Motion to suppress or limit debate.

[Raymond Paskauskas]

Our board for a non-profit dance club invited a member to speak at an open board meeting.  The board agenda permitted her to revisit our board's decision not to ratify her for a proposed appointment to a vacant board position, as defined in our local chapter's operating policy.  After previous meeting minutes had been approved by the board, she was invited to address the board and members in attendance.  Unfortunately, she launched into a lengthy disparagement of our current and past boards.  Instead of responding to the reasons why she was not ratified to fill a vacant position, she recalled other contentious issues going back decades.  As the board president I raised a motion, seconded by another board member, to request her to stop speaking.  However, the motion did not pass (2 Yes, 3 No) by our board.  Hence, we allowed her to continue disparaging our board.  She finished her address after nearly 90 minutes!  Only then could the board move on to the next order of business on our printed agenda.  What do you think?  Were we properly following Robert's Rules of Orders?     

[Richard Brown]

1 hour ago, Raymond Paskauskas said:

Were we properly following Robert's Rules of Orders?     

For all practical purposes, yes, you did. I am assuming there was no pre-set time limit on her comments, is  that right? 

It appears that she was given permission by general consent (unanimous consent... without objection) to address the board but without a time limit.  You as chair could certainly request that she wrap up her comments, but you alone did not have the  authority to cut her off and make her stop speaking.  You did the proper thing by making a motion that she stop speaking.  In this case, since she is not a member and was a guest who  had essentially been given permission to speak by the board, it would require a regular majority vote to require her to stop.  That motion failed by a vote of 2 to 3.  Under the circumstances, I don't know that there was much else you could do except to renew the motion after she continued speaking for a few more minutes.  Do you have any idea why three board members voted to let her continue speaking?

RONR gives you as chair a right that would normally let you as chair eject from the meeting a non-member who is being an annoyance or creating a disturbance.  §61:19 of RONR (12th ed.).  However, that is complicated by the fact that the assembly itself gave her permission to  speak (presumably by unanimous consent) and then affirmatively declined to order her to stop her presentation when you made a motion to do so.  That put you as chair in a bind because normally you alone  would have had the right to stop  her from speaking and to order her to leave.

Some of my colleagues may disagree and might be of the opinion  that you as chair could have ordered her to stop  speaking and even to leave the  meeting notwithstanding the failed vote to cut her time off (functionallly equivalent to a motion for the  previous question (or to end debate).  If you had taken (or tried) that action, a board member could have objected and made a motion that she be allowed to continue speaking. I'm sure it was an awkward and uncomfortable dilemma.  Stay tuned for other opinions. 

I am assuming for the purposes of this response that she was not speaking during a regularlly scheduled time for non-board members to address the board.

For the future, the board might consider adopting a special rule  of order that lets guests address the board for a specific time, such as up to three minutes or five minutes.  The time can always be extended by the board or even by the chair alone if there is no objection. 

[Rob Elsman]

If she was told the substance of the presentation she was invited to make, the chair failed in his duty to call attention to her straying and to tell her to either stay on track or finish her remarks.  Moreover, she ought not to have been permitted to make remarks about actions of the board taken in the past other than the action about which she was invited to speak.

Personally, I do not know why she was invited to speak in the first place.  The decision not to ratify was taken.  The action is finished.  The subject is closed.

Edited July 23, 2021 at 02:19 PM by Rob Elsman

[Raymond Paskauskas]

In retrospect, the board should have given our club member the reasons right away why she was not ratified to fill a vacant position.  I had believed that our board could exercise a "privilege" to privately discuss and decide who to ratify for a board vacancy.  One board officer and many club members felt that she deserved to know the reasons why she was not ratified.  Finally I agreed to speak with her over the telephone and provide those reasons.  She rejected those reasons and still requested to address the board at an upcoming open board meeting.  Too late to realize that it would result in a lengthy disparagement in front of other assembled club members.  It at least helped validate publicly that she was pedantic, argumentative, and would prove disruptive to the working harmony of our board. 

[Guest Zev]

6 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

Some of my colleagues may disagree and might be of the opinion  that you as chair could have ordered her to stop  speaking and even to leave the  meeting notwithstanding the failed vote to cut her time off (functionally equivalent to a motion for the  previous question (or to end debate).  If you had taken (or tried) that action, a board member could have objected and made a motion that she be allowed to continue speaking. I'm sure it was an awkward and uncomfortable dilemma.  Stay tuned for other opinions. 

