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Permission Required for Bylaws Revision?


jstackpo

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A bylaws committee has been established and asked to prepare bylaw amendments on a number of specific items, AND check over the entire bylaws for other appropriate, advisable, or necessary amendments.

 

The committee gets to work and soon discovers that the bylaws are a mess and really need a whole host of changes, reorganizations, rewordings, &c., not just the specific items requested.

 

Question:  Does the committee have to go back to the assembly and ask permission to present a General Revision (p. 593) of the bylaws, instead of a (large, probably cumbersome) set of specific text amendments?

 

P. 566, lines 23-26 could be read that way, or is that a bit of a stretch?

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If the committee has been tasked to "check over the entire bylaws for other appropriate, advisable, or necessary amendments" I think it's free to propose whatever it wants.

 

And I'm not sure that the committee, or anyone else, "presents" a revision. What's required (to remove the "scope of the notice" restriction)  is notice of a revision. Then it's open season.

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Well, they hadn't adopted RONR so what did they know.

 

Suppose, in my original scenario, I had NOT included the bit about "check[ing] over the entire bylaws for other appropriate....."  but when the committee went to draw up the amendments for the specific items, they still found the bylaws to be a mess and saw that the requested amendments would involve changes all over the place, anyway.

 

Anybody's answers change?

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Suppose, in my original scenario, I had NOT included the bit about "check[ing] over the entire bylaws for other appropriate....."  but when the committee went to draw up the amendments for the specific items, they still found the bylaws to be a mess and saw that the requested amendments would involve changes all over the place, anyway.

 

Anybody's answers change?

 

I don't see anything wrong with the committee reporting that, since the bylaws are a "mess", the best approach would be to give notice of a revision.

 

On the other hand, even if the proposed amendments are extensive, I think I'd rather propose specific changes rather than remove the "scope of the notice" restriction. There's nothing wrong with making (specific) changes "all over the place".

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No, 'course not, except that it can make for an awfully long, and perhaps confusing, meeting.

 

Longer (and more confusing) than a meeting in which everything in the bylaws is open to amendment?

 

The committee could prepare a side-by-side comparison of the existing text and the proposed changes with, perhaps, a third column explaining the reason(s) for the change.

 

Additionally, it's often the case where it makes no sense to amend one article (or part thereof) without simultaneously amending one or more other articles (or parts thereof).

 

I think it makes more sense to hash this all out in the committee (which, after all, is what they were tasked to do), than leave it wide open for the general membership to resolve. 

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These are important practical questions that are contingent on knowing the extensiveness of the amendments and the messiness of the bylaws, but my main interest remains with the "permission" question:  is the committee required to seek permission from the assembly to change what they were requested to do  --  draw up some amendments  --  and instead come back with a General Revision to the bylaws?

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It seems to me that unless the bylaws place restrictions on the consideration of a revision (such as requiring that a revision be authorized by one annual meeting for consideration at the next), the committee is as free to propose a revision as it is to propose a series of specific amendments. This seems especially so when the committee has been directed to "check over the entire bylaws for other appropriate, advisable, or necessary amendments." A revision is, after all, a specific type of amendment; of the entire document rather than specific parts. 

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Without conducting an overview study of the thread at this point, which I forbear to do on account my previous owed $4.50 is still unseen, I'll say I have the impression that some of us have lost sight of the primacy of the imperative of the report "to prepare bylaw amendments on a number of specific items."  I point out that, regardless of whether or not it's OK for the committee to turn up with a proposed revision, the committe better also have, maybe additionally, a report about the bylaw amendments it was charged with.  If that means painting those amendments in Day-Glo (Reg. U.S. Pat. Off) within the revision, fine, but those specific points should be highlighted.

 

It occurs to me that there should be, and probably is, a way to steer between slogging through umpteen individual proposed amendments (to limit possible changes), and the perils of a revision (because of its intrinsically rendering vulnerable the entirety of the bylaws to the whims of whatever idiocracy (neat, huh?  Has anyone thought of it before) shows up for the meeting).  I'm looking at the top of p. 593, and I'm wondering whether there's any reason that proposing a substitute for the bylaws, begiinning to end -- but with the proposed changes, only, up for changing -- would not do the trick.  (But I think maybe no, because of p. 155, lines 13 - 15.)

 

 

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A motion for the adoption of a revision of the bylaws proposes that the revision be adopted as a substitute for the existing bylaws.

 

I was thinking that p. 593, lines 11 - 14, apply to a proposed substitute, protecting everything that was not specified as a change, whereas a proposed revision "will be open to amendment ... fully (l. 21)."  No (and if not, why not?)?

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I was thinking that p. 593, lines 11 - 14, apply to a proposed substitute, protecting everything that was not specified as a change, whereas a proposed revision "will be open to amendment ... fully (l. 21)."  No (and if not, why not?)?

 

Please read the whole paragraph (ISOLATED CHANGES) which includes the sentence on page 693, lines 11-14. Perhaps you'll understand it better.

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