Shmuel Gerber

I don't know what you mean by "to vote yea/nay on the list of names, as part of the motion to commit." When a motion to Commit names the persons to be appointed to a special committee, members may offer different names, which should be treated as nominations in an election (see RONR, p. 496, ll. 18-25). Once this "election" part is completed, there is still the question on the motion to Commit itself. All of this seems to have been handled correctly, except for the parts where the chair did not permit any debate. Also, assuming that the motion specified that the committee would consist of 10 persons, the procedure of nominating a person to remove for each person to be added is a legitimate one, although the chair does not himself have the authority to require this procedure in lieu of the ordinary nomination & election process.

I agree; that situation is possible. But, by the same token, if a majority voted to amend the proposed rules, presumably they did not wish to adopt them in the original form, in which case the original motion may also lack the support needed for a two-thirds vote.

Obviously because the members of the Executive Committee are Very Important People with busy schedules and need more notice than the members of the proletariat.

You seem to be assuming that the content of the recording becomes the personal property of the secretary merely because the recording device it was made on is the personal property of the secretary. I think there is a legal question as to whether that assumption is valid. And obviously she is using it for her own convenience in carrying out the duties of the office, not her own personal convenience in general.

It seems to me that this entire exercise was in the nature of a motion to appoint a committee that the assembly had not previously decided to create -- i.e., it was a main motion to Commit. Therefore, after nominations are closed (and if there were any nominations, after the assembly has determined who the members of the committee would be), the motion itself should be debatable, independently of any debate on the nominations (i.e., the question of which names shall be included in the motion).

It might get you further if you didn't keep misspelling "premier".

That hasn't stopped anyone from trying, though.

But what about the amount that was previously set? It's not clear that you are talking about a board that has done things a certain way from the beginning. If, as you previously assumed, there was already a permanent dues policy in effect, then wouldn't that policy remain in effect until rescinded? I don't see how adopting a motion "that the dues for the following year will be X Dollars" will be sufficient to allow a majority-vote motion to set dues in subsequent years, unless the previous policy is also fully rescinded, rather than just being amended with respect to the upcoming year.

Considering his lack of professionalism, this secretary, Pro Tim, is inaptly named, isn't he.

If it's you going on vacation, how is it that I'm the one paddling a rowboat?

I am struggling to find the help (or the conveyance of any idea at all) in this "help". Please help.

I am struggling to find the relevance of this anecdote to this topic. Please help.

If this type of rule isn't a qualification for office, I don't know what is. And I don't know if you are using the term "attendant circumstance" correctly from a legal standpoint, but I think maybe your legal studies have begun to muddle some of your thought processes in the present matter.

Hieu didn't say the organization doesn't exist; he asked how there is an organization if there are no bylaws.

Well, they probably can't ban you from becoming a member, except by amending the bylaws.

This is puzzling on several levels. First, in the situation presented in this topic, there is a professional parliamentarian (presumably you) available and present, so why mention that the organization might find it hard to follow RONR without one? And as the professional parliamentarian, you ought to be persuading them what a terrible idea it is to be operating without an adopted parliamentary authority. Second, if you honestly believe that some other parliamentary authority will provide a better system for conducting the meeting (presumably because it has a smaller page count), then feel free to recommend its adoption -- but don't come to the RONR Forum to ask questions that may arise, unless for the sole purpose of belatedly acknowledging the superiority of RONR. Third, you have not given any plausible rationale for how specifying that RONR will be a "guide and resource" is better than simply adopting it. Members who want to make trouble can still try to misapply the "guidance" rules based on what they think RONR says, on what they would like it to say, or on what it actually does say. Yet members who are faithfully trying to protect their own rights or the rights of others will have no way of doing so, since the chair can simply choose to follow or ignore any provision on a whim, and that will not violate any rule (or so you seem to be saying). So the assembly gets the worst of both worlds -- the chair and the members are supposed to be acquainted with all of RONR for "guidance", yet they have no ability to rely on any part of it, or on the overall balance of rights that it provides, to actually ensure order and protect their rights at the meeting. If the members really believe that there is a greater potential for misapplying procedural rules because RONR is adopted, then they can adopt a rule such as the following: "In order to appeal from any decision of the chair, the member seeking to make the appeal must cite the location of the specific text of the rule, or a specific precedential instance of an established custom or an earlier decision, that the decision of the chair conflicts with."

You say that "all past practice" is that the Board Chair also chairs the annual meeting, so it seems to me that he or she is the regular presiding officer, and therefore a two-thirds vote will be required for the parliamentarian to preside, unless the Chair and Vice-Chair agree. But if you think there is a question about this, why not recommend that the assembly adopt a rule regarding the selection of a chairman, as part of the initially adopted rules package?

I'm surprised that news even made it to your part of the country. Is the opening of every little $4.4 billion project in New York national news these days? (I guess Donald Trump has been too slow with the tweets lately, so the newspapers have to fill their pages with trivial stuff.)

Do you think that the rule on page 251, part (a), would be wrong if the footnote were simply omitted altogether?

Well, you can still raise a point of order about a continuing breach at any time. You just can't raise a point of order about a formerly continuing breach.

Well, it's good to know there's at least one correct statement on this subject in the book. But what about the rule on page 252, lines 20-27? "If one or more members have been denied the right to vote, or the right to attend all or part of a meeting during which a vote was taken, it is never too late to raise a point of order concerning the action taken in denying the basic rights of the individual members …" (Cf. Official Interpretation 2006-6.) That seems to suggest that a point of order can be raised long after the breach has any continuing effect.

I certainly appreciate the desire for precision in this matter (and all others), and I agree there's no particular reason to say that there are cases in which a point of order "doesn't need to be timely" or "must be timely" when there are more specific ways of saying what is intended. However, I don't think this is an issue worthy of admonishment. If it is never too late to raise a point of order, then it is hardly worth emphasizing that such a point of order is being made in a "timely" fashion, since there is no time limitation attached to it at all. There is an obvious distinction between cases where there is a time limitation and ones where there isn't, and I don't think that calling the former requirement "timeliness" will lead anyone to a wrong conclusion.

(P.S.: And I ain't sharing mine with you, either, so don't even try askin'.)

You're just jealous that he hasn't shared his college degree with you, so now you have to think for yourself in order to be taken seriously.

Yes, this "mistake" is so common that RONR itself makes it. :-) How else do you explain the wording in the footnote on page 251 and on page 445, lines 8-17?