[Lnc-business] DRAFT MINUTES MARCH MEETING V1

[Alicia Mattson]

Below are my comments regarding version 1 of the March 9-10 LNC minutes:


APPENDICES:

Appendix F – The secretary’s report included here seems to be version 1,
which doesn’t yet incorporate the changes we already saw in version 2, but
the minutes elsewhere indicate there is another version 3 in existence.

Appendix F – These low-resolution images of pages from a PDF document are
particularly painful to try to review for content.  The tables of OpaVote
results, in particular, are completely unreadable.  I cannot distinguish
the numbers of the listed rankings.

Appendix I – Page 110 has a rogue header, suddenly showing as Appendix G in
the middle of Appendix I.

Appendix N – Page 126, in the middle of the report of the Historical
Preservation Committee suddenly has a page from the Convention Oversight
Committee inserted in place of page 2 of the HPC report.

Appendices AA and BB – Like my comment on the tables of OpaVote results,
these graphic images of tiny-font tables are pretty unreadable, and thus
can’t easily be reviewed for accuracy.  If you make the column titles
vertical, that will save you a lot of white space and probably allow a
larger font size, but the main issue is embedding these as graphics rather
than as text or as other more suitable objects.

Appendix BB – p. 185-186 are missing the header

Appendix W – This report is missing the Wisconsin supplement which was also
sent separately.


MAIN BODY OF MINUTES:

p. 40 – Mr. Kraus is the author of the financial reports in Appendix E.

p. 38 – Footnote 26 repeats the statement that Mr. Fishman became
“ineligible” for the CVPC because he was selected as the new Executive
Director.  In an email thread started on 3/28/19 titled “Convention Voting
Process Committee”, I posted on 3/31 to say that I saw nothing in our rules
which made him ineligible.  Mr. Fishman then chose to voluntarily resign
instead.

p. 38 – Regarding Population of the CVPC, it lists 10 names who were
supposedly elected to a 9-member committee.  Kevin Moore did not apply for
that committee, and Appendix BB does not indicate that anyone cast a
write-in vote for him, yet this reports he was elected to the committee.
He is also listed as being elected in the table of numbered motions on p.
40.

p. 38 – You could add that we entered executive session at 12:35 p.m.

p. 37, footnote 25 and p. 38, footnote 26 both use “effected” rather than
“affected”.

p. 35 -  :-)  Footnote 24 indicates that, “The LNC conducted an experiment
as if they were acting as a Committee of the Whole, and it was determined
that the body preferred to move this vote to email vote by 11-3.”  If we
acted as if a committee of the whole, then RONR p. 471 says those
proceedings should not be entered into the minutes. It was just an offhand
joke, and the sense of the LNC is adequately reflected by the formal 11-4
vote on Dr. Lark’s motion to postpone, so I think it’s covered already
without the footnote.

p. 26 – There is a paragraph which reads, “Without objection, Mr. Redpath
moved to amend his prior amendment to apply to both the Convention Voting
Process Committee and the Membership Support Committee.”  (Mr. Sarwark
phrased the motion as a suspension of the rules since time had expired
already.)  But that motion was actually not adopted at that point in the
meeting.  Rather the chair ruled it to be out of order until such time as
the pending amendment was resolved.  Mr. Redpath did later make the motion
again, and it was adopted without objection at that later time, but in the
minutes it belongs after the p. 27 sentence, “This amendment PASSED with a
roll call vote of 13-1-1.  [190309-3]”

Note this change also means the “as secondarily amended” should be removed
from p. 26 since the secondary amendment was ruled to be out of order, and
footnote 22 becomes awfully redundant when the motion is moved to its new
home on p. 27.

p. 24-25 – In numerous places in these minutes (not limited to these two
pages), there are references to “The Hospers’ Project”.  It is not a
project which is owned by or is being completed by Mr. Hospers, as he died
8 years ago, so the possessive nature of that phrasing doesn’t seem to be
warranted unless possibly it is other members of the Hospers family doing
the project??  Otherwise, it seems that it should be “The Hospers Project”
without any apostrophe.  There are two instances in the paragraph where the
possessive apostrophe is appropriate (“anniversary of John Hospers’ book”
and “how Mr. Hospers’ tradition has already been carried on”).  However, it
doesn’t seem to fit in the section title, the motion, and various other
references in the agenda, document appendix, table of numbered motions, etc.

p. 23 – Regarding the evening adjournment, you could add the time at which
the LNC adjourned for the day, which was 5:15 p.m.

p. 20 – The first line of the current draft reads, “Without objection, Ms.
Mattson moved the previous question which subsequently PASSED by a show of
hands with a vote count of 13-3.”  This wording choice muddles two separate
votes.  I moved the previous question on Mr. Bishop-Henchman’s amendment.
There was no objection.  Then the 13-3 vote was on Mr. Bishop-Henchman’s
amendment, not on the motion for the previous question.

p. 20 – There is a similar muddling of two separate votes in the later
sentence, “Without objection, Mr. Smith moved the previous question which
PASSED by a show of hands with a vote count of 13-3, so that…”  Mr. Smith
moved the previous question.  There was no objection.  Then the Goldstein
amendment was adopted with the 13-3 vote count.

p. 18 – I noticed that this set of minutes has a number of RONR references
inserted, sometimes in the body of the minutes like on this page and others
as footnotes.  Past minutes during this term have been also extensively
footnoted with policy manual references and a smaller number of RONR
references.

