Does Executive Committee Control Report of Appointed Committee

[cmzenker]

Our group is a museum docent group which has its own bylaws and officers but operates under the auspices of the museum itself and ultimately under the authority of the Museum Board of Trustees.

A Bylaws Committee of 5 members was appointed by the Docent President  to review current Bylaws, incorporating previously adopted amendments, clarifying language, and proposing additional changes to bring Bylaws and actual practices into alignment. Over a period of months, the committee has met and completed a draft for presentation to membership. The document was submitted to the Docent Executive Committee (consisting of the Docent Officers) and Museum leadership for their review. While museum leadership asserted that they found no conflict between the submitted draft and the bylaws of the museum board, both the Executive Committee and Museum leadership made some suggestions for change. These were taken back to committee, discussed and voted on individually. The existing Bylaws states that the President is an ex-officio member of all committees (except the Nominating Committee), so the President chose to attend the meeting at which these recommendations were discussed, participate in the discussion, and vote.  Not all of the recommendations were adopted.

Now the President is making the point that this is an ad hoc committee appointed by the President and under the authority of the Executive Committee (as are all committees) and is demanding the committee make all recommended changes before presenting the draft to the membership. How should we respond?

[Hieu H. Huynh]

The committee decides by majority vote what to report to the membership.

[Josh Martin]

17 hours ago, cmzenker said:

Now the President is making the point that this is an ad hoc committee appointed by the President and under the authority of the Executive Committee (as are all committees) and is demanding the committee make all recommended changes before presenting the draft to the membership. How should we respond?

Well, this is a bit of a tricky situation. As Mr. Huynh notes, the committee decides, by majority vote, what is contained in its report. 

If the President appoints the committee, however, he could always replace the committee's members with those who are willing to make the changes he wants to see, if he is willing to take it that far.

[Guest Clarification / ex-officio]

I have a question about an elected Chair and serving on Nominating Committee.

My organization's bylaws state that the board chair serves as ex-officio on all committees. But RONR states that Nominating Committee is the exception. I shared that piece of information with the board chair and the response I received was the request/suggestion (from the board chair) about then becoming a full-committee member. That was not what I expected and my interpretation is that board chair is not supposed to sit on Nominating--ex-officio or otherwise. With the existing power differential (staff member and board), I would appreciate others weighing in here. 

[Hieu H. Huynh]

The rules in your bylaws supersede those in RONR.

[Hieu H. Huynh]

Also, for future reference, please post as a new topic.