Committees

[abcdave]

First a little backround -

Officers and Directors for our local board are elected for 2 year terms - 1/2 on "even" years and 1/2 on "odd" years.

Our Mandatory Policy Manual (from National HQ) states that we have one Standing Committee and

"1. The president may establish other committees, with board approval, as needed.

2. The President has the authority to remove committee members from president appointed committees.

3. Other committees may be, but are not limited to:......"

So the president made a list of committees including the duties and responsibilities for each. This was submitted to the Board for approval - the board approved and these were added into the Policy Manual. When a new president was elected, he immediately declared that we no longer have any of these committees - he presented a new list of committees to the board - NOT for approval, but to ask for volunteers for any of these new committees. Each of these committees performs a task that repeats - is this considered "on-going"? For example, we have an annual dinner event - after the event, is the committee that organized the event considered a "special committee" because the event is over - or a "standing committee" because we will be having another one? Can the new president unilaterally declare that the committees from last year were all "special committees" that no longer exist?

[Rob Elsman]

First a little backround -

Officers and Directors for our local board are elected for 2 year terms - 1/2 on "even" years and 1/2 on "odd" years.

Our Mandatory Policy Manual (from National HQ) states that we have one Standing Committee and

"1. The president may establish other committees, with board approval, as needed.

2. The President has the authority to remove committee members from president appointed committees.

3. Other committees may be, but are not limited to:......"

So the president made a list of committees including the duties and responsibilities for each. This was submitted to the Board for approval - the board approved and these were added into the Policy Manual. When a new president was elected, he immediately declared that we no longer have any of these committees - he presented a new list of committees to the board - NOT for approval, but to ask for volunteers for any of these new committees. Each of these committees performs a task that repeats - is this considered "on-going"? For example, we have an annual dinner event - after the event, is the committee that organized the event considered a "special committee" because the event is over - or a "standing committee" because we will be having another one? Can the new president unilaterally declare that the committees from last year were all "special committees" that no longer exist?

I think the correct answer has more to do with the interpretation of the governing documents than anything in RONR.

[Gary c Tesser]

Agreeing with Mr Elsman, I will say this ...

1. While, according to your MPM's Rule2, the new president has the authority to depopulate the appointed committees, effectively making them powerless, I see nothing that allows him to dissolve them altogether. That might be silly, since it would encumber your organization with stacks of empty committees on the books, but there it is.

1 (a). And, nothing in RONR gives a president the authority to do any of this. As Mr Elsman might be implying, they're your rules: you tell us.

2. I see nothing in the quoted rules that allows a president to establish new committees without the board's approval.

3. I don't think Robert's Rules will tell you whether these are special or standing committees. It depends on how your organization wants to look at them, and especially on how they function. If each of these annual events takes the event committee a couple days to set up and wrap up afterwards, it will more likely quack like a special committee. But if the committee can work on the event for the previous ten months, it can be better viewed as a standing committeee.

4. Not Robert's Rules, nor any of your rules that I have seen (please don't post more of them: it won't help), give your president any unilateral power to dissolve the committees, special or not. But see "silly," above.