Officers ability to make motions and amendments

[Guest Sloan]

Can a state officer (assistant moderator) present amendments to motions for receiving a boards report?

[Gary Novosielski]

Well, there's no need for a motion to receive a board's report.  Once the board has reported, the report has in fact been received.  If there are recommendations in the report that would require action, those individual motions can be made (no need for a second) by the person reporting.  Is that the "state officer"?

If this "assistant moderator" wants to offer amendments to any of these motions, I see no problem as long as he is a member of the body that is meeting.  I'm assuming that he is not chairing the meeting at the time, but maybe you could clear that up and provide some more detail.  What sort of meeting is this, and what's the relationship to this "board".

Edited April 30, 2021 at 03:20 PM by Gary Novosielski

[Guest Sloan]

Gary, thank you  for your response. We are attending a state meeting in our faith group...we operate under roberts rules of order. 
This took place in our General Board meeting —— associational representatives gathering together to represent each association of our work. We are congregational and not connectional in government. It altered an entire boards report including a yearly budget and strategy for years.

I know the moderator cannot do this unless he steps away from his responsibility by deferral but did not know if the “assistant moderator” needed to do the same because of his possible responsibilities of recusal happened.

 

[Richard Brown]

4 minutes ago, Guest Sloan said:

I know the moderator cannot do this unless he steps away from his responsibility by deferral but did not know if the “assistant moderator” needed to do the same because of his possible responsibilities of recusal happened

Unless he is presiding, the assistant moderator (or vice chair) may participate fully just as all other members.  The rule requiring the presiding officer to remain neutral and impartial applies to the person who is presiding.  If the assistant moderator is not presiding, he is not the presiding officer.

[Gary Novosielski]

I think the closest analogy to the RONR terms would be a president presiding and a vice president potentially having to preside at some future time.

RONR stresses that the president should strive to protect the appearance of impartiality while actually presiding, but places no restrictions on what motions the VP can make while not actually presiding at the time.  

[Rob Elsman]

It might be worth saying that a vice president should not preside when an item of business is pending about which the vice president showed himself to be a partisan while he was not presiding.  Another vice president should preside, instead.  In the case where there is not another vice president available to preside, a temporary occupant of the chair should be elected.