[Caution: I’m feeling perturbed as I write this item.] Ms. Harlos, you
voted against approval of the 2016 convention minutes because they
contained an appendix of endnotes which contained no editorializing text
written by me, nothing but verbatim copy/paste text from RONR.  You said
you were uncomfortable that the added RONR references were in the same
document as the official record, argued that members would be “confused”
that maybe the LNC was approving of the “opinions” in the appendix, and
argued that the party should not publish minutes that contain an opinion.
Now that you’re writing the draft and could choose to not do the thing to
which you previously objected, the RONR references are seemingly no longer
objectionable.  Besides the rule references, the minutes contain large
volumes of opinion in the form of debate commentary, public comments, etc.
When I advocated against including those, your position was that it’s
important for (buzzword alert!) transparency, for informing the members of
“significant” opinions, and that it’s our “custom”.

p. 17 – I have previously argued against including general debate
commentary in the minutes.  However, the LNC this term has previously
declined to remove such material, so if it’s going to be there...  Under
the motion I introduced for the COC to amend PM 2.03.12, this draft records
only the opinion of two staff members in opposition to the motion, but none
of the comments in favor of it.

I think the best solution is to delete the paragraph containing the staff
comments.  If it is to remain, however, I would like to add before that
paragraph:

“Ms. Mattson summarized data she had previously sent to the LNC, showing
that the cash collected for the 2018 convention had been instead used to
fund deficit spending in general party operations, and that the same thing
is happening with funds already received for the 2020 convention.”

Following Mr. Merced’s motion to postpone, I would like to add:  “Ms.
Mattson explained that the COC expects to begin selling 2020 packages
before this motion would be revisited, and delaying the fix would merely
allow more funds to be borrowed-from-but-not-repaid-to the convention
event.”

p. 16 – Footnote 17 makes hay of an RONR suggestion to avoid the word
“defer” due to its vagueness, and instead say “postpone”.  If someone were
to defer an item to a specific time, I don’t understand why the RONR
authors think that is vague…but that’s an issue with that sentence in RONR,
and I digress…  Anyway, I noticed at least 6 other times in the minutes
that you used the word “deferred” when referring to something which had
been postponed.  ;-)  Do you want to change those also?

p. 15 – The motion adopted at the meeting was to approve version 8 of the
December 1-2, 2018 minutes, but this draft says version 9.  I’ve not seen a
version 9, if such a thing exists.  The first version of the secretary’s
report indicated intent to move to approve version 7, and I noted some
additional changes needed, which resulted in version 8.

p. 15 – Footnote 16 references PM 1.02.6 related to the motion to approve
the EC minutes.  That policy only discusses the auto-approval procedures,
for which this motion was not eligible since the first draft was not
submitted by that deadline.  I am unsure how this reference relates to this
motion, which was not an auto-approval.

p. 15 – I realize the order of this isn’t particularly significant, but
under the “Vendor Presentations” heading, it indicates that the Mad Statist
presentation was prior to our lunch break.  According to my notes, we broke
for lunch and heard from AgendaPop during that time.  My raw notes say, “At
1:33 p.m. Redpath moved to agenda to take up Kieran O’Se  next after
10-minute recess”, which was following lunch.  So I think those two
paragraphs are chronologically reversed.

p. 14 – Footnote 14 indicates that there is a version 3 of the Secretary’s
report, but I don’t believe that was distributed to the LNC.  The last copy
that I have is version 2.  As noted above, the version in the appendices is
version 1, and even if it were version 3, the low-resolution pictures
inserted into the appendix are VERY difficult to read, making it a pain to
review their contents.  It would be easier to review if a copy of that
document were sent separately to us.

p. 7 – Regarding the section, “Mr. Sarwark ruled Ms. Mattson’s motion OUT
OF ORDER as not only…” – It is not recorded that I cited RONR p. 408-9 as
expressly permitting the motion that I was making.  I also noted twice
during the debate that we were past the timeliness requirements for a
motion to reconsider, and we had already carried out the thing that the
original motion called for, therefore a motion to reconsider would be out
of order at this time.  (P.S. note to the universe, it only requires a
majority vote to adopt a motion to reconsider anyway, not 2/3.)

p. 6 – I realize this item is not significant, but it indicates “the LNC
entered recess for twenty (20) minutes”. The chair actually said 10
minutes, rather than 20.

 -Alicia


On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 2:27 AM Caryn Ann Harlos via Lnc-business <
lnc-business at hq.lp.org> wrote:

> Hello everyone, attached please find the V1 draft of the March minutes.
> Dr. Lark, Dr. Moulton, and Mr. Dehn kindly gave them a read over and gave
> their input.  I was really hoping to get the input of Ms. Mattson before
> posting but I understand things have been really busy with the California
> convention.
>
> --
>
> *  In Liberty,*
>
> *Libertarian Party and Libertarian National Committee Secretary *-
> Caryn.Ann.
> Harlos at LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos at LP.org> or Secretary at LP.org.
> *Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee* - LPedia at LP.org
> Call me at 561.523.2250 and follow my public figure page at
> facebook.com/pinkflameofliberty/
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