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Respect for the Board


Guest Joe Clark

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I have attended our local county Board of Supervisors meeting for about 15 years and have seen a lot of changes. Our Board allows 3 minute public comments at each meeting. According to the Board by-laws you are not allowed to ask any question to a board member and they are not allow to ask you any questions or make any comments.

The board voted in a new chairmen on the first meeting of this year and he is not afraid of showing people that he has power. For years Men and Women have made public comments to the board while wearing their hats, scarf's, etc.. During our last meeting a Vietnam Veteran starting making a public comment with his Vietnam hat on. After about thirty seconds into his comment the Chairman told the Veteran that wearing his hat while making his comment to the board was disrespectful and that he had to remove his hat if he wanted to continue making any comments. The old Veteran removed his hat. I have seen many people speak in the past and this is the first chairman that I have ever seen that made anyone remove their hat. In fact, this Chairman has allow others to speak while wearing their hats but appears to force only certain people to take off their hats off. I have read Robert Rules of order and the Board of Supervisors by-laws and I can not find anywhere were it says you must remove your headgear in order to make a comment at the Board of Supervisors meeting.

My question is: If someone refuses to remove their hat can the chairmen ask that you be removed or prevent you from speaking. I assume this is not against the law. Than you anyone for any advice and or comments.

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According to RONR, the presiding officer can require non-members to leave if they are being disorderly. (Neat, eh?) The non-member, having zero rights at the meeting, has no option but to comply, even -- having no rights -- to assert that he is in no way being disorderly. However, any member -- in this case, any member of the board of supervisors* has the right to appeal the eviction, which turns the decision on eviction over to the assembly (the supervisors).

I will say, given the facts as stated, this perhaps looks like dirty pool on the part of the chairman. Or perhaps, being better versed in parliamentary procedure than the other members there, which he should be, he was able to discern that the particular tilt of the cap was the secret signal for all us disguised Bolshevik subversives in the hall to rise up and declare the People's Republic of King of Prussia, Penn., or wherever it is that your board of supervisors formerly held sway.

Ah, the faded dreams of youth.

___________

*Has any governmental agency tried a board of supravisors? Discordians, where are you?

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There does not appear to be anything in Roberts Rules of Order about any requirement to wear, or not wear, a hat during a non-member's presentation to a board. Non-members may be permitted to address a meeting by permission of the Board (not the chair, I note, the Board).

Perhaps another Board member could bring up a point of order that there are no provisions requiring particular headgear of non-members.

I also note that any provision of the law that would apply to your county Board of Supervisors would take precedence over the rules of order and your bylaws, and there may well be some law about public input to governmental bodies that would apply.

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Are you talking about state law or a local ordinance that may apply. Like I said before the by-laws says nothing about headgear but does say you can be removed for being disorderly. I do like your suggestion of another member of the board bring up a point of order. Could you tell me what to check when you mention they may be a law that takes precedence over the rules of order and the bylaws.

Thank you.

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Could you tell me what to check when you mention they may be a law that takes precedence over the rules of order and the bylaws.

You could start with the U.S. Constitution.

You could also direct the chair to this page describing the debate over the rule to ban hats on the House Floor:

John M. Patton of Virginia defended “the really harmless but apparently indecorous practice of wearing our hats” as a manifestation of the House’s resolute rejection of presidential meddlesomeness. “Regarding then this usage as merely ‘the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual’ freedom of this body from all executive control or interference, let us preserve it,” Patton declared on the floor. “And whenever, if ever, our executive magistrates shall attempt to employ any improper influence on this body, let us be found with our hats on.”

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(First: is Guest_Guest, of this Post #4, the same poster as Original Poster Guest Joe Clark?)

Are you talking about state law or a local ordinance that may apply. [snip] ... Could you tell me what to check when you mention they may be a law that takes precedence over the rules of order and the bylaws.

We are talking about any rule made by any government that applies to your organization, whether on a municipal, state, or national level. (I didn't mean to imply you have to dig up all the pronouncements of the King of Prussia, that was a joke.) I'm not risking anyone's suspicion that I'm practicing law without a license, because I'm patently not, when I say that you might bounce the burden of proof onto to the president to show a law that prohibits the citizens from hat-wearing, rather than bankrupt yourself paying a lawyer to exhaustively search all the laws and statutes in the universe to prove that such a law against wearing hats does not exist.

[q]Like I said before the by-laws says nothing about headgear but does say you can be removed for being disorderly.[/q]

In your case, your chairman did not even assert that the Veteran* was being disorderly, which would be in violation of the rules: he declared that wearing the hat was being disrespectful -- which itself violates no rule in Robert's Rules, as long as the disrespect does not extend to being disorderly or uncivil (violating the rules protecting the decorum of the meeting). Of course this is a judgement call for the chair -- and it looks as if clearly the chair exercised unacceptably poor judgement here, especially since he's being inconsistent, having allowed other speakers to wear their hats without a word from him.

I'll say it seems to me that any intelligent civilized person, even a member of this organization, would instantly challenge the chair's ruling. As I see it, the board member would raise the point of order that the chair is violating the rules by ordering an otherwise decorous open-forum citizen to remove his hat, because the chair does not have the authority to issue such an order. The chair will then either concede, ruling the point well-taken; or he will dig in his heels, being a fatuous obstinate Neanderthal philistine, and say not well-taken. At which point any rational member in attendance will raise an appeal of the ruling, and the chair will present his reasoning (which will go into the minutes, if only as an object lesson; citation available on request, for $1.50. It's going to be a long night). (I would generally expect that his opponents, amounting to the sane persons present, should reasonably be allowed to refute his deranged presentation, but it looks as if they get no say at all, since this matter "relates to indecorum or a transgression of the rules of speaking" (p. 257, lines 33 - 34). Whyever is that??!? I have never understood this limitation -- that only the lunatic in charge gets a say?. But maybe that's why other guys get to be Registered Parliamentarians, while such as I labor under the delusion that I get $4.50 an hour to type away all night, which technically I think is what "nocturnal emission" really means, notwithstanding silly, quaint 20th-Century notions of prepudescent raciness.) The membership will then decide, by vote, unfortunately hearing only one, the delusional, side, whose flaws might not be apparent to the assembly, swayed by the president's mellifluous, callipygian powers of suasion.

____________

*I initial-capitalized the Veteran to make it clear, OK?

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I've seen some judges getting VERY annoyed at anyone with the temerity to wear a hat in their courtroom. Maybe this guy has delusions of jurisprudence.

Also, military personnel in uniform are trained to remove their hats upon entering any building (with the exception of train stations and air terminals for some reason).

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