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Confidentiality of Board Vote


Guest Mary Ann

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Our association by-laws have a mileage restriction on membership, must live within 30 miles radius.  The board is proposing a by-law change that the restriction can be extended beyond 30 miles "at the discretion of the board." We believe the board already invited two members, beyond the 30 miles, to join. They allegedly voted to do this at a board meeting, and now that they realize they violated the by-laws, are seeking to correct the fact.  Can we ask "minority" board members to confirm the fact of the vote, or would that be in violation of RONR

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If the Board meeting was held in Executive Session then the Board members can't divulge to anyone other than other Board members what was done at the meeting and if they do they could be subject to discipline.  However, I would imagine that the General Membership will eventually will know of any new members (though whether they are beyond the 30 mile limit may not be known ) so at that point the cat will be out of the bag.

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Our association by-laws have a mileage restriction on membership, must live within 30 miles radius.  The board is proposing a by-law change that the restriction can be extended beyond 30 miles "at the discretion of the board." We believe the board already invited two members, beyond the 30 miles, to join. They allegedly voted to do this at a board meeting, and now that they realize they violated the by-laws, are seeking to correct the fact.  Can we ask "minority" board members to confirm the fact of the vote, or would that be in violation of RONR

 

No. Asking "minority" (whatever that means) board members to confirm the fact of the vote would not be in violation of any rule in RONR.

 

I'm curious, however, as to why you seem to be more concerned about this than you are about the proposed bylaw amendment itself. If you are opposed to it, just make sure you, and those who agree with you, vote against it.

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So how do we hold the board accountable for a violation of our by-laws in inviting two members outside the mileage limit to join. It seems to me what they are attempting to do now is change the by-laws so their prior conduct is no longer in violation of the bylaws.

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If that concerns you, you still need to be concentrating your efforts on seeing that the amendment does not pass, so this doesn't continue to happen.  If they succeed, then what they did previously will not matter--even if you got those outlying members removed, they could immediately join again.

 

If you vote down the amendment, then you might have something to hold them accountable for.

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So how do we hold the board accountable for a violation of our by-laws in inviting two members outside the mileage limit to join. It seems to me what they are attempting to do now is change the by-laws so their prior conduct is no longer in violation of the bylaws.

 

If these two people are, according to your bylaws, ineligible for membership, then they're not members, and a point of order to this effect can be raised at any time.

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Our association by-laws have a mileage restriction on membership, must live within 30 miles radius.  The board is proposing a by-law change that the restriction can be extended beyond 30 miles "at the discretion of the board." We believe the board already invited two members, beyond the 30 miles, to join. They allegedly voted to do this at a board meeting, and now that they realize they violated the by-laws, are seeking to correct the fact.  Can we ask "minority" board members to confirm the fact of the vote, or would that be in violation of RONR

 

Board members can tell anyone at all whatever they want to tell them as to what occurred during a board meeting unless it occurred while the board was meeting in executive session (this is what Mr. Harrison said in post #2).

 

Whether or not the board was meeting in executive session (see RONR, 11th ed., pp. 95-96, esp. p. 95, ll. 26-30) is a question of fact. We don’t know.

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