Motion to Censure Elected Officials

[Guest Censured]

A motion to censure was introduced at a meeting against 2 board members. The motion to censure was not on the agenda. No information was provided to board members prior to the chairman making a speach of character based observations and he then moved to censure.

Since the move to censure was not on the agenda, no previous notice, would the agenda be required to be amended since the members actions took place outside of the meeting or does that matter? If so, would this call for a 2/3 vote of the body or a majority vote to modify the agenda? If the agenda was not modified by the membership would the motion be out of order? Also note, this is an elected board that has a policy stating that Robert's Rules will be used. There is no policy on adding items to the agenda or censuring a member.

The infractions were at best laughable however the vote was 4 in favor - 5 refused to vote. 3 of the 5 were stated as abstentions and the two members whos actions for censure were unrelated were bound together by the same motion and told their votes were void following the outcome.

I have read that a motion required previous notice and based on the severity of the motion that a motion could require the majority vote of the entire membership. Since all 9 members were there and the motion was not introduced prior to the meeting I would think that a required majority of the membership would have been assumed. Since constitutional provisions for officers of the state are also in play since this is an elected school board I am not understanding why neither censured member was able to vote on the other. I would think that the vote failed in that only 4 of 9 eligable votes were cast not being enough to pass.

[George Mervosh]

The motion to censure requires no previous notice under the rules in RONR, is debatable, amendable, and takes a majority vote to adopt. The 2 members who were denied their right to vote were denied that right improperly, but they shouldn't have voted even if they weren't denied.

Nevertheless, 4 votes in this case carries the day under the rules in RONR.

[Chris Harrison]

A motion to Censure requires a majority vote (of those members who were there and voted on the question) and no previous notice or inclusion on the agenda is required (unless your bylaws say otherwise). See RONR p. 125 ll. 19-20 tinted pages 6-7 #1.

[Tim Wynn]

… I am not understanding why neither censured member was able to vote on the other.

A member cannot be compelled to refrain from voting, however, RONR does indicate situations under which a member SHOULD NOT vote. See RONR (11th ed.), p. 407, ll. 21-31.

In any event, if these truly were two separate main motions being considered together, any member could have demanded that they be considered separately. See RONR (11th ed.), p. 274, l. 31 - p. 275, l. 6.