Ex-Officio Board Member Privileges

[Guest David Jeffers]

The by-laws of an organization I belong to defines its Board of Trustees as follows:

There shall be ten voting members:

(4)President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer

(6) At-Large Members serving rotating three year terms

The Past President as Ex-Officio with no voting rights.

The question is...does the fact that the Past President (Ex-Officio) member of the Board have the same rights and privileges as the other 10 members even though they cannot vote, i.e., can they, for example, make a motion for the Board to discuss and vote on???

Thanks!

[Mr. J!]

The by-laws of an organization I belong to defines its Board of Trustees as follows:

There shall be ten voting members:

(4)President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer

(6) At-Large Members serving rotating three year terms

The Past President as Ex-Officio with no voting rights.

The question is...does the fact that the Past President (Ex-Officio) member of the Board have the same rights and privileges as the other 10 members even though they cannot vote, i.e., can they, for example, make a motion for the Board to discuss and vote on???

Thanks!

The rules in RONR are written with the assumption that all members have the same basic rights. Your rules are different, at least with respect to this particular member. You will have to decide what your own rules mean, after reading them carefully and in context.

[Gary Novosielski]

The question is...does the fact that the Past President (Ex-Officio) member of the Board have the same rights and privileges as the other 10 members even though they cannot vote, i.e., can they, for example, make a motion for the Board to discuss and vote on???

Thanks!

According to RONR, members "ex-officio" have, by default, all of the same rights as any other member. Your bylaws can restrict all of these rights, some of these rights, or none of these rights.

In general, when interpreting language that enumerates some things but not others, it is presumed that the things not mentioned were intentionally not mentioned. So if your bylaws restrict some rights, but do not mention others, the presumption is that they did not intend to restrict the others.

But these are general rules. Your organization needs to interpret the true meaning of your bylaws, and that can only be done by considering them as a whole.