How far can a special committee go?

[wfdickjr]

FACTS. Ours is an appointed board in charge of a municipal parks and recreation department. Bylaws direct the board to use RONR as the parliamentary authority. At the last regular meeting, the president of the board presented a copy of the bylaws to the board with revisions that he had made. The president moved that the revised bylaws be adopted. A motion was made that a special committee be formed “to review the proposed changes and report back to the board at the next meeting.” The motion to form a special committee passed without amendments. The special committee met, deliberated, and adjourned. Minutes of the meeting have been circulated and the special committee will deliver its report at the next meeting.

AT ISSUE. When the committee met to review the proposed changes as charged, the committee added several changes of its own to the bylaws changes it had been directed to review.

QUESTION. Is it permitted under RONR for a special committee to go outside the bounds of the motion that created the committee as appears to have been done in this instance?

I have read RONR 11^th ed. p.176, l. 20-31 and understand that the committee may recommend amendments to the original motion. I am not sure how that applies in a situation where the motion to refer was worded like this.

Frankly, the greatest part of the problem for me, personally, is that a special committee that was charged to review a couple of bylaws changes ended up behaving as if it had been charged to rework the entire bylaws. Something about that feels wrong to me but in such matters I trust rules, not feelings. Any thoughts welcome; references to RONR especially appreciated.

[dglynch]

A special committee cannot exceed its mandate, but it's not clear to me that in your case it did. If the president's proposal truly included "revisions" of the bylaws or "revised bylaws", rather than just a set of isolated amendments, it could certainly be argued that the special committee was asked to rework the entire bylaws, because the word "revision" is a term of art within parliamentary procedure that refers to a complete reworking of an entire document.

It could just be a subtle confusion of language between any number of you, me, the president, and the committee. This is why, when dealing with bylaw amendments, it is of critical importance to carefully distinguish between a "revision" on the one hand, and a set of specific isolated changes (not constituting a "revision") on the other hand.

That said, the board will be free to agree or disagree with some or all of the committee's recommendations when it receives the report. And, if the board finds that the committee failed to do a good job of obeying its instructions, the proposal can be sent back to the same committee, or another committee, for another try.

(I'm assuming here that your board has the authority to amend the bylaws and that there are no other procedural issues.)

[Rev Ed]

The essential question is this: By instructing the Committee to consider the revisions, can the Committee add extra changes to its report?

Generally no. However, I have not seen the By-laws nor the proposed changes made by the President, nor the Committee's Report. As such it is hard to tell. For example, the President may have recommended a change to By-law #2. If this was accepted, it might require another By-law, say By-law #4, to be changed as well. So, if the Committee recommended By-law #4 be amended to fall in line with By-law #2 (should it be amended) then yes the Committee was within its power.

Also, what was the exact wording of the motion? It might allow for some interruptation by the Committee.

However, as the Committee is only commenting on other By-laws, which are similar to what it was created to do, I would probably not ocmplain too much. If it started commenting on other areas, it would clearly be outside its mandate.

[Robert B Fish]

I don't think the committee exceeded its instructions at allif it recommended that some of the suggested changes be dropped, that some of the suggested changes be modified, or that other sections of the bylaws be also amended to avoid conflicts with the new changes.

Depending on the EXACT wording (the post says “to review the proposed changes and report back to the board at the next meeting.”) it may well be that a review of the proposed changes could find they failed to address all the ungent needs of the board and that other changes should therefore be added.

Finally, note that this is a report, not an amendment to the bylaws. If you won't accept them in a committee report, any mamber could make them as a motion (although notice and a vote would be required for adoption). If the other members don't like their ideas, it normally won't even take a majority to defeat them.

IMO, hear what they have to say, move ahead with the good and drop the bad.

-Bob

[wfdickjr]

Thanks to all who replied. i think I have my answer and very much appreciate the thought that went into the replies. In response to the questions, the wording of the motion was almost verbatim to that stated in my original post. Also, the additional changes were in no way related to the originally proposed changes.

As for sorting out the bad from the good changes, that is not likely to happen given the existence of a lock-step voting bloc but it is worth a try.

