[Lnc-business] The Libertarian Party only has 2 full-time staffers?!

[Nicholas Sarwark]

Starchild,

At present, the LNC has Wes Benedict, Eric Dixon, and Robert Kraus
full-time and based out of the Alexandria office. My understanding is
that Nick Dunbar and Mat Thexton are also based out of that office,
though not full-time.  We also have a number of contractors working
remotely, including Andy Burns, Lauren Daugherty, Jess Mears, Denise
Luckey, Bob Johnston, and Elizabeth Brierly.

Wes and I are in the midst of interviewing candidates for Press
Secretary, which is anticipated to be full-time, and will be moving on
to interviewing candidates for a Candidate Support Specialist shortly.

Yours in liberty,
Nick

On Wed, Jun 7, 2017 at 8:05 PM, Starchild <sfdreamer at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Thank you, Alicia. Coupled with the Convention Oversight Committee
> experience you mention, this does raise questions. But beyond the issue of
> getting the requested information, I was honestly shocked to hear that only
> Wes and Robert are usually in the office full time. If their time is
> valuable enough to justify what we're paying them, surely we should not be
> having them routinely spend that time on tasks that lower-paid staffers, or
> volunteers, could be handling.
>
> I would like to hear what Nick Sarwark as chair thinks about both the data
> request compliance and how staff hours are apparently being allocated.
>
> Love & Liberty,
>
>                                     ((( starchild )))
> At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee
>                           RealReform at earthlink.net
>                                  (415) 625-FREE
>                                     @StarchildSF
>
>
> On Jun 7, 2017, at 3:02 PM, Alicia Mattson wrote:
>
> Starchild,
>
> I have a lot of disagreements with your other ideas about how we should find
> meeting locations and what arrangements are workable.
>
> However, I do agree with you that it should not take so long to provide the
> LNC with basic data about the routine costs of our meetings, and provide
> copies of the meeting space contracts showing which of those expenses are
> required performance.  You've been asking for some time, and it's not that
> large of a data request.
>
> Recently, the Convention Oversight Committee was not in agreement about
> whether to again use an outside professional to assist with the 2020 site
> search, or whether to do it in-house with Robert Kraus as the point person.
> When the issue of asking a staff member to take on such a time-consuming job
> was discussed, the COC was told that when Wes tells the LNC that staff is
> overloaded, that characterization does not necessarily include Robert Kraus,
> and he was willing and able to add such a large project to his plate.  If
> that's the case, then I don't see why there isn't time to fulfill this data
> request of yours in a more timely manner.
>
> -Alicia
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Starchild <sfdreamer at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Maybe I just haven't been paying attention. That's what LP operations
>> manager Robert Kraus suggested when I spoke with him today and expressed
>> surprise at his statement that he and Wes Benedict are the only paid staff
>> working full time at our office. He said that if I'd read the report Wes
>> presented at the last LNC meeting, I would have been aware of the situation.
>>
>> Robert told me this by way of explaining why he has not yet sent the LNC
>> the details of how much we are paying for hotel meeting space, food and
>> beverage obligations, staff airline flights, shipping costs, etc., in
>> connection with LNC meetings. At the last LNC meeting in Pittsburgh in
>> April, he told me in response to my asking him for this information that he
>> would send it within a week or so. When I spoke with him today, he said that
>> if I wanted him to stop what he was doing and send the information now, he
>> would have to stop working on updating donor information to help us raise
>> money, because he was the only person in the office right now. When I asked
>> whether he could get us the meeting information prior to the next LNC
>> meeting on August 19 (over 2 months from now, and 4 months from when he
>> originally said he'd provide it), his response was "possibly".
>>
>> We have 11 people listed on our staff page (https://www.lp.org/staff/),
>> not even counting individuals like our legal counsel and our FEC consultant
>> who are kind of "on call", and although political director Carla Howell's
>> contract wasn't renewed, the chair recently proposed adding an additional
>> lower-level staffer. With that many folks on the roster, I don't understand
>> why the two highest-paid individuals on staff are the only ones who are
>> being paid full-time salaries and asked to staff the office largely by
>> themselves. If this is true, it means that our highest-paid staffers are
>> likely spending a significant part of their time doing routine office tasks
>> like answering phone calls which could be handled by lower-paid staffers or
>> even by volunteers.
>>
>> Robert did say he agreed with me that staff should not be asked to monitor
>> or be involved in the party's social media outreach, which would potentially
>> take a lot of their time away from other tasks. I also suggested that
>> volunteers, instead of staff, could be the ones to research LNC meeting
>> locations and present options to the LNC. Local activists in the cities
>> where we're considering holding meetings would be the logical people to do
>> this. If we don't have any local activists in a particular area able to help
>> us find free or low-cost meeting venues there and help with details such as
>> coordinating local transportation and folks able to host out-of-town
>> visitors, it would beg the question of why we are meeting in that location
>> instead of somewhere there is an active local Libertarian organization that
>> can support us and which we in turn can support by seeking to arrange to
>> have visiting LNC members make press appearances, attend local campaign
>> events, do fundraising, etc., while in town.
>>
>> But if what Robert says is correct, it seems to me that we are not running
>> our office efficiently. It also seems to me that LNC members being made to
>> wait months and months after an LNC meeting to see what the actual expenses
>> were for that meeting is unreasonable. Actually, we should be seeing such
>> expenses listed before each meeting, since expenses like hotel meeting space
>> fees, food and beverage obligations, staff airline flights, and shipping
>> costs are in most cases known in advance. And we should be seeing estimates
>> of these costs prior to even making a decision on where to meet, since such
>> costs ought to factor into our decisions.
>>
>> Love & Liberty,
>>
>>                                      ((( starchild )))
>> At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee
>>                           RealReform at earthlink.net
>>                                   (415) 625-FREE
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lnc-business mailing list
>> Lnc-business at hq.lp.org
>> http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lnc-business mailing list
> Lnc-business at hq.lp.org
> http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org
>
>