(1) The person in question is not a member of the board; (2) The board's decision to allow her to speak does not negate your authority over non-members that violate decorum; (3) Your motion was not necessary, you could have exercised your authority at any moment; (4) A member of the board, however, could have appealed your decision, see 61:19.

[Josh Martin]

11 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

Some of my colleagues may disagree and might be of the opinion  that you as chair could have ordered her to stop  speaking and even to leave the  meeting notwithstanding the failed vote to cut her time off (functionallly equivalent to a motion for the  previous question (or to end debate).  If you had taken (or tried) that action, a board member could have objected and made a motion that she be allowed to continue speaking. I'm sure it was an awkward and uncomfortable dilemma.  Stay tuned for other opinions. 

Since the speaker's comments appear to have strayed from the topic the speaker was invited to speak on, and appear to have also violated the rules of decorum, I think it would have been appropriate for the chair to order the individual to stop speaking and even to leave the meeting, but the chair's decision in this matter would be subject to appeal, so it seems to me it would have likely worked out the same way in the end.

[Richard Brown]

9 hours ago, Guest Zev said:

The board's decision to allow her to speak does not negate your authority over non-members that violate decorum;

I disagree. The board voted affirmatively to permit her to continue speaking. At that point the chair’s opinion that her remarks were inappropriate became irrelevant. The board decided by majority vote to permit her to continue. The chair had no right to ignore that vote. 

Now, if the nature of her remarks changed after that and became inappropriate, at that point the chair could perhaps have taken action on his own such as ruling her comments out of order (or disruptive) or he could have renewed  his motion to stop her from speaking. We don’t know whether or how the nature of her remarks changed after the vote to permit her to continue nor do we know how much time had elapsed before  the vote was taken nor how much time elapsed between the time the vote was taken and the time she ultimately concluded her remarks. We are doing a whole lot of second guessing with very little information as to the details of what was happening other than knowing that the board voted to permit her to continue speaking.

Perhaps many of us who are regulars on this forum know that the chair actually had the authority to prohibit her from speaking or to eject her once her remarks became inappropriate, but this chair may not have known he had that authority. Regardless, rather than attempting to handle the matter single-handedly, he, with the board’s  apparent consent, permitted her to address the board.

When her remarks in the opinion of the chair became inappropriate, he could have stopped her single-handedly but chose instead to leave it up to the assembly. That was a judgment call he made. However, once the assembly voted to allow her to continue speaking I believe his hands were tied unless and until the situation changed. He apparently decided not to try again and no other councilmember did so either.

As Mr. Martin stated in his comments above, the chair could have tried to eject her from the meeting on his own even after the vote, but a board member could have objected and the ultimate outcome may have been that they would overrule him and allow her to continue speaking.

There is a whole lot of shoulda,  coulda, woulda here, and I am not going to criticize the way the chair handled this unfortunate and wholly unexpected situation. Although some of us might’ve handled it differently, the way he handled it was not unreasonable, and especially not after the board voted to permit her to continue speaking.
 

 

[Raymond Paskauskas]

Thank you, Mr. Richard Brown.  It has been a humbling experience to become acquainted with Robert's Rules of Order and apply it in the real world.  I have read an old edition dating back to 1893, and I ordered the new brief edition promoted on this web site.  Thank you again.  If I could only upload the entire Zoom video recording that fateful afternoon, it might be edifying to others watching it.  However, I would have to worry about matters of privacy and someone alleging a wrong done.

[Guest Puzzling]

3 hours ago, Raymond Paskauskas said:

Thank you, Mr. Richard Brown.  It has been a humbling experience to become acquainted with Robert's Rules of Order and apply it in the real world.  I have read an old edition dating back to 1893, and I ordered the new brief edition promoted on this web site.  Thank you again.  If I could only upload the entire Zoom video recording that fateful afternoon, it might be edifying to others watching it.  However, I would have to worry about matters of privacy and someone alleging a wrong done.

Also get the latest (twelfth) edition  of Roberts rules , the  1893 edition  only has  historical value (but I guess some readers here would be willing to pay a lot for a unsoiled original copy of it enough to buy some copies of the 12 edition)