Article 8. Committees
Standing Committees are appointed by the Executive Board to develop proposals and prepare suggestions for decisions to be made by such Board or by the Membership. Standing committees shall include the Nominations Committee, the Membership Committee, and the Finance Committee.
Ad Hoc Committees (Working Groups) may he established from time to time in response to emergent issues, topics, or areas of concern.
The Nominations Committee shall be appointed within thirty days after a new President takes office. Its duties are to evaluate proposals for recognizing regular members as Fellows, evaluate nominations for Society awards, and to elicit nominations to all offices that are or will become vacant.
No member of the Nominations Committee may simultaneously hold a position for which the committee has nominating responsibility.
The Membership Committee shall review the membership status of the Society and decide on applications for and on cancellations of memberships. It is also charged with proposing and developing outreach strategies, to be approved by the Executive Board.
The Finance Committee shall supervise the Treasurer and propose the budget for the Society including the dues structure. It will also propose fund raising actions to the Executive Board and carry them out, as agreed.
Article 8 is essentially unchanged from the 1979 edition, with one exception:
- it is now specified that no member of the current Nominations Committee may currently hold a position subject to this committee’s oversight
an important change from the existing bylaws that i would not vote for is to remove a certain decision making power from the nomination committee.
the existing by-laws state that “the nominations committee shall nominate ..”
the proposed by-laws wants us to let the nominations committee … “to evaluate nominations for Society awards, and to elicit nominations to all officers that are or will become vacant.
the reason for why ithe existing by-laws require the nominations committee be appointed right after the new president takes office is to assure its independence from the current leadership regarding the nomination of the future leadership. in the existing by-laws, the executive board conducts an election with the candidates nominated from the committee or from the membership. it must not interfere with or modify the nominations from the nomination committee. this is to prevent cronyism from arising. i wouldn’t want to sacrifice this autonomy and suggest that it be made clear:
“The nominations committee shall nominate candidates for offices that will become vacant.”
HERE, WE MIGHT WANT TO BE MORE SPECIFIC AND NOT CONFUSE NOMINATIONS FOR REQUIRED OFFICES AND EVALUATIONS FOR HONORS OR NON-VOTING MEMBERS AND SAY:
The Nominations Committee shall decide on the slate of candidates for all officers in the next Executive Board and for Trustees whose term will expire. Toward this end, the Committee shall actively elicit nominations from the membership, evaluate their qualifications and availability, and transmit its slate of candidates to the Executive Board for action. It must include in this transmission of qualified nominations by a signed petition of 15 or more Voting Members. Presidential elections shall take place at least one year before the current President and Vice President’s term expires and elections for the other offices at least six months before their terms expire. The Executive Committee may also request the Nominations Committee to nominate candidates for unexpected vacancies, following the same procedure, except that candidates for these vacancies are to be transmitted within 30 days of this request and put to a vote within 15 days after the names of the candidates are received and published.
The Nominations Committee shall also evaluate proposals for recognizing Voting Members as Fellows or other honors, and for appointing Non-voting Members. These proposals may come from any source within the Society and the results of these evaluations are transmitted to the Executive Board for action.
Again from the perspective of the job of the Nominations committee - it is difficult to find people who are willing, have the time, are competent, and persistent enough to stay the 3 year term. Thus I would prefer to not to have two different schedules for president and VP and the other officers! Of course, theoretically one could elect all the officers one year before the current term expires, but again, given the size of the society this seems a bit demanding. Could we not make the officers to be elected 6 months prior to the term expiring?
I probably should have said something about this when looking at the drafts earlier; but it is the discussion that has brought it to some clarity for me. And I am not insisting, merely suggesting (as indeed is all that I can do!)
Electing all officers at the same time reduces a lot of administrative efforts (one election following 6 months after another).
Reducing the time between election and taking office to 6 months would shorten the time the President-Elect can acquaint her or himself to how the Executive Board works. But it is a practical compromise that i would support as well.
I appreciate, Pille, your stressing the need to consider the reality of our society. The existing by-laws were instituted when there were more members. The badly worded proposed by-laws are about four times as long as the existing ones and expand the number of officers we need to have. This strikes me as unrealistic as well.
ranulph,
in personal communication you say that what i was suggesting is already what is practiced. which is fine.
however, what you do is one thing, what is in the revised by-laws is another. by-laws are operating instructions for future officers of the society.
i think any revision of the by-laws applicable to the nominations committee need to make a distinction between
(1) nominations of officers, which the executive board should not be able to veto as only the membership should have that choice. (you may notice that my proposed revisions allow the executive to add names but not subtract any — again on the premise that more choices the more democratic the process)
and
(2) nominations of candidates for special awards, which the membership does not vote on but the executive needs to back up or should have the right to deny. i sent you an example of how another organization, ica, handles this: its nominations committee elicits proposals from anyone plus letters of support (this includes from members of the executive committee), deliberates on their merits, proposes them to the executive committee, which has the choice of vetoing any nomination and otherwise awarding the honor. the ica by-laws do not allow the executive committee to give any awards that are not processed by its nominations committee. these are all well tested procedures.
if you do follow this practice indeed, as you say, then let the by-laws reflect them. in article 9 on voting the proposed by-laws say that the nominations committee reports its recommenbdations to the executive board. in standard english, a recommendation may be accepted or it may not, enabling the executive board to undo the work that the nominations committee has done. in my opinion, this should not be allowed.
you said earlier that the excutive board is elected while the nominations committee is not and therefore cannot speak for the membership. this precisely the reason why one has to grant choices to the membership regarding all elected officers, and grant the executive board the power of vetoing nominations for special honors.
the proposed by-laws fail to differentiate between what i outlined as two very different kinds of nominations (1) and (2).