How long can old motions be acted upon?

[Guest ATRSC]

According to our club's Constitution and Bylaws, the process to presnet motions to our members for voting is to submit motions to the Constitution Committee each year by July 15th. The Constitution Committee is required to publish the proposed motion twice in the bi-monthly newsletter before the annual meeting. The motion is discussed at the annual meeting and a vote taken as to whether the motion will be sent to members for their vote.

Without going in to the drama ocurring with the club, there are a variety of reasons that there are motions that were never published but discussed at the annual meeting, some were published but never discussed and some motions that met the criteria but weren't sent to the members.

As we work to clean up the mess, how long can these motions sit out there and still be valid? Some of them are five years old.

[jstackpo]

Your relatively complex rules in your bylaws about how to process motions precludes our giving advice. Our advice is, or would be, based solely on RONR's rules which are much simpler.

It will be up to your organization to figure out the status of all the "non-standard" motions you describe. See p. 588 for help in that process.

[Guest ATRSC]

Thank you. I only have a simplified and applied version at this time. I will check my library to see if there's a RONR I can tap into for the informaiton.

.

[jstackpo]

Be sure you get "The Right Book"

And take a look at

RONRIB:

"Roberts Rules of Order Newly Revised In Brief", Updated Second Edition (Da Capo Press, Perseus Books Group, 2011). It is a splendid summary of all the rules you will really need in all but the most exceptional situations. And only $7.50! You can read it in an evening.

[Guest Nancy N.]

I don't think Dr. Stackpole would begrudge me a few aspirationally salient points. It might be charitable for the Original Poster, Guest_ATRSC_, to hear a little about how Robert's Rules deals with motions, and see if any of that is useful to him, her, or it. (Forgive me, OP Guest_ATRSC_, for being unclear about your sex or species.)

In the general case, a motion is disposed of at the meeting at which it is moved, then and there. The principle alternative is to postpone it to the next meeting, but that is only valid if the next meeting occurs within a quarterly time period (meaning about one quarter of a year, and technically, as it's defined, up to not quite four months).

The exception is when a motion is put into the custody of a committee. Robert's Rules gives no time limit as to how long a committee can have legitimate custody of a motion. Some experts here might say that five years is still intolerably absurd, and I'd have trouble refuting that, except to ask for a citation, but then most of those experts can easily find "absurd" in their copies of RONR, 11th Ed (Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr.) But there's no Robert's Rules Police (we of the East Coast Overnight Patrol do not have police powers, in the technical sense, though some of us are members of the Two Fisted Parliamentarians Club, so let no one get complacent) -- so, if those experts are right, your organization would have to decide (by simple motion) whether you think your bylaws do establish a time frame for when your napping motions may have expired, even if it never left the custody of the Constitution Committee. And then better codify that time frame in the bylaws, because setting a time frame, pretty much arbitrarily, is going way out on a limb.

... because if it's unexceptionable that the Constitution Committee still legitimately has ahold of these motions, then you can simply resume slogging away at them, as if they were bright and cheery and fresh as the morning dew.

(More later, when my fingers grow back. You all know it was National Lobster Day yesterday?)

[Guest ATRSC]

Chuckling here... thank you for your insight. Our bylaws don't have an expected timeframe for the Constitution Committee to process motions so I suppose it's more of a reflection on the club (a rather poor reflection) that it took so long to get them out to our members to vote on them.

And no, I didn't know it was national Lobster Day yesterday. I'll add it to my calendar to celebrate next year. Lobster is awesome.