Re: [Lnc-business] DRAFT MINUTES JULY 27-28, 2019 V2
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@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. *
Gracias I will take a look. And you are correct - I had multiple deadlines that weekend, and I mistakenly put in July 29 rather than July 28 as the last day of the meeting. With the vote counts, I keep getting contradictory feedback, so I am going to make a decision on how I am going to report and stick with it. In a past report, I included yes-no-abstain-and did not vote in the totals, and there was an objection to that. But you are correct, that such is a data point to be noted. I am going to go back to the YES-NO-ABSTAIN-DIDNOTVOTE format and leave it at that. I can't please everyone, but that to me seems to capture all the data. *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), please contact me privately and let me know. * On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 7:49 PM Alicia Mattson via Lnc-business < lnc-business@hq.lp.org> wrote:
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@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. *
participants (2)
-
Alicia Mattson -
Caryn Ann Harlos