Speaking of a voting bloc, I am sorry to trouble you again but I do have one more question if I still have your attention. The person who made the original motion failed to state the number of the members of the committee. Rather than specifying the number himself, the president asked for volunteers and appointed all four who volunteered. Two days later, the president appointed a fifth person to the committee to, as he put it, make the vote odd-numbered. I felt this was improper but I was not aware of any rule to prevent appointing another person since the number of the committee members had never been specified.

Is there a rule that speaks to the issue of appointing additional committee members after the committee has been appointed?

[Gary Novosielski]

In response to the questions, the wording of the motion was almost verbatim to that stated in my original post.

Well, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the difference between verbatim and almost verbatim is the difference between "lightning" and "lightning bug".

The person who made the original motion failed to state the number of the members of the committee. Rather than specifying the number himself, the president asked for volunteers and appointed all four who volunteered. Two days later, the president appointed a fifth person to the committee to, as he put it, make the vote odd-numbered. I felt this was improper but I was not aware of any rule to prevent appointing another person since the number of the committee members had never been specified.

Is there a rule that speaks to the issue of appointing additional committee members after the committee has been appointed?

I can't find one. The proper procedure would have been for the president to put the question of how many the committee should comprise at the time of establishing it. But if the did not, and the assembly did not, and he had the power to appoint members, I'm not sure any rule was violated by exceeding a limit that did not exist. However, it sounds like the president made some appointments outside the context of a meeting, and it's not clear he was authorized to do that by the assembly. That is more likely to disqualify the appointment than a rule concerning strictly the number.

Or I could be all wet.

[wfdickjr]

Well, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the difference between verbatim and almost verbatim is the difference between "lightning" and "lightning bug".

Mr. Twain definitely definitely had a way with words. The actual motion was exactly that in my first quote preceded by the words "I move that a special committee be appointed ..."

However, it sounds like the president made some appointments outside the context of a meeting, and it's not clear he was authorized to do that by the assembly. That is more likely to disqualify the appointment than a rule concerning strictly the number.

Do you have any references that might shed some light on that? (Whole sections would be fine - I just don't know where to start.)

[Guest Gary c Tesser]

You will probably want the subsection "Naming members to a special committee" (P. ??, RONR 11th Ed; p. 167 in ye olde and newly-disdained 10th Ed) in Section 13, "Commit or Refer"; and the subsection "Appointment of Committees" (p. 474 - 480, ibid non troppo), especially (d), "Appointment by the chair" (p. 478) in Section 50, "Committees." See p. 479, lines 7 - 12, and p. 167, lines 18 - 29 (both in that antient , decrepit, decciduous 10th Ed), about appointing the committee members later: it doesn't say anything about varying the number of committee members. IMHO, the context is that the number was fixed during the meeting; but as it is said in the Right Book, "Nothing in RONR prohibits it."

There are probably comparable citations in the 11th Edition. Probably a few dozen people have copies of it by now. and 80% of them post on the RONR MB regularly, so you can always ask here until a few hundred more copies are printed up for the rest of us.

[wfdickjr]

You will probably want the subsection "Naming members to a special committee" (P. ??, RONR 11th Ed; p. 167 in ye olde and newly-disdained 10th Ed) in Section 13, "Commit or Refer"; and the subsection "Appointment of Committees" (p. 474 - 480, ibid non troppo), especially (d), "Appointment by the chair" (p. 478) in Section 50, "Committees." See p. 479, lines 7 - 12, and p. 167, lines 18 - 29 (both in that antient , decrepit, decciduous 10th Ed), about appointing the committee members later: it doesn't say anything about varying the number of committee members. IMHO, the context is that the number was fixed during the meeting; but as it is said in the Right Book, "Nothing in RONR prohibits it."

There are probably comparable citations in the 11th Edition. Probably a few dozen people have copies of it by now. and 80% of them post on the RONR MB regularly, so you can always ask here until a few hundred more copies are printed up for the rest of us.

Thank you for the citations - they were most helpful. I had read them before - and very recently. This time they read like a brand new book - probably because I had a very different perspective.

Thank you to all who responded!

[Guest GcT]

Remember you have to read them in the new book or it doesn't count.