Approval of Committee Minutes by members who are new and did not attend the previous meeting

[Guest Jorge]

At recent committee meeting we had all new members of the committee joining for the first time.  The topic of approving the minutes of the prior committee meeting came up and there was a question as to whether it was appropriate for these new committee members (no prior member was in attendance) to approve meeting minutes where they had not been in attendance. The Chair asked the business leaders in the room (who had attended the last committee meeting) if they had read the minutes and if they could confirm the minutes presented were accurate.  Once the leaders in attendance did so, the Chair then moved to approve.  Was this an acceptable way to handle this?

[J. J.]

The members can vote, no matter if they attended or not. 

 

The correct procedure is for the chair to ask for corrections to the minutes.  If there  are none, the chair declares the minutes approved.

[George Mervosh]

I think my good friend, J.J. missed that this was a committee, because committees are not required to keep or approve minutes at all.

" In small committees, the chairman usually acts as secretary, but in large ones and many standing committees, a secretary may be chosen to keep a brief memorandum in the nature of minutes for the use of the committee."  RONR (11th ed.), p. 500

[Atul Kapur]

If you are in a situation where the entire membership of a body is changing, then I suggest that the final meeting of the "old" group appoint a minutes approval committee. They can approve the minutes and report to the first meeting of the "new" group that the minutes were approved. 

[Gary Novosielski]

11 hours ago, George Mervosh said:

I think my good friend, J.J. missed that this was a committee, because committees are not required to keep or approve minutes at all.

" In small committees, the chairman usually acts as secretary, but in large ones and many standing committees, a secretary may be chosen to keep a brief memorandum in the nature of minutes for the use of the committee."  RONR (11th ed.), p. 500

On the other hand, it's clear at this point that this particular  committee does take minutes, and approve them.  So i think there's no harm in pointing out that actual committee members, whether they attended the prior meeting or not, are explicitly authorized to participate in the approval process, while random "business leaders" who happened to be present in the gallery, are not.