Below are my comments on v2 of the draft minutes from the July 27-28 LNC
meeting.
The email transmitting v2 again portrays the Secretary's assertion that
these are eligible for the LNC's auto-approval policy. Again I will note
that the policy (PM 1.02.6) establishes that to be eligible for
auto-approval, "Draft minutes shall be mailed or emailed to all LNC Members
not more than 15 days after each meeting." The meeting ended on July 28,
so 15 days after would have been August 12th. The email list and I
received the first draft on August 14. The Secretary set the 15-day
comment deadline relative to that same August 14th date. When I previously
noted that was too late for auto-approval, the Secretary's response was
that they had been sent a few moments before midnight, yet that still would
have been on August 13, which is too late for the auto-approval process to
apply.
SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTS
p. 6, under "Opportunity for Public Comment", I think to be fair to Jeff
Hewitt and how this will read to someone who wasn't there, if the joke is
to be included in the minutes at all, the text should say "Jeff Hewitt
jokingly moved to adjourn until the following morning..." Similarly on p.
12 under "Chair's Report", I think to be fair to Jeff in how a reader
perceives it, the text should note his motion to adjourn was done jokingly.
p. 6, under "Attendance", we often note when the listed participants
arrived following the call-to-order. My notes indicate that the Region 2
alternate arrived at approximately 11:30 a.m. on Saturday.
p. 7 references an appendix of those who signed onto the attendance roster,
but do you also wish to list others who are known to have attended? Wes
Benedict was at times present, though he is not listed in the appendix
presumably because he did not sign in.
p. 12, under "Chair's Report", after the Chair, "further highlighted the
tremendous work that Ms. Daugherty did at FreedomFest..." we could add that
the LNC gave her a standing ovation.
p. 18, under "Population of Awards Committee" we informally punted a motion
by reading the room, ignoring the original motion, and instead taking up a
different motion. Because we did that, it looks like the minutes are
missing the explanation of how we disposed of a motion. It says, "Mr.
Smith moved to suspend the rules and elect these five (5) candidates by
acclamation." It never says what happened to that motion. It goes
directly to, "Mr. Phillips moved to suspend the rules and elect the three
(3) nominated LNC members by acclamation..." Perhaps in between it would
help to explain that, "Based on an observation by Ms. Bilyeu that the LNC
has not yet seen the submitted applications of the unfamiliar candidates,
the Chair read the sense of the body and no one objected when Mr. Phillips
introduced an alternate motion and it was taken up instead of the Smith
motion."
p. 19, under "Audit Committee", it refers readers to appendices J-2 and J-3
for the Board Disclosure Letter and the Management Letter. There is a
reason that these documents were not emailed to the public email list but
were instead only provided on paper in person. These documents are not
published because their nature can at times reveal weaknesses in internal
controls, which could allow someone to take advantage of them. I thought
the audit firm usually put a "confidential" label on at least one of them,
but Ms. Fox may have just mentioned it to us in person. The end of each of
these documents says that it is intended only for use by the board and the
management team, and no others. These should not be put into public
documents without an LNC decision to disclose them.
p. 21, regarding the sentence, "Mr. Hagan moved to amend criterion number
three (3) by adding 'and must not be registered as a member of another
Party'" I believe this is an inaccurate representation of the motion. That
phrase was not to be added to the existing language of item 3, but it was
to replace the last portion of item 3, such that the full sentence would
read, "The candidate is legally qualified to hold the office and must not
be registered as a member of another Party."
p. 29, with my usual caveat that I don't believe extensive debate should be
included in the minutes, if it's going to be there then I would change the
description of my comments to be, "Ms. Mattson noted that there were
important gaps in this proposal such as: whether or not the $200,000
figure is gross or net of Mr. Sarwark's pay, any limitation on the number
of hours for which we could be charged, distinction between volunteer time
spent by an elected chair as opposed to paid fundraiser hours, and which
revenues would be counted as new fundraising specifically attributable to
the new paid effort as opposed to baseline party revenues which would occur
without a paid fundraiser."
p. 37, regarding the sentence, "The amendment PASSED by a show of hands
with a vote count of 10-3" - My notes show the vote total as 11-3, rather
than 10-3. I reviewed the audio to confirm that the chair's count was
stated as 11.
p. 41, my notes indicate that Mr. Sarwark resumed the chair at the point
following the sentence, "Without objection, Mr. Phillips moved to postpone
indefinitely" but before the section about timing of LNC committee
appointments. The gavel had been passed to Mr. Merced back on p. 39.
p. 41, regarding the sentence, "Without objection, Mr. Bishop-Henchman
moved that budget category 68-Candidates & Campaigns be increased..." - We
do not have a budget line 68, but the Candidates & Campaigns line is 60.
p. 70, in Secretary's report, email ballot 190410-1 does not include its
ending date of 04/13/19. It ended in fewer than 7 days because all of us
had voted.
p. 69-75, as I have noted in the Secretary's reports for previous meetings,
the vote tallies are reporting yes-no-abstain votes, but they only include
some of the abstentions rather than all of them. Express abstentions and
not casting a vote are both abstentions which should be counted together to
report how many people abstained.
