Discharging a Standing Committee from duties assigned to in in the bylaws

[Guest W. Watson]

My organization has no Article on Discipline in its bylaws but has adopted RONR as its parliamentary authority via its Bylaws. Our bylaws do, however, create a disciplinary committee call the Infraction Committee and gives it standing authority to perform confidential investigations/hearing on members/affiliate units who have been alleged to have violated rules. Our organization has adopted a standing rule requiring the Infractions Committee to perform all confidential investigations/hearing within 30 days of a request. Recently, an affiliate Unit violated a standing rule that has been approved in one of our manual. The violation was referred by a member to our Infraction committee for a confidential investigation.  Six months have already passed and the Infraction Committee has not presented its report to the assembly. What should the assembly do now? Can it discharge the standing committee from a function that the bylaws specifically give to that standing committee and take up the matter itself? What are its options?  

[Hieu H. Huynh]

Generally, the assembly could discharge the committee and take up the matter itself (see RONR 11th ed., pp. 658-659 footnote).

[Gary Novosielski]

4 hours ago, Guest W. Watson said:

My organization has no Article on Discipline in its bylaws but has adopted RONR as its parliamentary authority via its Bylaws. Our bylaws do, however, create a disciplinary committee call the Infraction Committee and gives it standing authority to perform confidential investigations/hearing on members/affiliate units who have been alleged to have violated rules. Our organization has adopted a standing rule requiring the Infractions Committee to perform all confidential investigations/hearing within 30 days of a request. Recently, an affiliate Unit violated a standing rule that has been approved in one of our manual. The violation was referred by a member to our Infraction committee for a confidential investigation.  Six months have already passed and the Infraction Committee has not presented its report to the assembly. What should the assembly do now? Can it discharge the standing committee from a function that the bylaws specifically give to that standing committee and take up the matter itself? What are its options?  

Yes it can, and if the committee has missed a deadline for reporting (as seems to be the case here), the motion to discharge requires only a majority vote, not the usual 2/3.

Since the committee is a standing committee and may have more than one matter under consideration, the motion should identify which matter the commmittee is to be discharged from further considering.