Phil D

That is an interesting order of operations. RONR focuses on the rules for the decisionmaking meetings of deliberative assemblies. A purely informational meeting reporting the outcome of another meeting is not really covered in RONR any more than the conduct of a movie night would be. So in that case it’s not clear to me that anyone is required to open the floor for questions in this info session.

Assuming RONR is the controlling parliamentary authority, most motions require only a majority of those present and voting to pass. Abstention is not a vote.

A Request for Information can be raised even when another has the floor if it requires immediate attention, and does not require a second. Absent a provision of the bylaws or relevant procedural law to the contrary, members have an individual right to debate. So if the presentation of the budget amounts to a presentation of a main motion, a member of the assembly should be able to take the floor and debate the proposal.

Yes as a practical matter the meeting is over once folks have packed up, gone home, and start posting parliamentary questions to online fora, regardless of whether the magic words “meeting adjourned” were spoken or arrived at through the correct procedure. The chair effectively “gaveled through” a motion to adjourn. It’s a bit beyond the scope of RONR to tell you what to do in an acute situation like that where the rules are being blatantly disregarded as described, they generally presume the chair and the overwhelming majority of the assembly will respect the rules and the will of the assembly. You and other members may wish to figure out how to replace the chair with one who will follow the rules.

Was a point of order timely raised? If not, then the improper adjournment stands.

Doesn’t 25:13 apply to prevent the temporary majority from nullifying the effect of reconsidering and entering on the minutes? “Rules that have their application outside of the session which is in progress cannot be suspended.”

Your bylaws contain the rule, hopefully they also contain the disciplinary process. We are not really going to be the authority on how your organization’s bylaws get interpreted. It would seem to me that a candidate for membership to the Freemasons or whatever secret society you are part of is inherently authorized to receive information about the status of his candidature. Query whether you are in violation of the same rule by describing something that happened during a members only meeting of your secret society. Are we authorized to receive this information?

I think it's news to everyone here that your bylaws prohibit sharing "any of the work of this order" to a person not authorized to receive it.

To allow members deliberate and vote without interference from non-members.

Yes, that's the rule I am thinking about. In a sense, the proposed committee is less a committee in the usual sense and more of a roster of people who are encouraged to promote local, informal social events among members.

'A member has reached out about establishing a "Social and Outreach Committee" for our organization. One major idea for this Committee is that members would be in charge of setting up small social events to drive meeting participation. For instance, those members would be encouraged to host a happy hour or similar gathering right before our (virtual) general membership meetings. The scope of such social events being suggested here informally would not entail any collectively obtained funds (of which there are none anyway). Does such activity require the Committee to have "power to act," or constitute a committee which has power to act on behalf of the assembly, or otherwise require a supermajority to create. Or is there some way the member could formulate a proposal to achieve this goal without requiring supermajority approval?

Regarding the impact of state statutes or relevant labor law, I did inquire of our parent organization's general counsel and peruse the statutes myself. I don't think there's anything compelling us to disclose the full membership list merely because a member asks. I agree that this is an important interest. For many assemblies that depend on RONR, there's probably not a major countervailing interest. For us, though, there are worries about retaliation against members. Giving out a list of members merely because a member asks for it creates the possibility of that list being published more broadly. I seem to recall that RONR refers, at least in passing, to the practices of "secret societies" in some section or other, suggesting that the use of RONR by secret societies is contemplated. I have to imagine that secret societies aren't readily publishing their member lists to the rank-and-file. A union is not exactly a secret society, of course, but it's perhaps a little more concerned about protecting the privacy of members than some other organizations.

I appreciate the direction to citations. Helpful. I incline in the opposite direction since those sections do not explicitly reference certain specific records by type (bylaws, RoO, standing rules, minutes, and committee reports) but not the membership rolls themselves. I had not thought to look through statutes on non-profits as potentially responsive to the issue. I’ll look into that. I’ll concede some bias on the point since, to the extent we have discretion, the member-elected government wants to deny the request. And there are some concerns around maintaining the secrecy of members (or at least not collating them into a readily reproducible list), as members may worry about retaliation from management where other deliberative bodies probably don’t have similar concerns. That of course wouldn’t alter the content of RONR or relevant statutes, but just to provide some perspective as to why we would decline if we have discretions

A rank-and-file member has asked to see a list of all members of our organization (a union chapter). Presume bylaws and constitution are silent on the issue. Relevant procedural law requires that candidates for officer positions have equal access to members for purposes of campaigning, but our parent organization has largely taken to relaying campaign materials to members, rather than disclosing the membership list to candidates. In any event, the member making the request here is not seeking such a position. Does any particular provision of RONR require disclosure of the full membership rolls to any individual member upon request?

