Joshua Katz

I don't really follow, but I think you're asking if items can be arranged on an agenda in an order other than that of the standard order of business. An agenda need not follow the standard order of business.

It would seem odd to postpone all motions after deciding not to postpone one. But hey, people do what they do. Well, I'm not sure what purview means here. RONR doesn't have rules about what's in your bylaws (but it has suggestions) because your bylaws outrank it.

Well, it's clearly compatible in a trivial sense, since RONR provides that bylaws govern when they conflict with RONR. It's not clear to me that the proposed bylaw would apply to practically all motions made at regular meetings. Many motions, perhaps, adopt or change a standing rule, but most seems too strong to me. As to what I think of it, personally, I think that RONR reflects hundreds of years of wisdom, and has designed rules such that certain motions require notice, others do not but have their thresholds modified by notice, and yet others are not impacted by notice. It then contains yet more rules for dealing with temporary majorities. I think the collected wisdom of the authors over time is generally best, for most organizations, and superior to making it up yourself. But some organizations do have special needs. Notice requirements are, to some extent, an attempt to strike a balance between the rights of absentees and the right of the gathered assembly to act. This proposed bylaw leans very heavily towards the absentees. There might be some special reason to do so, but in general, one thing to note about absentees is that they could have shown up.

So far as RONR is concerned, organizations which meet as often as quarterly should not use agendas. Nonetheless, they still might, and it appears this one (regardless of how often it meets) does. An agenda, though, is adopted at the meeting, not before (it cannot be adopted before, because its adoption is an item of business, and business is only conducted at meetings, unless your bylaws provide for other means). So, no, it is not the case that all items should be listed prior to the meeting. Rather, at the meeting, the body will take up the question of adopting the proposed agenda, at which time it may be amended prior to adoption. After adoption, it may be amended by the motion to amend something previously adopted, and items of business may be taken up via a motion to suspend the rules. However, as noted, all of that is so far as RONR is concerned. If you have relevant rules and/or applicable procedural statutes, they will take precedence.

Or the organization's stock holdings could issue a dividend. Point being, to be clear, even if none of those things happened in debate, there's nothing inherently out of order, in my opinion, about adopting the motion. We do not know what the future holds. Think of the consequences if such a motion were out of order. Suppose there is $100 in the bank, and I make a motion to spend $70. In order, right? But how can we know that, before the expenditure, the organization won't be assessed a $40 fine? Exactly. In these days of overdraft protection, it isn't even the case that paying more than is in the account is necessarily impossible or illegal anyway.

Sure, but the comment here was about the bank balance, which is something that can change from day to day. Maybe I confused the issue by introducing budgets, but my point was that I don't see any reason it's out of order to plan to spend more than you have, so I don't see why a motion to actually do it is out of order, either.

Why would that be out of order as opposed to, say, just a bad idea? Would it be out of order to adopt a deficit budget?

Mr. Kapur's point sounds right to me. Absent other rules, why does a motion to spend x on y contradict a later-adopted motion to spend more? I could see it if it were done in the other temporal direction.

I guess I'm confused about your confusion. It looks straightforward to me - the board adopts a motion saying "we think it would be good to amend the bylaws in this fashion, and ask the bylaw committee to take a look." The committee then takes a look, and makes a recommendation to the membership, which has the power to amend the bylaws.

This is not true, unless everyone comes to every meeting, and no one but you ever abstains. On a voice vote, the minutes should simply reflect if the motion was adopted or not. No tally should be included. Even if rising, how an individual voted should not be included; that's only included when voting by roll call.

Debate on this motion should follow the rules of debate as they would be applied to an original main motion. The topic of debate will be the wisdom, or not, of adopting the change to the bylaws, so discussion of other bylaw provisions will be out of order (except as they relate to this question), etc.

Well, I said main motion, not original main motion ;-). So far as I know, there was no main motion which the assembly referred to the committee. The board, it is true, is an assembly, but not the assembly (from what I understand) which is currently considering the recommendation. But it is a form of the motion to amend something previously adopted (the bylaws) which is an incidental main motion. It remains debatable, which I think was your actual question.

Not only can they revisit part of it by the motion to amend something previously adopted, they could have amended your motion while it was pending, or moved to divide the question while it was pending. You can make a motion with two parts, but you can't force the board, unless it agrees to be forced, to face such a motion as a binary choice.

I'm not sure if I follow your question entirely, but a motion to amend the bylaws is a special form of the motion to amend something previously adopted. It is a main motion, and is debatable.

The one who votes against the motion in order to move its reconsideration should not be the parliamentarian, who should not vote at all. And should be impartial.