Point of Order

[Guest Wendy]

Who is allowed to call Point of Order? Everything I read says member or voting member; however, the audience at our POA meetings are called members. There is one specific member, who is NOT on the Board of Directors, who says they can call point of order because RRoO says members can. 

[Josh Martin]

14 minutes ago, Guest Wendy said:

Who is allowed to call Point of Order? Everything I read says member or voting member; however, the audience at our POA meetings are called members. There is one specific member, who is NOT on the Board of Directors, who says they can call point of order because RRoO says members can. 

Only a member of the body that is meeting may raise a Point of Order. So at board meetings, only board members may raise a Point of Order. At meetings of the full association, any member of the association may raise a Point of Order. Since you describe the POA members as the “audience,” presumably the meetings in question are board meetings.

Edited February 27, 2020 at 02:22 PM by Josh Martin

[Guest Wendy]

Thank Josh! We have 3 types of meetings (work sessions, board, and the Annual meeting, all of which our association members are given 3 minutes during public comment to speak. The issue is a past president tries to discredit the board repeatedly and continues to call point of order and says because he 

 

 

[Richard Brown]

1 hour ago, Guest Wendy said:

Thank Josh! We have 3 types of meetings (work sessions, board, and the Annual meeting, all of which our association members are given 3 minutes during public comment to speak. The issue is a past president tries to discredit the board repeatedly and continues to call point of order and says because he 

 

 

I’ll refer you back to Josh Martin’s correct answer above. Only members of the body which is meeting are entitled to raise points of order. If it is a board meeting, only board members may raise points of order.

I suppose, depending on the type of public comment permitted, the member in question could use his three minutes at a board meeting to try to point out a breach of the rules, but the board is free to ignore him. It does not need to be treated as a point of order. The board may ignore the fact that he is trying to raise a point of order.

[Josh Martin]

3 hours ago, Guest Wendy said:

Thank Josh! We have 3 types of meetings (work sessions, board, and the Annual meeting, all of which our association members are given 3 minutes during public comment to speak. The issue is a past president tries to discredit the board repeatedly and continues to call point of order and says because he 

At the board meetings, this person may not raise a Point of Order since he is not a member of the board, and the board is the assembly which is currently meeting. I assume the annual meeting is a meeting of the full association. If so, he may raise a Point of Order during that meeting.

To the extent that a “work session” (a term RONR does not define) is a meeting in the parliamentary sense, only persons who are members of the body that is meeting during such sessions may raise a Point of Order.

Edited February 27, 2020 at 06:02 PM by Josh Martin

[Joshua Katz]

I, of course, agree with the answers above. I would add that, if I were on the board and someone not on the board tried to raise a point of order, we'd tell them to be quiet, and then, if they had a good point, I'd raise the point of order.

[Chris Harrison]

Agreeing with everyone else I will add some citations as well.  First, see the definition of "member" on p. 3 ll. 1-5 and p. 648 ll. 11-19 which says nonmembers have no rights and the Chair can unilaterally throw a disruptive nonmember out of the meeting (subject to that ruling being Appealed by the members).  Of course, your rules may have something to say on the subject and it sounds like members of the General Membership might have a right to attend and speak for 3 minutes but you should check those Bylaws to determine whether that is actually a right or merely a custom the Board can decide to discontinue.