RONR does not tell you whether a person who has the privilege of debate, but who cannot vote, is allowed to move a motion. That is because RONR 1.4 defines a member as a person who has the full ability to participate in the proceedings of the deliberative assembly. A member is a person who has the four basic rights: to attend, to make motions, to debate, and to vote. The rights are freestanding. The right to make a motion is not inherent to the right to vote or to the right to debate. 1.4 goes on to acknowledge that "Some organized societies define additional classes of 'membership' that do not entail all of these rights." At the risk of impertinently relying on your paraphrasing of the bylaws, rather than their actual text, I tend to say that your limited members don't get to raise motions, because that right has not been conferred on them by the bylaws in your summation. However, it sounds like there's a bit of sloppy drafting in the bylaws that creates an ambiguity. The bylaws don't say that full members can raise motions. Thus, either they have that right despite the silence of the bylaws or they don't have that right and you have created a deliberative assembly that cannot actually raise any motions. The former invites questions about whether the limited members have the same unspoken rights, as you are well aware. The latter seems patently absurd, but bylaws need conform to neither reason nor RONR.

Fundamentally, the minutes act as a record of what the deliberative assembly did. In other words, it helps keep track of what decisions were made so that later on the assembly can make sure those decisions are executed. They also act to keep a procedural record sometimes, when it matters to keep track of unfinished business. 48:5, 1 states that the name of the mover “should” be included in the minutes. Should is not must. To be honest, I don’t 100% understand the importance of noting who raised a motion every time (though perhaps other parliamentarians will chime in with their understanding of the background of that prescription). The failure to include the mover is contrary to RONR’s very strong recommendation, but does not seem fatal to the objective of the minutes otherwise. All of which is to say that your proposed “The Board agreed to [x]” is not 100% correct as far as RONR goes but if it captures what your Board decided such that interested parties could figure it out later on, it’s probably good enough.

I don’t think you need to include a reference to unanimous consent at all, unless some superseding rule or affirmative directive of the assembly requires it. Section 48 covers minutes. Generally, only the adoption or rejection of a motion in its final form needs to be recorded, not the threshold required or mode of voting. Only 48:5, 2 prescribes inclusion of details of voting in the minutes, and there only for votes in which an actual tally of votes was ordered: a counted vote, ballot vote, or roll-call vote. Unanimous consent is not one of the circumstances. That said, bylaws might direct the secretary to include such information. Or the assembly could vote for it to be included. If that were the case, I would use: “The motion by [mover], that the Society [take some action] was adopted by unanimous consent.”

I am a relatively vulgar practitioner of RONR, so you should take my thoughts with a grain of salt. Let us proceed from some basics. Any member may raise a motion proposing the sacred, almighty Assembly take some action. A member may raise a motion even if it is beyond the Assembly's established scope, if membership authorizes introduction of the motion by a 2/3 majority. Normally a motion requires a second. However, when a member of a committee makes a motion on behalf of a committee, the requirement of a second is waived. I have not found a citation from RONR that strips the committee of this privilege merely because it has exceeded its scope, or even the scope of the broader organization. Nor do I think 39:5's nullification of actions in contravention of the bylaws or procedural laws removes that privilege. I tend to think your committee did exceed its scope. The motion raised is not really related to Lawn Bowling. Another red flag for me is that they are asking another committee be appointed to do something. While I can't lay hands on the citation, I had been under the impression that it was out of order to form an Ad Hoc Committee to do something that is within the purview of a Standing Committee. In other words, if it's within the Lawn Bowling Committee's purview to gather the information they want gathered, then they cannot ask an Ad Hoc Committee to do it for them. If they could ask for an Ad Hoc Committee to do that thing, it would be outside their purview. Could be wrong. That's just what I had thought. However, the general power of members to raise a motion seems like it should have given you some ability to get your motion heard, even if not with the imprimatur of the Lawn Bowling Committee.

Abstainers can’t be complainers. Generally a 2/3 majority means 2/3 present and voting. So in an Assembly of 100 people, 2 Ayes, 1 No, and 97 abstentions is a 2/3 majority.

