recourse for failure to follow procedure

[Guest LThom]

I am a member of an organization whose President proposed Bylaws Amendments without following procedure.  Notice was provided in the from of a Bylaws Committee Report that summarized the proposed changes (in a few words) and identified same as "Action items" on the report.  The proposed changes were never presented in writing (in any form) and she refused to entertain a Motion to Table.  What is my recourse?  How do we proceed from here?  

[jstackpo]

First, check your bylaws:  Look for an Article titled "Amendments" (or the like) probably toward the end of the document.

Did your president follow the procedure in that article, to the letter?  If so, you have no grounds for complaint. 

If not, come back here and tell us about it, and we might be able to help.  Please quote -- EXACTLY -- the text of the "Amendments" article.

[Guest LThom]

Article IX: Amendments

Any proposed amendments to the Les Meres et Debutantes Constitution and By-Laws must be submitted to the Constitutuion and By-laws Committee before submission to the membership.  The committee will review the proposed amendments to the membership at a regular meetng.  The Les Meres et Debutantes Consittution and By-laws may be amended by a two-third (2/3) vote of the Club's membership.  The amendments will have immediate effect.  

Also, the only reference in the C & B to Robert's Rules is under Article V:  Officer Duties

Section 12:  The parliamentarian shall:

(a) Be apppointed by the President to assist in the interpretation of the Constitution and By[-Laws and shall also use Robert's Rules of Order as a guide for meetings.

[Richard Brown]

11 minutes ago, Guest LThom said:

Article IX: Amendments

Any proposed amendments to the Les Meres et Debutantes Constitution and By-Laws must be submitted to the Constitutuion and By-laws Committee before submission to the membership.  The committee will review the proposed amendments to the membership at a regular meetng.  The Les Meres et Debutantes Consittution and By-laws may be amended by a two-third (2/3) vote of the Club's membership.  The amendments will have immediate effect.  

 

Whew.  My reading of your bylaws, unfortunately, is that neither previous notice nor the exact text of proposed bylaw amendments is required for your organization to adopt bylaw amendments.  Your procedures for amending the bylaws supersede the provisions in RONR.   I think you have a poorly thought out provision on bylaw amendments, but it is what it is.  It is ultimately up  to your organization itself to interpret your amendment provisions since they differ so much from the standard procedure in RONR.  

If you believe that the procedure required by your bylaws was not followed, you can raise a point of order at the next meeting (or at any future meeting) that the required procedure for adopting bylaw amendments was not followed and that the amendments are null and void.  The president rules on the point of order.   I think  we know  how she would likely rule.  However, any member can appeal from her ruling.  The appeal requires a second and is debatable, subject to special limits.  It requires a majority vote to overturn the ruling of the chair.  The decision of the assembly is final.

[Chris Harrison]

Agreeing with the others I'd also point out that in the future if the President refuses to entertain a motion you should ask him or her to explain why the motion isn't being entertained and be prepared to Appeal that ruling.  Also, in the future if they try to pull off an amendment like that again you should demand the EXACT language that is being voted on by read and you can cite RONR p. 299 ll. 4-10 for support.

[Joshua Katz]

On 9/11/2018 at 12:13 PM, Guest LThom said:

and she refused to entertain a Motion to Table. 

Bylaw issues aside, this ruling was almost certainly correct (although perhaps not worded perfectly - rather than "refusing to entertain" the motion should be ruled out of order).

28 minutes ago, Richard Brown said:

My reading of your bylaws, unfortunately, is that neither previous notice nor the exact text of proposed bylaw amendments is required for your organization to adopt bylaw amendments. 

I concur with Mr. Brown. I'd add that all they require is submission to the committee, which then "reviews them" at the next meeting. (Could a creative person argue that something cannot be reviewed unless it is first viewed? Perhaps, but then they'd need to explain how the term "judicial review" works.) The "reviewing" here sounds more like presenting, but potato, potato, I guess (that works better verbally than in writing). The organization can ultimately decide.

53 minutes ago, Guest LThom said:

(a) Be apppointed by the President to assist in the interpretation of the Constitution and By[-Laws and shall also use Robert's Rules of Order as a guide for meetings.

Well, it seems odd that the parliamentarian would use RONR (or Robert's Rules, but we'll set that aside because we can get around it) as a guide for meetings when RONR is not the parliamentary authority, not least because the parliamentarian should advise the chair, so speaking of guiding the parliamentarian just sounds wrong. Anyway, though, there it is - I don't think this line in the description of the parliamentarian is sufficient to adopt RONR or any other parliamentary authority. 

[Joshua Katz]

1 minute ago, Chris Harrison said:

Agreeing with the others I'd also point out that in the future if the President refuses to entertain a motion you should ask him or her to explain why the motion isn't being entertained and be prepared to Appeal that ruling. 

In a world where Presidents follow the rules, probably because there was no urgent business to attend to, no emergency, and the motion was an effort to, without debate, not deal with the amendment, rather than to, for instance, deal with other logically prior matters first. I wasn't there, of course, though.

[Guest LThom]

Does it matter that I sent a request via email to the Chair of the Bylaws Committee requesting the text of the proposed amendments prior to the meeting?

[Joshua Katz]

Well, it might from a politeness perspective. But so far as the rules are concerned, a request is a request, and unless there is a right to the thing requested, it can be turned down (and in some cases must be). As a general matter, there is no right to know a committee's report in advance, to attend committee meetings, etc. (for non-members of the committee, of course). Thus, they didn't have to give you the text simply because you asked, although it might have been nice of them.

[Guest Lthom]

Thank you all for your input!

[Gary Novosielski]

On 9/26/2018 at 1:15 PM, Joshua Katz said:

The "reviewing" here sounds more like presenting, but potato, potato, I guess (that works better verbally than in writing).

 

If you'll forgive an off-topic comment, it is said that when the song Let's Call the Whole Thing Off was first released, the sheet music reached England a few weeks before any recordings were received.  Confused Brits puzzled over the lyrics, and wondered why such an apparently stupid song had become so popular in the U.S.