counter motion to a committee's motion

[Guest Travis]

In a recent assembly meeting of our church (whose bylaws require meetings to be conducted according to RRoO), a committee gave a report which included a motion. The chairman stated the motion, indicated that it did not need a second, and would be passed by a simple majority vote. He asked if there was any discussion on the question... there was lots! At some point someone was recognized and said he wanted to present a counter motion. The chairman asked him to state the motion, said that it would take a 2/3 majority vote to pass and called for discussion. Is that the proper procedure if there is a pending motion from a committee already being considered? Does attention shift to the counter motion without disposing of the pending motion first?  What would happen if there were several "counter motions." In other words, if people are trying to resolve an issue by making motions that they believe would be better than the committee's motion (like how to finance something), but they are afraid that the assembly would vote to pass one of the others before they even hear their motion, then it seems to make sense that the options are all heard first, but how does that work?

[Hieu H. Huynh]

A motion coming from a committee is treated like any other main motion. It could be amended and the amendments are voted on before the main motion. The assembly decides by majority vote. Details on the motion to amend are found in RONR in Section 12 starting on page 130.

[Tom Coronite]

At some point someone was recognized and said he wanted to present a counter motion. The chairman asked him to state the motion, said that it would take a 2/3 majority vote to pass and called for discussion. Is that the proper procedure if there is a pending motion from a committee already being considered? Does attention shift to the counter motion without disposing of the pending motion first?

 

 

No to both questions.  Generally speaking you deal with one main motion at a time. The first motion from the committee should have been dealt with first. And I can't imagine why the chair would declare a higher voting threshold unless he's mistakenly thinking the second motion was rescinding or amending a previously adopted motion. But whereas the first was not (yet) adopted that was not the case. As Mr Huynh explains above, the proper procedure if people want to "perfect" the committee's motion is to offer amendments, not "counter motions."

[Dan Honemann]

Agreeing with the previous responses, I'll also note that the chair might have been able to treat the "counter motion" (there's no such thing as a "counter motion" in RONR) as a motion to Substitute, which is a form of the subsidiary motion to Amend, and is discussed at length on pages 153-162 of RONR, 11th ed. Had he done so, however, he would (or should) have known that such a motion requires only a majority vote for its adoption.

[Richard Brown]

Agreeing with Dan, it seems clear to me that what the member was proposing was actually a "substitute motion" and it should have been treated as such (after determining, perhaps, that that was indeed the intent of the maker of the "counter motion").