Rules of Order spell that out very specifically. Why didn’t he know that or did he? Was he following some preconceived agenda? When the discovery of this misunderstanding surfaced, the issue should have been taken back into the Board of Review Committee for discussion and then a new vote be taken. That didn’t happen thus leaving the impression that the chairman over-ruled his own committee’s vote. Since objections were not carried further, the GC’s decision stood. With the appearance of our legal people, the system that has been in place for many years appears to be manipulated in a way that doesn’t reflect the member’s intentions. In fact not much has resembled the member’s intentions during the last two presidential terms.
Do these actions reflect the perception of an honest organization? Maybe a better question would be, do these actions enhance the confidence of the membership in their Governing body?