[Lnc-business] Email Ballot 2017-06: Move Archive Records to CO

Sam Goldstein goldsteinatlarge at gmail.com
Thu Mar 30 07:31:10 EDT 2017


I vote Yes.



Sam Goldstein
Libertarian National Committee
Member at Large
8925 N Meridian St, Ste 101
Indianapolis IN 46260
317-850-0726 Phone
317-582-1773 Fax

On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 12:11 AM, Daniel Hayes <danielehayes at icloud.com>
wrote:

> I vote "YES".
>
> Daniel Hayes
> LNC At Large Member
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Mar 29, 2017, at 7:34 PM, Brett Bittner <brett.bittner at lp.org> wrote:
>
> I vote Aye on email ballot 2017-06.
>
> Brett
>
> **This message sent from my phone. Please excuse any typos.
>
> On Mar 29, 2017 20:31, "Caryn Ann Harlos" <carynannharlos at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> To supplement the other update and relevant to this motion: I now have
>> two volunteers willing to dedicate an entire week block of time if the
>> records are in the Denver area to work on the project.  This is with
>> minimal word of mouth from person(s) who read the LNC list.  I believe I
>> would get several regular crews.  LPCO already has a commitment to its
>> history (unfortunately some records list due to past neglect prior to my
>> time and were soiled by vermin).  I am a prolific volunteer recruiter when
>> I need them.
>>
>> -Caryn Ann
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 3:19 PM Caryn Ann Harlos <
>> carynannharlos at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Joshua, any historical work with a budget is going to require
>>> prioritization which requires knowing what we have.  If it were just the
>>> records in the basement, that would not be an issue (another volunteer I
>>> found just spent two more days there - total volunteer time on the project
>>> now totals likely over a 100 hours between inventory work and LPedia
>>> database fix issues - IOW significant volunteer has already been expended -
>>> we have been effective).  It is the storage facility records that are the
>>> issue.  If they remain there, one possible avenue to keep staff uninvolved
>>> as much as possible is to grant me the key to designate to a certain core
>>> group of volunteers in the area to be determined.  I am confident that
>>> whatever is decided, we will make the most effective, cheapest, least
>>> intrusive means possible.  As I said, I will have to spend vacation time in
>>> VA this summer if they are not moved.  I do not require any staff
>>> oversight, but that money could go to the Party rather than Southwest and
>>> Marriot.
>>>
>>> And no, this year that expense will not grow (and next year is a
>>> different budget discussion).  I am convinced it is too high by at least
>>> $1000 (unless salary is way more than I figure in my head - which of course
>>> would be a confidential discussion).  And I want to remind everyone that I
>>> already raised nearly $1200 and promised an additional $1500 if the move
>>> was approved.  So if I am right (and I am pretty convinced I am) that the
>>> $9000 figure is correct, taking away the pledge and the amount raised, we
>>> are at $6800.  Which is only $1800 more than the LNC expected already to
>>> come out of the budget (and most certainly money will be raised toward
>>> that) in additional to the free professional labor.  Putting aside that
>>> this is my project and I have a bias, we need to be supporting these
>>> volunteer initiative small projects.  I could wax long about that, but I
>>> will save it to not bore everyone to death with this post.  But you are
>>> right, we have spent more discussing a relatively trivial amount with a
>>> potential result of volunteered time, product, and good will way beyond the
>>> amount.  For once, I am nearly talked out - miracle of miracle.  I have
>>> never tried so hard to give away so many hours of my professional time over
>>> several years.
>>>
>>> I don't think there is much btw that falls in some third category. I do
>>> think that is somewhat of a false premise.  I broadly went through records
>>> in the facility and it was not that category (membership slips should be
>>> scanned IMHO - whether they are published is a different decision).  There
>>> are filing cabinets in the basement which do, but which have always been
>>> outside our scope.
