Committee Hierarchy

[TomL]

I live in a bundled golf community. Our Master Board consists of 9 elected members. Outside of the President, most members are the chairperson of a standing committee.

Recently, an ad-hoc committee was established by the President, voted on by the board, and is chaired by a Master Board member, to study the results of some changes to our tee time system. This committee developed a survey that they wish to send to the membership of the community. The golf committee chair claims that the Golf Committee has the right to refuse to send the survey out. 

The question is, can one committee override another committee? I can understand if it was created as a sub-committee of the golf committee, but in this case it was not. 

  Thanks,

      Tom

Edited June 16, 2023 at 02:43 AM by Shmuel Gerber
Edited the topic title

[Shmuel Gerber]

On 6/15/2023 at 9:15 PM, TomL said:

I live in a bundled golf community. Our Master Board consists of 9 elected members. Outside of the President, most members are the chairperson of a standing committee.

Recently, an ad-hoc committee was established by the President, voted on by the board, and is chaired by a Master Board member, to study the results of some changes to our tee time system. This committee developed a survey that they wish to send to the membership of the community. The golf committee chair claims that the Golf Committee has the right to refuse to send the survey out. 

The question is, can one committee override another committee? I can understand if it was created as a sub-committee of the golf committee, but in this case it was not. 

  Thanks,

      Tom

According to Robert's Rules, "A special committee may not be appointed to perform a task that falls within the assigned function of an existing standing committee." RONR (12th ed.) 50:10. Assuming there is nothing in your bylaws or applicable state or local law about the powers of committees, any conflict between committee functions should be resolved in favor of the standing committee — although presumably it would be up to the board to make this determination rather than the committee chairs. Each committee of the board should follow whatever instructions it receives from the board.

However, it's not clear to me which committee in this scenario is trying to override the other. If the Golf Committee is the one that would send out the survey, why would it would take instructions from a different committee? Even if the Golf Committee were not in charge of this area, that doesn't mean a different committee can issue instructions to the Golf Committee.

[TomL]

Thanks for your reply. To answer your question, it is the newly created ad-hoc committee that wants to send out the survey, the golf committee is the standing committee. The golf committee at their last meeting wanted to shut the survey down claiming that the survey must go through their committee before it can be sent out.

[Shmuel Gerber]

On 6/16/2023 at 12:09 AM, TomL said:

Thanks for your reply. To answer your question, it is the newly created ad-hoc committee that wants to send out the survey, the golf committee is the standing committee. The golf committee at their last meeting wanted to shut the survey down claiming that the survey must go through their committee before it can be sent out.

The golf committee may (or may not) have a valid claim that it was improper for the board to have empowered this ad hoc committee, but I believe the problem would ultimately have to be resolved by the board. (I am assuming that the golf committee is subordinate to the board, but perhaps that is an incorrect assumption.)

[Drake Savory]

I agree with Mr. Gerber and that it falls under the body's right to assign charges to a committee.  Assuming this survey does not fall under one of the charges given already to a committee, the motion would be something like, "I move to charge [pick one of the two committees] to send out a survey regarding tee times."

[TomL]

Last year (2022) we created a sub-committee of the golf committee to look at and recommend changes to our tee time system. It was a sub-committee of the golf committee and was compromised of members of the golf committee. Changes were recommended to the golf committee, which is a subordinate of the board, and then were brought to the Master Board for a vote. Some of the changes were implemented and some were not.

This year (2023) the President of the board created a new ad-hoc committee to study the impact of the changes. It was chaired by a member of the board and was comprised of members of the community, not just the golf committee.