EDITORIAL COMMENTS
There are a number of sentences which are just written awkwardly such that
the meaning is muddled. For instance:
p. 9, "Without objection, Mr. Hagan requested that ten (10) minutes be
added for a proposed Policy Manual amendment regarding functional
allocation of expenses to New Business without Previous Notice." It sounds
like a discussion of allocating expenses to an agenda category. Perhaps
rewording as "...Mr. Hagan requested that ten (10) minutes be added to New
Business without Previous Notice for discussion of a proposed Policy Manual
amendment regarding functional allocation of expenses."
Similarly, two sentences later on the same page could be more clearly
rewritten as, "...Ms. Harlos requested that ten (10) minutes be added to
New Business without Previous Notice for a discussion of..."
p. 9, I believe "gave notice" is technically incorrect terminology in the
sentence "...Ms. Harlos gave notice of her request to add this to the
November agenda." One gives notice of a motion, rather than an agenda item
request. Perhaps it is better written as "...Ms. Harlos requested to add
this to the November agenda."
p. 9, I believe the sentence "Ms. Harlos requested ten (10) minutes be
added on Sunday's agenda for approval of the March minutes" could provide a
more complete picture if the phrase, "with an updated draft to be provided
on Saturday night" were added to the end.
p. 13, the paragraph which begins, "Ms. Mattson questioned whether it was
appropriate to book..." would be more clear if the final phrase, "which
resulted in extensive discussion" were made into a separate sentence.
p. 14-16, there are two pages of minutes content which largely are
unnecessary duplication of the staff report in the appendix
p. 16, the paragraph which begins, "Mr. Bishop-Henchman moved to suspend
the rules..." is another awkwardly written sentence which sounds like the
email list might be temporarily for 10 minutes moved to Google, and we
might fund a request for 10 minutes. Perhaps it would be clearer to
instead write, "Mr. Bishop-Henchman moved to suspend the rules to add two
10-minute agenda items under New Business Without Previous Notice: moving
the LNC list to Google, and amending the budget to accommodate Apollo
Pazell's request for candidate support funding." See also 4 paragraphs
later for similar awkward phrasing.
p. 26, awkward language in a sentence which refers to "...not doing more to
retain her in this position for five (5) minutes" rather than discussing a
5-minute suspension of the rules to take up the subject.
p. 27, regarding, "Ms. Mattson moved a substitute motion to appoint..."
there is a missing comma which should appear here: "...until the next
quarterly LNC meeting, being eligible to receive..." The comma made it
into the amended version on p. 28.
-Alicia
On Thu, Aug 15, 2019 at 6:16 AM Caryn Ann Harlos via Lnc-business <
lnc-business(a)hq.lp.org> wrote:
> Attached are the V2 draft minutes from the July 27-28, 2019 LNC session.
> Suggestions from Dr. Lark (and from members Chuck Moulton and Joe Dehn) are
> incorporated. I also noted that there was a missing portion after regional
> reports and that has been added. This is the OCR'd compressed PDF version.
> In the following message I will send google links for the non-compressed
> OCR'd pdf and Word versions.
>
> Please note that the LNC has a policy which allows automatic approval (if
> no objection) under various time frames. See Policy Manual Section 1.02.6
> for the details of this process. Any requests for correction are due within
> 15 days, by August 29, 2019. After that time I will put out an updated
> draft which will become auto-approved absent a qualifying objection (which
> would generate a new set of deadlines or postpone approval until the next
> LNC meeting).
>
> Dr. Lark and Mr. Goldstein won the bounty hunt.
>
>
> * In Liberty,*
> * Personal Note: I have what is commonly known as Asperger's Syndrome
> (part of the autism spectrum). This can affect inter-personal
> communication skills in both personal and electronic arenas. If anyone
> found anything offensive or overly off-putting (or some other social faux
> pas) in an actual email, please contact me privately and let me know. *
>