>>>
>>> I find it interesting that it seems there is a critique that the
>>> original scanning budget has not been spent - it seems my prudence and
>>> caution is being used as a point of suspicion rather than good stewardship
>>> which rather reminds me of government budgeting.  I could have spent it in
>>> a week.  I am determined to squeeze it for every penny but it seems that
>>> this suggestion would have had a lot less discussion if I were
>>> irresponsible.  I did get some advice to just spent it right away being
>>> cautioned about this very thing.  I don't operate that way.  I treat OPM
>>> (other people's money) as sacred.  I have spent my own money on misc items
>>> rather than nickel or diming this.  Volunteers have spent days from their
>>> vacation time - neither of them lived by HQ, one was further away in VA and
>>> the other was all the way from AZ.
>>>
>>> PS:  I have a volunteer willing to commit a full week of time to
>>> assisting with these records,, if they are moved to CO.
>>>
>>> -Caryn Ann
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 12:48 PM, Joshua Katz <
>>> planning4liberty at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Well, let me say this:  the debate on this motion has entirely changed
>>> my view on the questions involved.  One thing I am gleaning from the
>>> debate, though, is that different people are talking about entirely
>>> different issues and concerns, and several of those issues are not
>>> well-framed enough to be answered in a yes/no manner.  For a while, I
>>> thought the debate was largely off-track because it was getting into the
>>> weeds, but now I realize that some of those weeds are LNC concerns, and
>>> others, despite ideally not being LNC concerns, have become such due to a
>>> lack of other governance mechanisms.  I will attempt here to lay out what I
>>> see as the issues being discussed - largely independently - and suggest
>>> that the question be narrowed.
>>>
>>> *The Stuff*
>>>
>>> We have piles of stuff, is what I'm gathering.  We passed a motion a
>>> while ago, creating the Historical Committee, which I think was implicitly
>>> premised on the idea that the stuff falls into two groups:  garbage, and
>>> things we wish to preserve for historical value.  At least, that was my
>>> implicit premise.  Now we're finding, though, that there's a third group:
>>> things we wish to preserve for legal/business purposes.  This suggests to
>>> me that our handling of the previous motion might not have been sufficient
>>> because of this faulty premise.  So we're left with a broad question:  how
>>> to handle all this stuff.  I think a lot of us thought our previous motion
>>> would take care of that, but perhaps it will not if this third category
>>> exists.
>>>
>>> *Financial Considerations*
>>>
>>> This is what I originally thought this motion was all about - spending
>>> money.  In particular, it seems to me that this motion is based on the idea
>>> that the money we previously allocated was not sufficient.  This gives me
>>> independent concerns:  if the expected cost of a project doubles in a
>>> matter of weeks, experience shows us that it is likely to continue rising.
>>> I also would like to know how we learned this - since none of the
>>> originally allocated money has been spent, and the proposed increase is
>>> exactly the amount allocated, why can't the allocated money be spent to do
>>> this?  While much discussion has been about the proposed object, the motion
>>> seems to me only to authorize money, and to take for granted that the
>>> moving can be done by staff as long as the money is there.
>>>
>>> Now, assuming there's some other use for the original $5k, I don't think
>>> what Wes has told us suggests that we can do this project for either $5k or
>>> $10k.  I think it suggests that the cost of the project is (at least) $10k,
>>> once staff time is included, as it should be.  A functionally allocated
>>> budget would have made this clear, whereas with our current budgeting
>>> procedures it has to come out in discussion and remain a little fuzzy, but
>>> that's how I'm reading it.  We can spend the additional $5k in cash, or we
>>> can spend it in lost staff time.  That brings up a new question, then -
>>> since we approved the project at $5k, do we still think it is worth doing
>>> at $10k?  I think that's perfectly well-framed to be answered with a yes/no
>>> decision.  However, what is less clear is what happens if we say no.  One
>>> option is that things would remain at status quo, and we'd continue paying
>>> for storage space.  Another is to throw everything out.  There are probably
>>> other options, too.
