Public Comment for each motion or agenda item only

[aliris]

Our local community council tries to allow the general public to weigh in on issues of importance (and controversy).  We generally follow Rosenberg's rules superseded by Robert's when necessary.

I understand public comment to come after an agenda item is announced and reported on, and clarifications made, but before a motion is moved and seconded.

However what if a motion is amended?  That happens after the original motion is stated, but shouldn't the amendment be subject to the same clarification-public comment preliminary conversation?

I understand public comment is never required under Robert's, but if it is allowed for a motion, shouldn't it be also allowed for an amended (or substituted) motion?

[Hieu H. Huynh]

The answer to your questions would have to be found in your rules.

[jstackpo]

Setting aside Rosenberg (who is he/she? Do you have a bibliographic citation?), RONR's rule is that non-member (or public) comments are entirely under the control of the assembly.  So whatever the members want (2/3 of them in the case of non-members participating in debate -- see page 263, footnote) is allowed.

[Joshua Katz]

7 hours ago, jstackpo said:

Setting aside Rosenberg (who is he/she? Do you have a bibliographic citation?), RONR's rule is that non-member (or public) comments are entirely under the control of the assembly.  So whatever the members want (2/3 of them in the case of non-members participating in debate -- see page 263, footnote) is allowed.

I've seen that rule set before; it's a couple pages long.  I don't recall anything in it about public comment, though.

[Guest Who's Coming to Dinner]

12 hours ago, aliris said:

Our local community council tries to allow the general public to weigh in on issues of importance (and controversy).

Unless mandated by public law, that is a custom rule devised by your council and one which it is free to maintain, amend, or abolish as it sees fit. If you believe the rule is not being properly applied, then raise a point of order.

[Benjamin Geiger]

Quote

The rules of procedure at meetings should be simple enough for most people to understand. Unfortunately, that has not always been the case. Virtually all clubs, associations, boards, councils and bodies follow a set of rules — Robert’s Rules of Order — which are embodied in a small, but complex, book. Virtually no one I know has actually read this book cover to cover. Worse yet, the book was written for another time and for another purpose. If one is chairing or running a parliament, then Robert’s Rules of Order is a dandy and quite useful handbook for procedure in that complex setting. On the other hand, if one is running a meeting of say, a five-member body with a few members of the public in attendance, a simplified version of the rules of parliamentary procedure is in order. Hence, the birth of Rosenberg’s Rules of Order.

The rules can be found here.

EDIT: I just want to be clear that I don't agree with the quoted statement. I included it to illustrate the attitude that seems to inspire the rule set. I should've been clearer about that.

Edited January 7, 2018 at 11:10 PM by Benjamin Geiger

[Benjamin Geiger]

Having read Rosenberg's Rules several times, I still don't see the point, especially now that RONRIB is a thing.

I'm pretty sure RONRIB could be condensed further into something of comparable size, and would still be a better-thought-out system.

[Joshua Katz]

37 minutes ago, Benjamin Geiger said:

Quote

The rules of procedure at meetings should be simple enough for most people to understand. Unfortunately, that has not always been the case. Virtually all clubs, associations, boards, councils and bodies follow a set of rules — Robert’s Rules of Order — which are embodied in a small, but complex, book. Virtually no one I know has actually read this book cover to cover. Worse yet, the book was written for another time and for another purpose. If one is chairing or running a parliament, then Robert’s Rules of Order is a dandy and quite useful handbook for procedure in that complex setting. On the other hand, if one is running a meeting of say, a five-member body with a few members of the public in attendance, a simplified version of the rules of parliamentary procedure is in order. Hence, the birth of Rosenberg’s Rules of Order.

 

Virtually every sentence of this, in my opinion, is wrong.  The biggest issue I take with such efforts is: if a rule is not needed, it's because it won't come up.  So who cares?  Even 5 people, though, can run into a situation where a close, 2-1 vote, would come out differently if all 5 were present, and where the 1 might want some options if the proposed action (such as spending thousands of dollars on gerbil balls) will take place before the next meeting.  It's true it won't need rules for that instance 99% of the time - so what?  

This organization, though, has a further level of confusion - it adopts one of these micro-sized parliamentary guides, and then says it will supplement with RONR as needed.  Who decides when it's needed?  The gerbil-ball loving temporary majority, I assure you, will not think the supplementation needed.  In general, the more complex rules of RONR will be unpopular at precisely the points they are needed.  

In any case, there's only so much you can do, conceptually.  You can assign different trade-off values for stability vs. the freedom to act, the power of the body vs. the power of the chair, the rights of the majority vs. the rights of the minority, etc.  That's about it, really.  But these simplified guides like to pretend they aren't doing these things, just "simplifying."  They aren't, what they are doing is modifying, and by so doing, changing who holds power, in the name of simplicity.  And that's fine, but they should say that's what they're doing, not pretend they're getting the same outcomes (or, as they usually claim, the same outcome as RONR, except for RONR's supposed favoritism towards people who have a clue).