Roberts only really recognizes two statuses, member and non-member. There is also the notion of a “member in good standing,” which is generally a member whose privileges have not been revoked by disciplinary proceedings. Roberts also does not require members to attend meetings, and has a class of rules meant to protect absentees (like quorum and previous notice requirements). Orgs are free to write their bylaws and create whatever “diet membership” statuses they like. “Inactive member” and “new members” are creatures of your org’s bylaws. If there is not a clear process or definition for how a member in good standing becomes an inactive member though, then as far as RONR is concerned they are still a member in good standing with all then fundamental rights of membership. I get why the situation seems icky, but as Mr Honemann more succinctly put it, the Rules will not help you here.

Yes our bylaws are in need of some revision. They are about 95% good but leave a few loose ends for some rare but possible circumstances like this one. We are newly organized and are working on it. Lots are the tiebreaker in our other elections as required by our parent organization’s constitution and board policy—but those rules only apply to the election of our officers and delegates to the parent org. Can’t say I love it as a tie-breaking method but I suppose there is no easy alternative.

This is a potential problem that hopefully will remain merely potential. I preside over a union chapter. Our meetings are subject to RONR. Unless otherwise noted, you can assume that the various procedural authorities that would supersede RONR have nothing relevant to say. A small subsection of the chapter is having an election for their representative on a standing committee. The subsection is small enough that a tie vote is a live possibility. RONR contemplates repeat balloting until someone gets a majority. However, RONR also contemplates that we are conducting the balloting during a meeting. Rather, the vote will occur outside of a meeting, consistent with a resolution adopted by membership at our last meeting. So the question is what the practicalities are of setting those tiebreaker votes. It seems as though conducting the tiebreakers is inherent in setting a ballot election in the first place. Any guidance either from RONR or general experience on doing such a thing in a way that is fair and consistent with the rules?

Is there a mechanism to combine motions other than the motion to amend? Section 27 tells you how to split up a motion that contains separate questions, but I don't see a parliamentary mechanism for putting Humpty-Dumpty together again. I might ask Laser to explain a bit more about the parliamentary situation. What has happened to the Appropriation Motion at the point where discussion has turned over to the Bond Motion? Because if you are following RONR, then the Appropriation Motion should be disposed of, at least temporarily (i.e. committed, postponed, or tabled), before you turn over to the Bond Motion. Your Assembly could accomplish something similar either by presenting the motions in combination in the first place, or by amending the Appropriation Motion to in essence incorporate the Bond Motion. I note that the Motion to Amend contemplates that an amendment could change the vote threshold required to prevail: "Requires a majority vote, regardless of the vote required to adopt the question to be amended. This is true even in cases where adoption of the amendment would result in changing the vote required to adopt the question being amended, as from a two-thirds vote to a majority vote or vice versa." (12:7, par. 7). The higher threshold would prevail. Note however that such an amendment would not be in order if both these motions are already pending in some form. I would join Dr. Kapur's question as well. If you've got some alternative form of meeting an authorized appropriation, then the Appropriation and the Bond Issue can stand as separate questions (though I think that one is "germane" to the other such that you could raise a motion dealing with both issues or amend the Appropriation motion to authorize the bond). However, if these are really integrally connected in the way that, say, "buying a $5 coffee" and "paying the cashier $5 for a coffee" are connected, then they probably shouldn't be separate questions in the first place.

RONR allows it. Your bylaws and statutes may differ.

Unless your bylaws or some other superior rule of order say differently... No, a heated discussion is not a basis to adjourn a meeting by the chair without a vote. RONR allows for the Chair to adjourn a meeting without a vote in the event of a fire, riot, or emergency such that the time required to take a vote would endanger the members of the Assembly. The correct tools for the Chair in such a case are to call the members to a point of order, remind members that they should address marks to the chair, criticize ideas rather than personalities, et cetera. The Chair might use such an intervention to suggest a recess or adjournment, as in: "Personal attacks are out of order. Vigorous debate is welcome, but should be confined to the issues. If members are having difficulty with that right now, a motion to recess or adjourn would be in order." No, an ad hoc emailed vote ordered by fiat of the chair is not permitted under RONR either. I would (1) vote, (2) submit a contemporaneous objection to the vote, and (3) make a point of order when the vote is discussed a the next meeting. (2) is not strictly necessary, but could not hurt.