>>>
>>> *The Value of Things in Storage*
>>>
>>> Focusing for a moment on the items of business/legal significance, I
>>> think that, if a clean-up project does not proceed, they might as well be
>>> in the trash.  It is extremely unlikely that things can be found when
>>> needed, and it would be healthier, when such a concern comes up, to be able
>>> to say cheerfully "yep, it's gone," than to have a vague notion that it may
>>> exist in a large pile of stuff, buried under furniture.
>>>
>>> Turning to the historical items, I confess to being less interested in
>>> these than others are, but I take the result of the vote to suggest that we
>>> find it important, and so we're unlikely to think they're worth preserving
>>> at $5k, but worth throwing out if it would cost $10k.  In the grand scheme
>>> of things, $5k is not much money, and it's believed that there are
>>> donations available to support much of this.  In my mind, though, such
>>> donations are currently speculative - and I can speculate that costs will
>>> continue rising.  So let's ignore both speculations and assume we'll be
>>> spending the money out of what's currently in our budget - it's still
>>> rather small and not worth much of the time spent discussing it.  Heck,
>>> it's the amount we let the chair spend freely - which raises one possible
>>> solution.  More generally, it raises the idea that we should be freer with
>>> allocating budgets to projects without involving ourselves in the questions
>>> of how the money is spent.  Personally, I find it baffling that we turn
>>> over the vast majority of our budget to staff, yet insist on weird control
>>> mechanisms for small portions - putting the most control on money to be
>>> spent by committees, largely populated by board members.  I have no idea
>>> why we single out budget access, for instance, for EC control (why not, at
>>> least, control by the people directing ballot access?), but leave half the
>>> budget in Compensation.  But then, I don't understand many things about the
>>> world.
>>>
>>> *Budgetary Impact*
>>>
>>> That said, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, when
>>> donations are available for a given project, it is not always clear if they
>>> will increase total revenue, or simply be taken out of other giving the
>>> same people might otherwise have planned.  I suspect the answer is
>>> somewhere in the middle - a $10k project, fully funded by donations, will
>>> not cost us $10k, but also will not cost us $0, all things considered.
>>>
>>> *Why is There a Pile of Stuff?*
>>>
>>> I think Wes has well explained this one - people are afraid to throw
>>> things out.  A few years ago, I was elected Secretary of my fire
>>> department.  I went through old minutes and found that all correspondence
>>> was there - i.e. Christmas cards, invitations to Climb for Life, for
>>> decades.  This doesn't make it particularly easy to do the project I was
>>> engaged in - no one had kept records of standing rules, so I was attempting
>>> to reconstruct them from old minutes.  (A fun story for anyone who says "I
>>> don't see what's wrong with including discussion in the minutes" or who
>>> fails to see why it is important to record the actual language of the
>>> motion.)  Anyway, with a custom going back decades, it's hard to be the one
>>> who decides to break it.  The solution is a document retention policy,
>>> which we should come up with.  I will move in Pittsburgh that we appoint a
>>> committee to recommend one.
>>>
>>> *How to Throw Things Out*
>>>
>>> Although we have agreed that the LNC will make this decision, based on
>>> this discussion, I am questioning the wisdom of that move.  I think if a
>>> committee is going through this material, and if we have adopted such a
>>> policy, that committee should be free to throw things out within that
>>> policy.  Currently, as the Secretary notes, making these calls would take a
>>> good amount of expertise with the specifics of the materials.  With a
>>> document retention plan in place, I don't think it will.  I think it would
>>> be crazy for the LNC to make document by document decisions, personally.
>>> Let's set some rules about what sorts of things we want to keep, and then
>>> let volunteers have at it.
>>>
>>> *Purpose of Historical Committee*
>>>
>>> As the Secretary notes, we appointed a historical committee, not a
>>> clean-up committee.  If it turns out that cleaning up is necessary before
>>> the historical work can be done, we need to decide if the historical
>>> committee is the right committee for that purpose, or if something else
>>> needs to be done first.
>>>
>>> Joshua A. Katz
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 10:36 PM, Caryn Ann Harlos <
>>> carynannharlos at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Alicia,
>>>
>>> My recommendations will be primarily about duplicates.  I do believe I
>>> am experienced enough to determine a duplicate.  I also undertook a similar
>>> (obviously smaller scale but in principle the same) project already in
>>> Colorado (http://www.lpcolorado.org/archives).
