Business Meeting Commentary

[kevin_standlee]

I spent today doing as little as possible. Aside from going down to the BASFA meeting tonight and putting in a 6 km walk after breakfast, I napped, read e-mail, and mostly didn't do a bunch of the things I thought I'd get done this Labor Day weekend. I did, however turn in my marked-up draft of the WSFS Business Meeting minutes. I now have a somewhat better idea of what happened during the Pluto Motion, thanks to pmcmurray's note-taking.

You think I'm joking? When you're presiding, it's often very difficult to follow the parliamentary big picture, because you have to concentrate on the immediate situation. It wasn't until I went back through the meeting minutes that I could elaborate on why I did the things I did, in footnotes. (Assuming Pat agrees to leave them in.)

I made one ruling that is technically against the letter of one rule, and one ruling that was flat-out wrong. The first, IMO correct, ruling was to allow a motion for the Previous Question when there was no debate time left. WSFS rules say this motion (which shuts off the debate and the making of lower-ranked subsidiary motions) is out of order with less than one minute of debate time left. Well, zero is obviously less than one, but I've ruled that the intent of the rule is to prevent wasting debate time, but you can't waste debate time when there is none left; however, you can pester the meeting with undebatable subsidiary motions like Amend and Refer to Committee. Therefore, Previous Question has a substantive purpose, which is to shut off those subsidiary motions and bring the question to a vote. Besides, as I've observed in footnotes, the motion Suspend the Rules has the same vote requirement (2/3) as Previous Question, so one could move to Suspend the Rules and move the Previous Question anyway.

The one I didn't get right was a point of order raised that there had been no substantive debate on the Pluto motion, on account of all of the debate time had been used up by technical arguments and subsidiary motions. I ruled the point not well taken on account of the Previous Question having been ordered; however, there is a WSFS rule that says that in such cases we're suppose to allocate two minutes substantive debate to each side of the question. Well, I'm not sure how well I could have enforced this rule in light of the bloodthirsty mood some of the members were in, but I think I would have liked to have seen some actual debate instead of a twenty minute display of parliamentary gamesmanship.

Comments

[rwl.livejournal.com]

No disrespect intended, but I think I'm glad I skipped the meeting and missed all that.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Unless you were there for the spectacle or to keep an eye on the others, you were better off for missing it. All of the important business (except formally accepting the results of Site Selection) happened at the previous two meetings.

Unfortunately, you can't just tell people, "All serious business is done, you can leave," because otherwise the "rump meeting" could conceivably do something crazy, like overturn the decisions taken at the previous meeting. So people stick around just to make sure we actually get to adjournment sine die, at which point you can't go back and WSFS stands adjourned for another year. (There's no provision for special meetings of WSFS.)

[tkunsman.livejournal.com]

Will the slight commentary in the constitution under Section 4.2 (switching to two years voting and voter eligibilty) disapear now?

[A Constitutional Amendment to Section 4.1.1 adopted at Noreascon 4 included the following proviso, which impacts Voter Eligibility for both Interaction in 2005 and L.A.con IV in 2006:] . . .

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

It's not commentary -- it was a limited-duration provision, and, consistent with WSFS practice, it will disappear from the Constitution. I have a draft of the 2006 Constitution (that is, the version as of the end of the 2006 meeting that will be used by the 2007 Worldcon), and the provision has been removed.

The limited-duration provision adopted by this year's Business Meeting is a bit more complicated. While the provision itself is only one sentence long, I and the Secretary have decided that it's prudent to include what will happen to the Constitution should the contemplated action happen in 2009 or 2010, including the exact wording that would replace the two new sections of the Constitution. Otherwise, there's a good chance we'd get to the 2009 Business Meeting and not be certain what we would be voting to restore.

[tkunsman.livejournal.com]

I and the Secretary have decided that it's prudent to include what will happen to the Constitution should the contemplated action happen in 2009 or 2010 . . .

I'm glad to hear this. I was actually thinking about asking somehing along these lines at the business meeting at LA Con, but forgot to ask.