[Green-Rainbow] RE: Draft 2 of bylaws proposals (MSWORD) - CURRENT STATUS
Gil Obler
greengil at attbi.com
Sat Mar 9 14:11:01 EST 2002
Jamie -
I have not forgotten this. However, very little of it has gotten into
the proposal yet. I suggest that we get the Green-Rainbow proposals
done and then get these changes addressed at the following state
committee meeting.
1) Your language on multi-member districts did get into our purpose
section.
2) Your 8.1 revision: changing "Amending the by-laws" to "Amending the
by-laws between statewide conventions" should get addressed at the
summer state committee meeting. I think it would pass easily. We
can also try to do this as a friendly in two weeks, but only if
things are going well at that meeting.
3) Filling vacancies - We dropped our language about filling vacancies
among the state senatorial seats because we did not have consensus
and because we want to figure out just such a consistent and legal
process for vacancies among all types of seats as you propose. I
think that we should just sit down and work this out in the coming
months, with an eye towards the next few state committee meetings.
4) Feb 1st issue - The new 8.5.2 from the procedures committee takes
care of this issue.
5) 25% in the bylaws vs. seperate document - Although you are correct
about this, we did not do this. The reason is that we have already
had some complaints about the number of proposals, and did not
want to create more confusion by creating another seperate document.
We will just need to clean out the dates in 8.5.2 and 8.5.3 later on.
6) 8.2 and 8.9 - This will need to get looked at after the current
Green-Rainbow proposals. I do not forsee this as being controversial
once we are out of the woods.
7) section 9.17 - we have not resolved the issue over regional and
diversity reps in the adcom. We will need to try to sort this out
at the statecom meeting while trying to keep the number of seats
from growing too large.
Gil Obler
Fundraising Director, Mystic River Greens
Massachusetts Delegate, US Green Party
----------------------------------------------------------------------
email greengil at attbi.com
home (617)623-0582
cell (617)388-5445
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-----Original Message-----
From: Gil Obler [mailto:greengil at attbi.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 6:33 PM
To: 'Jamie O'Keefe'
Cc: 'procedures at massgreens.org'; 'Dan Keshet'; 'jeffo at massgreens.org';
'Green-Rainbow at massgreens.org'
Subject: RE: Draft 2 of bylaws proposals (MSWORD)
Thanks for your input Jamie. I will respond point by point.
> Purpose section - 3rd paragraph
>
> The point of multi-member districts is to implement a form of PR so
> that a
> diverse (in opinion, race, etc.) set of members is elected. So I
recommend
> changing the 1st sentence to read:
>
> Another important consideration is to maintain the proportionality of
> the state
> committee representatives to the general membership of the party and
maintain
> multi-member districts to increase the diversity of opinion of state
committee
> members.
I consider this a very friendly amendment and will recommend it to the
Green-Rainbow Future Committee as a friendly amendment.
> Proposed 8.1 Section - last bullet
>
> Just to make the state committees role in changing of the by-laws
> explicit
> change it to read:
>
> o Amending the by-laws between statewide conventions.
While I think that this is a very good idea, it is not related to the
mandate of the Green-Rainbow Future Committee. I therfore recommend that
this proposal be made seperately by the MGP procedure committee. I will
certainly support the passage of this change.
> Proposed 8.5 Section
>
> This section does not provide a consistent manner of filling vacant
> seats on
> the state committee. vacancies in the 4yr term seats can be filled by
2/3 of
> the state committee with no requirement of input from locals,
vacancies in PR
> seats must be filled by a county convention. I recommend that we pull
both of
> these sections out into a new 8.5.x that outlines how to fill
vacancies.
>
> Candidates must be nominated in writing by:
>
> o state senate district seats - the larger of one local or 1/3 of
> locals in
> the district
>
> o county seats - the larger of one local or the number of locals
> divided by
> the number of seats in the county.
>
> The state committee can approve the addition of a new member using the
> normal
> decision making rules (i.e. consensus or 2/3 vote).
>
> All members may serve for two years or until the next regional
> convention or 29
> days after the presidential primary, whichever is shorter. Nominees
for
> unfilled seats shall be appointed prior to consideration of regular
business at
> any state committee meeting. (Probably needs to be reworded.)
Again, I recommend to the Green-Rainbow Future Committee that this be
adopted as friendly.
> Section 8.5.2 - Item numbered 1.
>
> Since we are dependent on when the sec of state decides to cut a disk
> of the
> voters, I would not recommend having us decide on Feb 1st as the cut
off date
> for being a voter to be counted toward computing the distribution of
PR seats.
> Maybe something a little vaguer such as we have to get the list of
voters by
> Feb 1st.
This language came from the current Green bylaws as modified by the
State Committee. I therefore have no objection to changing this, but
would defer to the MGP procedures committee on this.
> Section 8.5.3 - Paragraph 4, last sentence
>
> Do we need to set the diversity goal for 2002 in the by-laws (and thus
> have it
> remain in there until removed)? Can't we just set it in a separate
document
> that isn't actually part of the by-laws? I don't have any objection
to having
> this, I just prefer not to put things in that are dependent on a year.
I do not object to removing this from the bylaws and just setting the
number to 25% in a seperate proposal. I recommend this as friendly to
the Green-Rainbow Future Committee.
> Section 8.9
>
> This section should be merged with Section 8.2 for ease of reference.
This came from the existing bylaws. We merely renumbered. I again defer
this question to the MGP procedures committee.
> Section 9.16
>
> Let me be clear that I don't have an issue with this change in as much
> as I did
> not want to have any non-role oriented seats on the administrative
committee
> (i.e. only the seven originally defined) when we first approved it.
that said
> I have a few concerns:
>
> 1. While reference is made to the need for diversity reps to keeping
> state
> committee members and thus locals and members informed of the
decisions of the
> administrative committee, it isn't exact. There are likely to be
regions that
> have no individual keeping tabs on the adcom, and others that have too
many.
>
> 2. Regional reps had many duties and the diversity reps have even
> more. This
> seems quite burdensome.
>
> 3. Who can serve in these seats and how do we decide? Women only,
> people of
> color only, queer only? It isn't specified.
>
> 4. How do we remove diversity members of the adcom? The same way we
> do with
> other adcom members? How do we fill vacancies?
BTW, this is back to 9.17 in the latest version (see statecom website).
I will work with you all and the Green-Rainbow Future Committee to try
to address these concerns by Saturday.
Gil Obler
Fundraising Director, Mystic River Greens
Massachusetts Delegate, US Green Party
----------------------------------------------------------------------
email greengil at attbi.com
home (617)623-0582
cell (617)388-5445
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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