Parliamentarian Joshua Lee Observation after the Annual Meeting

 Aloha,

First of all, I want to thank you all for the privilege and responsibility of serving as parliamentarian for the OBN meeting despite my inexperience. I also would like to ask for forgiveness to the extent my shortcomings hindered in any way the desired business conducted. I would like to offer a bit of clarification to some of the more complex issues with recommendations for moving forward.

In general, I think the OBN meetings would benefit from more instruction to the body about rules of order given that it appears many are unfamiliar. This would be particularly helpful for anyone helping facilitate given the following issues (numbers reference relevant sections in the current edition of Robert's Rules).

• Motions coming from a board or duly appointed committee require no second (4:11). Given that they were printed and part of the agenda, and a motion was made to accept the agenda, the motions were already on the floor for discussion. The representative speaking on the motion is not speaking to the motion ahead of time and then making a motion; rather, they are only allowed to speak to the motion because it is already moved and seconded.
• An alternative to this would have been to have an agenda section for each group to give a report and then make a motion from their report. Even in this case the motion would not need to be seconded assuming the group making the report was more than one person, but this does mean the representative would not be limited to the same 10 min. debate and 2x turns to speak rule since there is not a strict limit on the time to present a report.
• I recommended asking for a motion to limit debate when speaking with Pastor Abagon beforehand because he thought people should be limited to 3 min. rather than 10 min. Given that those initially speaking on each motion pretty much universally went over 3 minutes, I think it was wise to skip that.
• The motions written should be exactly as they would be stated if someone made them. While I didn't receive a packet, when Pastor Abagon showed me the printed motions, I do think some of them were probably not written well enough to serve as motions. For example, a recommendation to make a motion is not a motion, and motions should just describe the action to be taken. Additional information could certainly be included in the packet, but if advancing a motion from a committee vs. just presenting information and getting a motion from the floor, you want everyone to be clear what the actual motion is.
• The motion in the packet combined updating the constitution and by-laws. Since that is what was advanced in print and approved in the agenda, that was the motion on the floor.
• If wanting to consider each separately, someone would have to make a motion to divide the question (27:1), that would need to be seconded and voted on without debate (27:3).
• Someone speaking to a motion does not take over moderating and should not be taking questions directly from the floor. If members require more information, they should make a request for information (33:6) to the moderator. The moderator can give the floor to someone to answer the request if the question was directed to a specific member or someone else is better equipped to answer. Whoever answers should try to just answer the question without speaking for or against the motion as if they had the floor for debate.
• When James made the motion to postpone to the next meeting, I knew I read that postponing for so long was generally not allowed, but I did not know what to do if a motion like that was made. I let Pastor Abagon know about this restriction and that debate shouldn't continue, but apologize for not having clearer guidance beyond that. I've since looked up the rules in more detail and the specifics are found in section 14:6, which states that questions cannot be postponed beyond the end of a present session when meetings are held less frequently than quarterly.
• James also said he was making a motion to table, which is generally not debatable (17:3). That said, a motion to lay on the table is only valid to allow for a motion to be set aside to consider something else urgent (17:1). Since James was actually making a motion to postpone and just using the wrong terminology, it was correct to allow him to speak on his motion (14:4). At the times James strayed beyond speaking purely about rationale to delay, however, that should have been ruled out of order and he also should have technically been stopped at 10 minutes of speaking and/or the assembly asked if they would object to allowing him more time.
• I do believe the outcome still generally reflected the will of the assembly, especially given the small crowd around James after the meeting of people who were sharing they were going to speak against the motion but were glad the motion James made passed. If there was spirited debate, my belief is that the group would have adopted a motion to postpone indefinitely at a similar ratio just from the signs of controversy alone. While the specific motion James made should have been out of order, he could have made a motion to postpone indefinitely, which would have been in order and properly allowed him to include everything he shared, including comments speaking against the motion being considered noted in the bullet above (11:2).
• That all said, I do still regret and explicitly ask for your forgiveness for not having the fluency in the moment to more carefully advise how the moderator should end the debate and address a motion that technically should not have been allowed as stated. I think the ideal would have been to explain why the motion was not in order and explain the other options, which likely would have meant opening the floor to debate on postponing indefinitely. It is recognized as a valid strategy for people who have exhausted their opportunity to debate against a motion to open a motion to postpone indefinitely to get two extra shots at arguing against the main motion and test the strength of a motion (11:5).
• My main regret and the matter for which I most apologize is not interrupting to preserve the right for continued debate on postponing. Since a parliamentarian is generally only to speak to the moderator and not the assembly, I didn't think it was appropriate to interject after a vote was called, particularly with no point of order objection against taking the vote. Along with sharing the time restrictions up front, I would recommend reminding people that they have the ability to make a point of order (23:2) about anything that isn't going as expected and a parliamentary inquiry (33:3) if they have questions about how things should be done. Then we can be more confident that whatever happens has happened with the acceptance of the assembly even if some rules of order are not upheld to the letter.
• Given that the motion to postpone was put to a vote and passed, there are two options:
• You can treat it like a motion to postpone indefinitely, which would I would recommend because it just means treating it as if the motion failed this time around. This gives the Executive Committee a fresh slate to bring up the issue again in the future. Given that the motion was postponed, this is only an option if the Executive Committee is committed to bringing substantially the same motion back, otherwise the alternative below must be enacted.
• Alternately, you can treat the motion like an allowed motion to postpone for groups that meet more frequently. This means that it is automatically part of the general orders for the next meeting in the exact same form (i.e., is a motion that will be automatically put to the floor and does not need to be motioned and seconded). Given what I've noted above, I would strongly recommend the first action be for the executive board members to revise the motion language (per 12:7 requires second if not from committee, is debatable before vote) and divide the question (per 27:3 requires second if not from committee and no debate before vote). This requires a bit more complicated parliamentary maneuvering, which is why I favor the first option.

I hope all that is clear and helpful. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me if any further explanation is needed.

Regards,

Joshua Lee