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Committee Approving Minutes


jstackpo

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If a committee is established and appointed to "Approve the Annual Meeting minutes" (so to avoid waiting until next year), does that phrasing include the authority to make amendments to the Secretary's draft that the committee is tasked to "approve"?

 

Or does the committee have to be given explicit authority to "Correct (as necessary) and approve Annual Meeting minutes"?

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If a committee is established and appointed to "Approve the Annual Meeting minutes" (so to avoid waiting until next year), does that phrasing include the authority to make amendments to the Secretary's draft that the committee is tasked to "approve"?

 

Or does the committee have to be given explicit authority to "Correct (as necessary) and approve Annual Meeting minutes"?

 

In my view, the assembly has delegated the entire approval process as spelled out in RONR to the committee.  As always, further corrections can be made by the assembly via a motion to amend something previously adopted.

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 [...] does that phrasing include the authority to make amendments to the Secretary's draft that the committee is tasked to "approve"?

 

Do you mean,

a committee appointed to approve minutes between annual meetings

would be limited to saying,

"No, unapproved!", and stop there?

(Or, by saying, "Yes, approved," and leave everything in the minutes untouched.)

 

Wouldn't that limitation defeat the intent of the original authorization?

What is the alternative, if no amendng were to be allowed in the act of authorizing the approval of minutes?

Wouldn't next year's convention be surprised, when its commitee could not approve the minutes (due to inaccuracy or incompleteness), and could not amend the minutes, so that the burden of that chore returns to the convention floor to do the necessary amending?

 

***

Like Sherlock Homes said,

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

 

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When RONR says (on pp. 474-475) that "... the executive board or a committee appointed for the purpose should be authorized to approve the minutes" it means authorized to correct, if necessary, and approve the minutes. On page 475, lines 4-5, RONR refers to the fact that this authorization will not prevent the assembly from making "additional" corrections. RONR, more than once, uses the phrase "approval of the minutes" to encompass the entire process of correction and approval.

 

What any particular assembly may mean when it adopts a resolution authorizing a committee to approve its minutes is up to it to decide, although, if it has adopted RONR as its parliamentary authority, there shouldn't be much doubt about it.

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