I work for a firm that does Human Resources Services (payroll, benefits, etc.). Since they fall under all sorts of regulations, they have an ethics rule that employees must avoid even the **appearance** of conflict of interest. With a more relaxed rule than we have now, we open the door for someone to claim that there was a personal gain bias attached to one issue/vote or another. Such accusations are easy to make and really difficult to refute (any attorney will tell you that it's really difficult, if not impossible, to prove what **did not** happen, and thus much easier to prove what **did** happen). I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with what we have now, but I do hope the directors consider the other side (how to defend against the inevitable protests and accusations) if we change the rule. -- Andy Oppel, N6AJO At 08:49 AM 10/27/2005, you wrote:
I'd like to follow up on the point that Frank highlighted (regarding Jay's paragraph that began "I suggest that the appropriate parties to make the decision of who should represent them on the ARRL Board are the members of a Division in the election process, not the Board of Directors.").
That's why we have elections and are neither a self-perpetuating board nor a board selected by management.
Even without Article 11, not every member would be eligible to run for the Board. There would still be the minimum age requirement, the length of licensing requirement, the continuous years of Full membership requirement, and the license class requirement. No matter how many members in a Division might want to vote for somebody who doesn't meet one or more of those criteria, they can't.
More central to the point Frank zeroed in on is that I believe the Board -- as an institution, not just the particular individuals who now sit at the table -- has not only the right but indeed the duty to do their utmost to ensure that the League's governance remains demonstrably independent in thought and action from influence by commercial and government entities. To me that includes the duty to screen nominees before they are presented to the membership as candidates for the Board.
If this means occasionally advising members that although the popular Mr. or Ms. X is no doubt a fine person, a good ham, etc., etc., he or she is not *at the present time* eligible to run for the Board owing to his or her occupation, so be it.
Gosh. I guess I'm not a Jacksonian democrat after all.
Dave points out that many people who have been declared ineligible were not in the Amateur Radio business per se. That may be partly because the sort of people who -- for example -- own HRO or MFJ or represent ICOM or used to publish that newsletter on icky pink paper were never nominated in the first place because it is perfectly obvious that they were not eligible. What we pay the Election & Ethics Committee the big bucks for is to analyze and rule on the nominations of people whose occupational situations are not such no-brainers.
Perhaps it would be possible to re-word Article 11 somewhat -- maybe along the lines of the plain-English paraphrase that appears the QST election notice -- so as to make it clearer to members what the principle is driving at. In so doing, we would need to proceed with thoughtful caution, always bearing in mind that as we say down South it is very possible to pick up a snake to kill a stick. 73 - Kay N3KN