Pre-emptive veto by the president of the organization

[Guest Dave Kelly]

Our organization's constitution gives veto power to the President, who is the presiding officer. Can the president pre-emptively veto a resolution or motion before our General Assembly, the body, actually takes a vote on it? The measure is on the agenda and he wants to veto it before the group takes it up. Is that allowed?

[Rob Elsman]

It is your rule; you tell us. 🙂

[Atul Kapur]

In other words, RONR has no rules on a veto. It does say that interpretation of the constitution is a job for the organization to do for itself.

[Guest Dave Kelly]

Atul,

Thank you, that is what I thought. The constitution does not address a pre-emptive veto but, before I advised him he could do it, I wanted to see what RONR had to say. I couldn't find anything in my copy and I wanted to make sure I was not missing something.

 

 

[Atul Kapur]

You're welcome. My personal opinion is that a pre-emptive veto is more than just vetoing the decision of the assembly -- it is an attempt to  prevent the assembly from even making a decision, actually even from discussing the idea proposed. That is a significant power to grant an individual and, in my opinion, too much. 

An opposing argument is that, if the president is going to veto it anyway, why waste the assembly's time discussing it? But that assumes that the discussion won't sway the president and that no amendments will be made to make it more acceptable.

[Richard Brown]

I agree with Dr. Kapur, but would point out that generally rules which permit the president or some other official to veto an action also provide for a means to override the veto. Do your rules Provide for a means of overriding a veto?

It is my opinion that the right to veto action taken by the assembly does not grant the right to prevent the assembly from even taking up the matter in the first place.  Ultimately, however, in a up to your organization to interpret its own bylaws.

[Gary Novosielski]

On 11/4/2022 at 1:05 PM, Guest Dave Kelly said:

Atul,

Thank you, that is what I thought. The constitution does not address a pre-emptive veto but, before I advised him he could do it, I wanted to see what RONR had to say. I couldn't find anything in my copy and I wanted to make sure I was not missing something.

Well, if your constitution does not say he can do it, then he probably can't.

RONR has no provision for vetoes at all, so if your bylaws were totally silent on vetoes, they would not be in the president's power.   Any additional powers of the president beyond presiding have to be in your rules.  By the normal dictionary definition of veto it is the power to prevent enactment of legislation passed by a legislature.  So if the assembly in this case has not passed something I don't see where there exists anything to veto.  

But I'm not a member of your society, so my free advice is worth every penny.

[Josh Martin]

I would note that the extent of the information provided to us at this time is that "Our organization's constitution gives veto power to the President, who is the presiding officer."

While I concur with my colleagues that the manner in which a veto ordinarily works in governments is that the veto may not be issued preemptively, we have no information on the language used in the organization's constitution defining how this power works in this organization. So without additional facts, I don't think we can reach any conclusions as to whether, in this organization, the President may preemptively veto a motion.

I would add that in this case, the organization has granted the veto power to the person who serves as the assembly's presiding officer. In governments, the executive with veto authority generally does not serve as a member (let alone the presiding officer) of the assembly. It seems to me this difference conceivably creates a mechanism for how a "preemptive" veto could work - that is, the presiding officer could issue a veto of a motion when it is made. This seems somewhat comparable to an Objection to Consideration of a Question.

Finally, I would suggest that if the organization's rules on this matter are unclear, it would be prudent to amend them for clarity in the future.

Edited November 5, 2022 at 07:31 PM by Josh Martin

[Atul Kapur]

On 11/5/2022 at 3:27 PM, Josh Martin said:

we have no information on the language used in the organization's constitution defining how this power works in this organization. . . . I don't think we can reach any conclusions as to whether, in this organization, the President may preemptively veto a motion.

Exactly why my responses were in two parts: The first was what could strictly be supported by the information given; the second was a venture into personal opinion.

[Alicia Percell, PRP]

Agreeing with my colleagues that if posters don't show us the verbatim relevant language from the bylaws, we're left trusting that it has been accurately characterized.  So to all readers of the forums, not just to this post, use the copy/paste features to show us the actual language.  There are sometimes important words in there that we need to see, and things that are obvious to us when we see it may not have been obvious to you when you read it.

RONR is a will-of-the-majority system, and though your bylaws can certainly be written to give one person unilateral veto power of some sort, my instinct is that it's probably not a great idea to do that unless it is limited to particular topics related to their office.  That really makes me wonder whether there are other parts of such a bylaw which might limit its applicability.

[Dan Honemann]

On 11/5/2022 at 6:08 PM, Alicia Percell, PRP said:

Agreeing with my colleagues that if posters don't show us the verbatim relevant language from the bylaws, we're left trusting that it has been accurately characterized.  So to all readers of the forums, not just to this post, use the copy/paste features to show us the actual language.  There are sometimes important words in there that we need to see, and things that are obvious to us when we see it may not have been obvious to you when you read it.

The trouble is that it is often the case that a proper understanding of the meaning of some provision in a set of bylaws is entirely dependent upon a proper understanding of what is said in a totally different section in the bylaws, so that it is seldom safe to rely solely upon even an exact quote of a particular provision.

The very best answer to a question of this kind is the one provided by Mr. Elsman. 

[Guest Dave Kelly]

Atul,

Thank you, that is what I thought. The constitution does not address a pre-emptive veto but, before I advised him he could do it, I wanted to see what RONR had to say. I couldn't find anything in my copy and I wanted to make sure I was not missing something.

 

I appreciate everyone's thoughts and input. They were very helpful