mmk

Thank you for your response.

I believe our situation is covered by the scenario described immediately above by J. Katz -- and that the amendment was out of order. (To answer a previous question -- a point of order WAS raised about whether the amendment could be considered. The member who proposed it read an opinion from a member who is an attorney that said it was proper, and the chair did not challenge that.) To be specific, this matter pertains to the membership process. Currently, membership can be either single or joint between spouses, with applicants required to meet several criteria such as financial qualification before a vote by the board In the past, if a single member became married or a non-member spouse wanted to become a member, the "new" spouse needed to go through the same process. The proposed change to the bylaw would have allowed the couple to avoid the full process for the new/or newly added spouse. The couple could request spousal membership in writing, undergo a simple review and then go to the board for a vote. The reasoning is that the spouse of a member in good standing is best welcomed rather than subjected to judgement and scrutiny. A member objected to this change; he stated there is nothing special about these spouses and they should undergo the full "investigation" as he termed it. After lengthy discussion, the member's amendment to require the full application process for joining spouses passed on a heavily split vote. My belief is that this was not within scope of what was presented to the full membership -- it is the opposite of what was proposed. Our membership did not have the proper notice for this change to what was distributed to them in advance of the vote.

Thank you for your response. A board committee reviewed the bylaws (as is done about every ten years) to determine whether any articles or sections needed updates/revision. We identified several areas of priority and proceeded to revise them. After full board review, we presented the revisions to the membership for comment, made slight changes based on those comments and then distributed the final proposal to the membership in time for a vote at our annual meeting. We intend to repeat the review and revision process with areas of lesser priority in the coming months. I hope this answers your question fully. Your response above seems to indicate that had we just introduced individual revisions as amendments, we might have been able to reject this member's attempt. However, how does any of this pass muster when we have a standing article that requires 10 days' notice to all members for any change? About 20 percent of the members were not present for the annual meeting and had no advance notice of what this member did.

The board of our organization recently undertook an update/revision of our bylaws. Our bylaws specifically require 10 days' written notice to all members in order to make any change in the bylaws; such changes must be approved at an annual or special meeting and require a two-thirds vote of members present. At our recent annual meeting, a member rose to propose an amendment to a section of the proposed updated bylaws. When he was reminded of the requirement for 10 days' written notice, he produced a written opinion from another member who is an attorney (not present at the meeting) stating that such an amendment was allowed under Robert's Rules. After significant debate, this member succeeded in forcing a vote on his proposed amendment, which passed on a simple majority. Later in the meeting, the updated bylaws, including this amended language, was approved by those present. The amendment had the effect of nullifying the revision of the section in question as proposed in writing to the entire membership - many of whom were not present. My question is whether this amendment should have been considered at all in light of the requirement for 10 days' written notice of any proposed bylaw change; and if not, whether it can be nullified for that reason.