[Joshua Katz]

In any case, my previous tirade has nothing to do with the question.  As to that question, the choice of parliamentary guide, between RONR and Rosenberg's, doesn't make a difference, except that, if it's up to the assembly (that is, not in the bylaws) the way the assembly will decide may differ.

[aliris]

Thanks, everyone, for your responses.  I am not expert of any sort, but I have read all of Rosenberg's (easy) and RONR (not so much) yet couldn't agree more.  I don't see the point of adding a layer of close-but-no-cigar to RONR, never mind RONRIB.

I'm not in charge though.  And I appreciate your insight into the reality-on-the-ground.  I guess I will just keep tucked away under my hat an objection as a point of order in the future should an amendment come up with public comment disallowed on the grounds of fairness, understanding it is the chair's to rule on.  The grounds being that should the amendment appreciably change the motion, then the public if allowed to comment formerly, must be allowed to again.

[Richard Brown]

There are also the simplified "Small Board Rules" in RONR for use by boards of no more than about a dozen members.

I just glanced over "Rosenberg's Rules".  Thank you for the citation.  I had never heard of them.  They are clearly designed for public bodies which must allow public input and are quite simple.  But that very simplicity leads to problems and questions.  I'll use just one example, which happens to be the very first of Rosenberg's "rules" that I looked at, his rule about the agenda.  It says simply that "

Formal meetings normally have a written, often published agenda.

Informal meetings may have only an oral or understood agenda. In

either case, the meeting is governed by the agenda and the agenda

constitutes the body’s agreed-upon roadmap for the meeting.

 

Note that Rosenberg's rule says NOTHING about whether an agenda is actually necessary, who prepares it, how one is adopted, whether (and how) it can be amended, etc.  It just assumes that there is an agenda that somehow magically appears.  That is the sort of detail (or lack of detail) that causes problems in meetings.  RONR covers the issue of agenda quite thoroughly, probably addressing the vast majority of questions that will arise over the adoption and use of an agenda.  RONR adopts devotes pages to the subject.  Rosenberg devotes one paragraph to it.

 

Brevity is nice, but it leaves a lot of questions unanswered!  Thus this query by the original poster!

 

As to the public comment at the meetings of this public body, I suspect very strongly that it is dictated by state law or the council's own rules.  That is usually the case with public bodies. 

Edited January 7, 2018 at 10:43 PM by Richard Brown
Typographical corrections

[Joshua Katz]

1 minute ago, Richard Brown said:

As to the public comment at the meetings of this public body, I suspect very strongly that it is dictated by state law or the council's own rules.  That is usually the case with public bodies. 

And often with non-public bodies.

 

2 minutes ago, Richard Brown said:

They are clearly designed for public bodies which must allow public input and are quite simple. 

Then maybe I'm misremembering.  I was asked to join a group once (ended up not joining) that was using Rosenberg's, and I looked them over for the purpose of making comments on the proposed bylaws.

In any case, I'm not sure what you'd gain by working such provisions into a parliamentary manual, given that, in general, sunshine laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and will govern in such cases.

[aliris]

6 minutes ago, Richard Brown said:

Note that Rosenberg's rule says NOTHING about whether an agenda is actually necessary, who prepares it, how one is adopted, whether (and how) it can be amended, etc.  It just assumes that there is an agenda that somehow magically appears.  That is the sort of detail (or lack of detail) that causes problems in meetings.  RONR covers the issue of agenda quite thoroughly, probably addressing the vast majority of questions that will arise over the adoption and use of an agenda.  RONR adopts pages to the subject.  Rosenberg devotes one paragraph to it.

Yes, precisely.  I had to start digging around for the definition of "agenda item" and I don't even know if/when I'm allowed to resort to RONR definitions.  Doing things half-way almost always winds up just being more time-consuming, frustrating, spirit-quenching, cynicism-driving .... all the things one doesn't want in bootstrapping public governmental participation.  Frustrating.

[Guest Who's Coming to Dinner]

11 minutes ago, Richard Brown said:

Note that Rosenberg's rule says NOTHING about whether an agenda is actually necessary, who prepares it, how one is adopted, whether (and how) it can be amended, etc.  It just assumes that there is an agenda that somehow magically appears. 

Even worse, it says that the agenda controls the meeting even when it is "understood" (presumably by telepathy). This is a recipe for the despotism.

[Josh Martin]

21 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

I just glanced over "Rosenberg's Rules".  Thank you for the citation.  I had never heard of them.  They are clearly designed for public bodies which must allow public input and are quite simple.  But that very simplicity leads to problems and questions.

Having read these rules, many of the other alternate parliamentary authorities or third-party knockoffs of Robert’s Rules that I have seen don’t seem so bad in comparison.

21 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

But that very simplicity leads to problems and questions.  I'll use just one example, which happens to be the very first of Rosenberg's "rules" that I looked at, his rule about the agenda.  It says simply that "

Formal meetings normally have a written, often published agenda.

