USPSA Bylaws

[omnia1911]

The proposed change to this bylaw should be reconsidered.

Proposed:

The President shall appoint the Vice President from among the currently elected

Area Directors

or DNROI for a one-year term, beginning each January. The office of Vice President shall have no vote.

This will open up the possibility of a President appointing an AD, along with an AD's favorable vote to a president's agenda, to the VP position. The VP salary could be used as a tool to influence the BOD's business. Though the VP position alone has no vote, the combined AD/VP position does.

This change also comes mighty close to violating bylaw 5.2, if not actually doing so. How will an AD/VP clearly delineate between AD and VP duties when doing the business of USPSA?

The VP appointment is subject to the ratification of the BOD. Isn't it a conflict of interest to have an AD vote on his own VP appointment?

An AD jointly holding the President's position has its problems too. Would a jointly held AD/P position have two votes on the BOD? How would you break a tie BOD vote if this were the case?

[bgary]

With respect, you're looking at the proposed change backwards. The change being proposed is

The President shall appoint the Vice President from among the currently elected Area Directors or DNROI for a one-year term, beginning each January. The office of Vice President shall have no vote.

The current bylaw says that the President can choose the VP from among the ADs. There were two thoughts behind this:

-- the AD was elected by at least part of the USPSA membership, so if he/she needs to step in to fill the role of President, at least there was a representative/democratic process involved in that person becoming President, and

-- the ADs are already at the Board meetings, so there is no net cost increase associated with having one of them be the VP. In the old bylaws (several years ago), the President could appoint pretty much anyone as VP.

The proposed change adds the D-NROI to the list of people that the President could appoint as VP. This satisfies the second goal, above (no net cost increase for Board meetings), but it potentially means that someone could serve as President who has never been elected by the membership.

Two other notes

-- the VP position does not have a vote, so there is no "shift in power" if an AD serves as VP, and

-- the VP position does not carry a salary. the salary was moved to the D-NROI position a couple of years ago.

Last, the bylaws say a person cannot serve as President and AD. If an AD became president, he/she would have to appoint a new person (according to bylaws) to fill the AD term until a new AD is installed by election.

$.02

Bruce

[dajarrel]

Thank You Mr. Gary

dj