Use of point of order

[lingriff]

(I am very new to knowing and understanding Robert's Rules of Order)

Situation:

Our Co-op bylaws have no provision for a Second Vice President.  After our Feb annual meeting, officers were determined through nominations.  When the newly elected President (who has been on the board for the past 18 year) named his 2nd VP, it was stated by a director that this was not in the bylaws.  The President stated that this had been done since the inception of the park.  

For our April board mtg, the Pres and VP will be absent.  The Pres told the Secretary that she had to conduct the meeting.  When questioned about the 2nd VP doing this, the Pres stated that the Articles of Inc stated the Secretary was to take over (the Art. of Inc. do not state this), and we are allowed to have a 2nd VP because the Robert's rules say we can.

The Bylaws are on the agenda for the next board meeting as the residents are concerned about several questionable bylaws that the board may not be following.

 

Questions: How should this be handled?

1.  Can a point of order be made stating the 2nd VP position violates the bylaws thus making the motion for this nomination to be null and void?

2.  If so, am I correctly understanding that a director would do this and the presiding officer (sec'y) would rule on it?

3.  I don't see how an appeal and a vote would be allowed as this is a bylaw violation, but I am just not sure.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Richard Brown]

35 minutes ago, lingriff said:

Questions: How should this be handled?

1.  Can a point of order be made stating the 2nd VP position violates the bylaws thus making the motion for this nomination to be null and void?

Yes, that is the proper way to challenge it.

35 minutes ago, lingriff said:

2.  If so, am I correctly understanding that a director would do this and the presiding officer (sec'y) would rule on it?

The presiding officer should first rule whether or not the point of order is well taken.

Edited to add : Any member of the body which is meeting may raise the point of order. If it is a board meeting, it would have to be a board member. If it is a general membership meeting, it could be any member.

35 minutes ago, lingriff said:

3.  I don't see how an appeal and a vote would be allowed as this is a bylaw violation, but I am just not sure.

The ruling of the chair on the point of order is appealable. It does not matter that it involves a bylaw interpretation. The appeal is debatable, but subject to certain limits. For example, each member may speak only once, but the chair may speak twice, first in stating the reasons for his ruling and then he may speak again last. It requires a majority vote to overturn the ruling of the chair. The  ruling of the chair is sustained on a tie vote.

Regarding who should preside in the absence of the President and Vice President, RONR specifies that the secretary should call the meeting to order and a chairman Pro tem should then be elected ask the first order of business to preside for the rest of the meeting.. that is often handled by unanimous consent after someone, such as the secretary, asks if there is any objection to member X serving as chairman Pro tem for the remainder of the meeting. The president who was absent does not get to choose the person who will preside in his absence.

If you are subject to different rules which require that the secretary preside throughout the meeting, then those rules would most likely take priority over RONR.

Edited April 6, 2019 at 05:43 PM by Richard Brown
Added to answer to question 2 as indicated. Also typographical Corrections

[Guest Zev]

2 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

The ruling of the chair on the point of order is appealable. It does not matter that it involves a bylaw interpretation.

What about this section (b) at the bottom of page 256 on the motion to Appeal:

Quote

b) when the chair rules on a question about which there cannot possibly be two reasonable opinions, an appeal would be dilatory and is not allowed.

The thing that bothers me is that if the chair rules that a 2nd VP position exists when there is no such thing in the bylaws, then the ruling itself is absurd.

 

[Joshua Katz]

1 hour ago, Guest Zev said:

The thing that bothers me is that if the chair rules that a 2nd VP position exists when there is no such thing in the bylaws, then the ruling itself is absurd.

 

An appeal is dilatory, it seems to me, if there is only one reasonable opinion - and that's the opinion on which the chair ruled. To say a ruling cannot be appealed because the chair is obviously wrong strikes me as unlikely to produce good results.

[Josh Martin]

4 hours ago, Joshua Katz said:

An appeal is dilatory, it seems to me, if there is only one reasonable opinion - and that's the opinion on which the chair ruled. To say a ruling cannot be appealed because the chair is obviously wrong strikes me as unlikely to produce good results.

Yes, obviously the rule in question assumes that the chair is not the one with the clearly unreasonable opinion.

[lingriff]

Am I correct in my understanding  that you are saying that this point of order is not appealable as there can only be one reasonable answer?

On 4/6/2019 at 9:26 PM, Josh Martin said:

Yes, obviously the rule in question assumes that the chair is not the one with the clearly unreasonable opinion.

On 4/6/2019 at 5:05 PM, Joshua Katz said:

An appeal is dilatory, it seems to me, if there is only one reasonable opinion - and that's the opinion on which the chair ruled. To say a ruling cannot be appealed because the chair is obviously wrong strikes me as unlikely to produce good results.

 

[Joshua Katz]

3 minutes ago, lingriff said:

Am I correct in my understanding  that you are saying that this point of order is not appealable as there can only be one reasonable answer?

On 4/6/2019 at 8:26 PM, Josh Martin said:

Well, we don't know how the chair will rule (although we can guess that the point of order will be ruled not well-taken, but we don't know for sure). If it's ruled not well-taken, certainly it can be appealed. If it's ruled well-taken, my personal opinion would be that an appeal would be dilatory because there is no room for an alternative opinion to the fact that the only officers are those listed in the bylaws. However, I don't say that with any confidence, because I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to allowing appeals, and because I haven't read the bylaws in their entirety (and don't intend to).

In any case, whether an appeal is in order or not, the reason has nothing to do with the fact that it's a bylaws question.

[Richard Brown]

37 minutes ago, lingriff said:

Am I correct in my understanding  that you are saying that this point of order is not appealable as there can only be one reasonable answer?

 

You certainly have not heard me say that. I stand by my original answer, which was the first response to your original post.

My answer might be different depending upon the exact wording of the bylaws and whether the bylaws make plan that there shall not be a second vice president.

I will add that any presiding officer who starts taking the position that his rulings are not appealable because his opinion is the only reasonable one is going to quickly become a very unpopular presiding officer who is viewed as dictatorial. It is much better to permit the appeal than to try to say, in essence, "I am right and you are wrong and you are so clearly wrong that I'm not even going to permit an appeal". 

[lingriff]

Thank you to all who replied.  I am the presiding officer (for the first time) and want to properly conduct the meeting.  Understanding all this is not easy!

 

[Gary Novosielski]

On 4/7/2019 at 9:52 PM, lingriff said:

Thank you to all who replied.  I am the presiding officer (for the first time) and want to properly conduct the meeting.  Understanding all this is not easy!

 

And how do we know at this point that you will be the presiding officer.  Are you the secretary? If so, see Mr. Brown's post above which lays out the proper procedure if the President and Vice President are both absent.  The president cannot designate someone in advance, and absent some provision in your bylaws, neither does RONR.

It is worth noting that even if your bylaws did specify a position of 2nd VP, from your question it appears that this person was never elected and simply crowned 2VP by the president.   I can't seem to identify anything that you have quoted the president as saying which is actually supported by the rules in RONR.