Informal meetings may have only an oral or understood agenda. In

either case, the meeting is governed by the agenda and the agenda

constitutes the body’s agreed-upon roadmap for the meeting.

Oh, but this really is not so bad in comparison to its treatment of the motion to Amend.

“If a member wants to change a basic motion that is before the body, they would move to amend it. A motion to amend might be: “I move that we amend the motion to have a 10-member committee.” A motion to amend takes the basic motion that is before the body and seeks to change it in some way.”

Apparently, these three sentences are supposed to cover all of the rules for the motion to Amend (except for a motion to Amend by substitution, which is a separate motion for some reason, and friendly amendments, which are a real thing in these rules).

Edited January 8, 2018 at 08:09 PM by Josh Martin

[J. J.]

On 1/7/2018 at 5:14 PM, Benjamin Geiger said:

Having read Rosenberg's Rules several times, I still don't see the point, especially now that RONRIB is a thing.

I'm pretty sure RONRIB could be condensed further into something of comparable size, and would still be a better-thought-out system.

I'm not certain why he would thing 2011 is a particularly "different time," since it is the same year the 11th edtion of RONR was published. 

I noted contradictory definitions of votes, plus a lot of gray areas. 

[Benjamin Geiger]

5 hours ago, J. J. said:

I'm not certain why he would thing 2011 is a particularly "different time," since it is the same year the 11th edtion of RONR was published.

Because obviously nothing has changed since 1876, and absolutely nothing has been modified since Gen. Robert wrote the first edition. Obviously.

[Benjamin Geiger]

7 hours ago, Josh Martin said:

Having read these rules, many of the other alternate parliamentary authorities or third-party knockoffs of Robert’s Rules that I have seen don’t seem so bad in comparison.

At least most of the third-party knockoffs have the advantage of being based on the first edition of Robert's Rules, instead of being pulled entirely from one person's hind orifice.

[aliris]

lol y'all are helping me to feel better.  I'm a rank novice but from my POV it's quite difficult to get going with any real speed on parliamentary rules when it's watered to the point of unhelpfulness by Rosenberg, as pointed out.  The time spent scratching one's head trying to figure out the baby-version winds up being longer than it would just have been to figure out the real-deal.

Unfortunately, Los Angeles' grand experiment in populist democracy, its huge Neighborhood Council (NC) system, is encouraging this practice wholesale among its 97 I think the number is now up to, NCs.  Here:  http://empowerla.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Rules-Standards-and-Best-Practices-final_0925122.pdf

My own NC has changed its bylaws with every new chair to reflect RONR, then Rosenberg, then back again -- we've been through probably 6 iterations of this.  More time-wasting better spent just getting it right once IMHO.

Learning it the right way may be hard but at least its proscribed.  All the fuzzy edges are ironically, hardest to deal with when you know the least.

[Guest Who's Coming to Dinner]

Did you mean "prescribed"?

If people took the time they spend complaining about the rules of order to learn them instead, they'd be much farther ahead.

[jstackpo]

Get copies of

RONRIB:

"Roberts Rules of Order Newly Revised In Brief", Updated Second Edition (Da Capo Press, Perseus Books Group, 2011). It is a splendid summary of all the rules you will ever need in all but the most exceptional situations. And only $7.50! You can read it in an evening. Get both RONRIB and RONR (scroll down) at this link:

http://www.robertsrules.com/inbrief.html

Or in your local bookstore.

It might be just what the parliamentarian ordered.

and give them to the Chair and other officers of your NC as, say ,Valentines Day gifts.

[aliris]

20 hours ago, Guest Who's Coming to Dinner said:

Did you mean "prescribed"?

If people took the time they spend complaining about the rules of order to learn them instead, they'd be much farther ahead.

lol yep

[aliris]

20 hours ago, jstackpo said:

Get copies of

RONRIB:

"Roberts Rules of Order Newly Revised In Brief", Updated Second Edition (Da Capo Press, Perseus Books Group, 2011). It is a splendid summary of all the rules you will ever need in all but the most exceptional situations. And only $7.50! You can read it in an evening. Get both RONRIB and RONR (scroll down) at this link:

http://www.robertsrules.com/inbrief.html

Or in your local bookstore.

It might be just what the parliamentarian ordered.

and give them to the Chair and other officers of your NC as, say ,Valentines Day gifts.

well, yeah.  But the size of various NCs is different, one near is us is over 200 ppl I'm told (that sounds wrong though; hard to imagine how that could work).  Ours is 13.  Let's say just 10 on average, that's 10^3 members. 

More to the point it would be construed as pretty hostile (I really don't know why but it is). So .... life's long, I'll just learn what I can for the future.  But my point is that this comparatively inconsequential watered-down copy has strong institutional support, giving it an instant advantage (immediately lost by its poor quality).  Thanks.

[jstackpo]

OK, not much more can be done...  but I am reserving an "I told you so!" or two for future use.