Committee and Non-Committee/General Public

[Guest Officer]

We are a membership group which requires public noticing of all meetings, per our Bylaws. Our Bylaws allows our Chair to create Committees and appoint people to them as needed. Our new Chair has recently appointed a Committee. All meeting notices of the Committee have been sent both to our membership and the general public. One of our more "vocal" members has contended that they must be allowed to participate although they were not appointed to the Committee. Another, non-member, who is associated with the "vocal" member, has contended that they must be allowed to participate.

We've allowed everyone to listen to the Committee's deliberations and even taken some comments from non-Committee members but we have not allowed those not appointed to vote or be the primary participants.

I wanted to clarify that we are compliant in our actions and if you could point to any specific citations that help us in either supporting this compliance or assuring we are compliant going forward I would appreciate it.

[Hieu H. Huynh]

In RONR, nonmembers of the body that is meeting have no rights at those meetings. Since your rules provide otherwise, it is ultimately up to your organization to interpret those rules.

[Guest]

Thank you Hieu. Can you give me a citation?

[Hieu H. Huynh]

See "Public Session" in RONR 11th ed., pp. 96-97.

[Richard Brown]

You seem to have some customized rules about meeting notices.  Any such rules would trump what is in RONR.  As Hieu pointed out, RONR provides that only members of the body that is meeting (i.e. the members of the committee) have a right to be sent notices of a meeting or to participate or even to attend.  The committee (or the parent assembly) can allow non members to attend and can allow them to be heard, and, by a two thirds vote can allow them to participate in debate, but non members cannot be given the right to vote. 

[Guest]

The only thing that is customized is that we must notice the general public. Other than not, nothings is stated nor is any time period for noticing. I'm not sure what the later means for any minimum noticing period.

[Gary Novosielski]

On 5/12/2016 at 1:47 PM, Guest said:

The only thing that is customized is that we must notice the general public. Other than not, nothings is stated nor is any time period for noticing. I'm not sure what the later means for any minimum noticing period.

If there are public laws ("sunshine" laws) that require public notice of meetings, that's a rule that would supersede RONR.  

But a requirement for public notice does not necessarily imply that the public is allowed to participate in, or even attend, those meetings.  Nor would such a requirement necessarily apply to the meetings of committees or subcommittees of the main body.  The devil is in the details of how the law is worded, and not something that could be answered by looking in RONR.