>>>
>>> The rest would be done via inventory and in consultation with more
>>> experienced Party members.
>>>
>>> I do not have experience in years, but I have experience in diving in
>>> more deeply than persons with twenty years of experience have done.
>>> Further CO has a wide breath of available persons to volunteer.
>>>
>>> Right  now there is no danger of anyone's experience because it simply
>>> isn't being done, and unless another person with the passion I have for the
>>> topic appears, it likely will not in any forseeable future.  It hasn't so
>>> far.
>>>
>>> I respectfully submit that making recommendations is not complicated and
>>> I believe I have proven my understanding on historical artifacts.
>>>
>>> -Caryn Ann
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 9:26 PM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Starchild,
>>>
>>> My concerns are not about the city in which the analysis is done, but
>>> about the depth of experience of the person analyzing the contents in order
>>> to characterize them for the decision maker(s).
>>>
>>> -Alicia
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Starchild <sfdreamer at earthlink.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Alicia,
>>>
>>> If there were an amendment or second motion that none of the materials
>>> to be sent to Colorado be discarded without an elected or appointed member
>>> of the party leadership gives the okay, would that  allay your concerns? Or
>>> perhaps a motion/amendment saying certain categories of things can't be
>>> discarded, period? Having seen the kind of stuff that's sometimes been left
>>> behind and thrown away after LP conventions – current outreach materials,
>>> unused office supplies, etc. – not to mention stuff being deleted from our
>>> website, old meeting minutes and other important records apparently having
>>> been thrown out by people at various times, etc., I share your concern that
>>> things might get thrown out which would better be saved.
>>>
>>> Where we may possibly see things differently is that I don't perceive
>>> there being a greater risk of this occurring in Colorado than in
>>> Alexandria. The discarding of minutes and other important past materials
>>> presumably took place in the D.C. area. More recently, Wes mentioned in a
>>> recent message that he discarded some stuff, and although I trust there
>>> were no minutes among those materials, there wasn't a lot of detail
>>> provided about precisely what they *did* include, and I can't help
>>> wondering whether anything was discarded that I personally might have kept.
>>> I might have the same concern upon hearing of stuff discarded in Colorado,
>>> of course, but I wouldn't be any *more* concerned.
>>>
>>> Love & Liberty,
>>>                                 ((( starchild )))
>>> At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee
>>>                               (415) 625-FREE
>>>                                 @StarchildSF
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mar 26, 2017, at 2:16 PM, Alicia Mattson wrote:
>>>
>>> The discussion on this thread paints the motion in a very different
>>> light for me.  I want to take a step back and put this in context.
>>>
>>> The motion adopted by email ballot to create this committee included the
>>> following scope description:
>>>
>>> "The LNC establishes a Historic Preservation Committee to help preserve
>>> and publish historical documents of the party and to manage LPedia."
>>>
>>> The goal is to preserve and publish things of historical value.
>>>
>>> This motion suggests that the newly-requested funds will be used:
>>>
>>> "to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the
>>>
>>> historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site
>>>
>>> storage facility to a location in Colorado..."
>>>
>>> That to me sounds like the materials in question are of historical
>>> value, and it thus warrants the expenditure to preserve them.
>>>
>>> What we're learning, though, is that possibly the vast majority of this
>>> material is trash, and we're paying thousands of dollars to ship trash to
>>> Colorado to be thrown away there.
>>>
>>> This is really more of a document destruction project than a historical
>>> preservation project, though along the way it will likely find a few
>>> historical documents worth preserving.
>>>
>>> We created a Historic Perservation Committee, rather than a Basement
>>> Cleanout Committee, and they're very different tasks.
>>>
>>> I would be comfortable with volunteers in Colorado taking things deemed
>>> to have historic value and scanning them for preservation, or making them
>>> available for silent auction fundraising, etc.
