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Bylaw amendment process


Guest Gary Schepp

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We have the following in our Bylaws:

 

The By Law will be read at E-Board (no vote) and read and voted on at the second Membership meeting following the submission of the By Law. It must pass by a 2/3 majority.

 

 

The process is a member can submit an amendment to the bylaw which is read at the first meeting with no vote taken. It is then posted prior to the meeting. At the second meeting the bylaw is read again. In the specific incident the bylaw when submitted was also signed by two members.

 

After the 2nd reading a member of the Bylaws committee makes a recommendation and then makes a motion.

 

Is the submission and reading of the bylaw amendment considered a motion?

 

Can the Bylaws committee person make their motion?

 

Can the vote on the bylaw amendment be postponed until a later date when the current bylaw states it will be read and voted on at the 2nd reading?

 

 

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Assuming that the procedure you outlined is exactly what your bylaws says, the questions you raise are matters of bylaws interpretation, which your society is responsible for.  Your rules appear to vary significantly from RONR, so the rules there won't help that much.

 

If I were to try to hew as closely to the RONR rules as possible in framing what you describe as your procedure, I'd guess that the "first reading" actually is a motion, but with a mandatory referral to the bylaws committee at the close of discussion.  

 

At the next meeting, the Bylaws committee reports its recommendation(s) if any.  No motion is required on the part of the bylaws committee unless it is proposing changes, which would be moved as an amendment to the pending question on amending the bylaws.

 

The (bylaws?) requirement that the vote must be taken at the second meeting seems to me to be in the nature of a rule of order and therefore suspendible.  It would be in order to move to Suspend the Rules and Postpone the question until the meeting of <date>, as long as it was within a quarterly interval, and no later than the next regular meeting.  A 2/3 vote would be required to do so.  

 

It might be simpler to move to Suspend the Rules and Recommit the question to the Bylaws committee, with instructions to report back on <date>.

 

But note carefully that what you are delaying is not only the vote but the entire question.  When it is taken up again, it will be in the same condition as you left it, and will still be open to further discussion and change before the final vote.

 

Not having read your bylaws, I can't say whether any of this conflicts with them.  If so, your bylaws (which you must interpret) prevail.

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Thanks for the response. For a bit of clarification, the bylaws committee made a motion to recommit the bylaw amendment motion until the next mtg. Is the bylaws committee motion out of order because there was a previous motion on the floor in the form of the amendment motion? Or is the bylaws committee motion a secondary motion?

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A motion to (re)commit was proper - it is a subsidiary motion.  The fact that it was a "re-" doesn't matter.

 

And to be very precise, the motion shouldn't have been to "recommit to the next meeting", but "(re)commit with instructions to report back at the next meeting".   Same effect; the "precise" way makes it clear that you weren't (just) postponing the consideration but authorizing a committee to give the motion some more thought and perhaps recommend something.

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We have the following in our Bylaws:

 

"The By Law will be read at E-Board (no vote) and read and voted on at the second Membership meeting following the submission of the By Law. It must pass by a 2/3 majority."

 

I sincerely hope (and, in fact, assume) that that is not an exact quote from your bylaws.

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Edgar, that is the exact language of that section in the bylaw.

 

Well, that's unfortunate.

 

For one thing, when your bylaws say, "The By Law will be read at E-Board (no vote)", I assume what's meant is that the proposed amendment to the bylaws will be read at a meeting of the executive board without the possibility of a vote".

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