Executive Committee Minutes

[Guest Mlm]

A motion is made in the Executive Comm. and passed. When the minutes of the Executive Comm. are read at the general meeting they are asked to be approved. After approval the membership is advised that by approving the minutes of that Comm. they are approving any proposals that the Exec. Comm. acted on and the membership does not need to vote on those proposals. How can this be true and how can a membership who was not present at a meeting approve those minutes.

[Gary Novosielski]

It's not true, it's rubbish.

 

The body to which the minutes pertain is the only body authorized to approve them. 

 

In any case, the EC should approve their own minutes, which should not be approved by the general membership.

 

Furthermore, approving minutes does not meant approving of minutes.  In other words, approval merely means that they are an accurate record of what was done, not that what was done was a good or bad idea.

 

If some rule requires the EC to gain approval from the membership for its decisions, then that's another story, and would require a separate motion to ratify the decision of the EC.  The EC has only such powers as granted to it in the bylaws, so it's entirely possible that every decision would have to be ratified, or that no decisions need to be ratified, or anything in between.  But none of this has anything in the slightest to do with approval of minutes.

[Richard Brown]

It's not true, it's rubbish.

I agree with Gary.

 

I don't know where this is coming from, but I have heard several times lately (both on this forum and in other situations) that some people seem to think that approving the minutes has the effect of also approving of the actions that the minutes refer to.  Baloney.  Hogwash.  Nonsense.

 

I've also heard that if action is taken at a quorumless meeting, but that at the next meeting where a quorum is present, approving the minutes of the quorumless meeting amounts to ratifying those actions.  Again, Hogwash.  Baloney.  Nonsense.

 

Edited to add:  To ratify action taken at a quorumless meeting requires a specific motion to ratify the action and must be adopted by a majority vote.... at a properly held meeting with a quorum present.  Just approving the minutes from the quorumless meeting won't do it.