>>>
>>> I am not comfortable with volunteers in Colorado who have no experience
>>> in operations of our headquarters essentially making decisions about what
>>> documents get thrown away.
>>>
>>> The reason I spent a day in the Watergate dungeon (I think it was in the
>>> fall of 2011) digging through that material is because I was looking for
>>> some records that should have been preserved in perpetuity, but *someone
>>> who didn't understand their importance apparently threw them out*. They
>>> actually had very high value for legal reasons.
>>>
>>> As pretty as it sounds to have a team of volunteers in the birthplace of
>>> the LP building historical archives, a person's Colorado residence doesn't
>>> grant them magical knowledge of what business records ought to be kept and
>>> which ones ought to be thrown away.
>>>
>>> I realize that you say that the LNC will ultimately decide which things
>>> get tossed, but the quality of the LNC's decision depends heavily on the
>>> description of the records we are given.  If a volunteer describes to us
>>> that a box contains miscellaneous receipts, it's one thing if it's
>>> 15-year-old receipts for office supplies that have long since been used up,
>>> but it's another if the receipts are for equipment still in use today and
>>> maybe still under warranty.  If a volunteer describes to us that a box
>>> contains old email correspondence with a state chair, it's one thing if the
>>> conversation was, "I look forward to seeing you at the convention", but
>>> it's another thing if the conversation was relaying facts about a situation
>>> that is the subject of a lawsuit.
>>>
>>> If the person looking at the records doesn't really understand the
>>> context of the records, how can they give us the key information we need to
>>> make an informed decision about which ones to throw away?
>>>
>>> This is not a project that should be undertaken by people with no
>>> understanding of our party operations.
>>>
>>> There may also be old employment records with sensitive personnel
>>> information, social security numbers, etc., and those shouldn't just be
>>> passed around among random volunteers.
>>>
>>> I have no objection to paying for the committee chair to make a trip to
>>> the storage facility, spend a few days sorting through it to find items of
>>> historical value, and then shipping those 10 boxes to Colorado for further
>>> processing.  That is within the function of a Historic Preservation
>>> Committee.
>>>
>>> I do have objection to shipping our trash-mixed-with-important-records
>>> across the country for people who don't understand what is valuable and
>>> what isn't to give us vague descriptions which will be the basis of
>>> uninformed decisions for destroying our records.  This document destruction
>>> task is not what I had in mind when the Historic Preservation Committee was
>>> created.
>>>
>>> For several years our outside auditors have been urging us to adopt
>>> document retention policies (and also whistleblower policies, but that's
>>> another subject).  I think it was two terms ago near the end of that term
>>> that the Audit Committee proposed some starter language to try to get the
>>> ball rolling, but the LNC has not yet implemented anything.
>>>
>>> At minimum we need to establish how long certain records are to be kept
>>> such as employment records, financial records, membership certifications,
>>> and other categories.  These can be important to keep for legal reasons,
>>> for FEC compliance, etc.  Even after we make those policy decisions, I
>>> think the document maintenance has to be done by knowledgeable insiders
>>> rather than miscellaneous volunteers.
>>>
>>> -Alicia
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> *In Liberty,*
>>> *Caryn Ann Harlos*
>>> Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska,
>>> Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann.
>>> Harlos at LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos at LP.org>
>>> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado
>>> <http://www.lpcolorado.org>
>>> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus
>>> <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org>
>>> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee
>>>
>>> A haiku to the Statement of Principles:
>>> *We defend your rights*
>>> *And oppose the use of force*
>>> *Taxation is theft*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
>>>
>>> Lnc-business mailing list
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>> http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> *In Liberty,*
>>> *Caryn Ann Harlos*
>>> Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska,
>>> Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann.
>>> Harlos at LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos at LP.org>
>>> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado
>>> <http://www.lpcolorado.org>
>>> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus
>>> <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org>
>>> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee
>>>
>>> A haiku to the Statement of Principles:
>>> *We defend your rights*
>>> *And oppose the use of force*
>>> *Taxation is theft*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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