Re: [MV] Message from Lee Holland About Our Ranting

From: LEEnCALIF@aol.com
Date: Tue Aug 08 2000 - 09:46:16 PDT


This is a perfect example for ..............

Committees/standing/ad hoc

I want to expand my idea of a legislative committee just a bit, hopefully get
some feed back from you.

For those of you not familiar with such things, I better start at square one.
 Committees fall into two basic categories, a standing committee, which is a
permanent committee established to handle on going matters. And the ad hoc
committee, established to handle temporary projects or concerns. Of course
there may also be subcommittees under both ad hoc and standing committees. A
subcommittee is generally very task specific and most like falls into the ad
hoc (temporary) category.

In the matter of bill H.R. 4205, this would have been a good project for a
legislative committee. Obviously the Chair/President of a large
organization, such as ours, is advantaged by delegating whenever possible.
If he doesn't delegate, one or two hot issues can consume his time. He will
likely become so over burdened, his job of overseeing the whole operation can
be easily compromised. Just this armor import issue can be overwhelming.

The delegation of authority allows the chair/board to be free of the tedium
of investigation and focus on the discovery of relevant facts only. This
helps concentrate scant resources in areas where it would do the most good.
In short, it's a time and cost effective way of governing. A standing
committee also helps provides the conduit for a free flow of information. In
this way the rank and file membership is kept abreast of their efforts on a
regular basis, another positive achievement for the organization. It
encourages the rank and file to use the organizational structure rather than
going off on their own... a risky method at best, duplicative of efforts.

The chain of command structure insures the chair/board total authority over
the flow of information and the conduct of the committee/s assuring it's
success. Com-mittees are also the breeding ground for future board members.
This is a nice spin off of a committee. It encourages more membership
participation and that is a good thing. We develop members with more
expertise, more understanding and this leads us eventually to better
candidates for future elections. Committee work can be very rewarding, even
if you never take it to the next level of being a candidate. It's just one
more way to have a club that inclusive, rather than members who feel excluded.

If we were to request a (standing committee) it generally requires a BI-law
amendment. A good subject for Kansas City? An ad hoc committee is typically
authorized to exist by the sole power of the board or chair. Without reading
the BI-laws, I'm not sure what authority exists within the MVPA for creating
a new committee, but it's well worth exploring. I checked our official MVPA
web site and didn't see a link to the BI-laws. That would be another good
thing... a link to bring up our rules and BI-laws. If you are going to KC,
feel free to use whatever part of this you want!

I have also passed this suggestion along to Mr. Holland and I will send him a
copy of this email, but I would like to get some feedback first. Hey, any
comments, good or bad, are fair game! lol

Jack (Share the load) Lee



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