Brian's question is a good one. A partial answer is that the requirement to comply with Article 11 continues throughout one's term of office. However, Bylaw 42 (which sets out the responsibilities of the Election and Ethics Committee) speaks only of reviewing the eligibility of candidates/nominees for Director and Vice Director (as a side note, how the eligibility of candidates for President, Vice President, and Treasurer is reviewed is not specified) and does not speak to what happens if circumstances change during someone's term of office. Common sense would suggest that if a Director, Vice Director, President, Vice President, or Treasurer has a job change in midterm that might conceivably affect their eligibility, they should communicate that to the Election and Ethics Committee for review. But that's not spelled out anywhere. Not to pick on Howie Huntington, but since his name was mentioned by Carl Stevenson let me use Howie as the example. Motorola is a big company and is involved in lots of things, some of which would be of concern under Article 11 and some of which clearly are not. Howie works on cellphones for the Asian market, which has been found not to be a conflict. If he were transferred to the Powerline LV BPL project or to lobby the US government for more spectrum for Motorola's land mobile products, that would be an entirely different situation -- but nowhere is there spelled out an obligation for him to call that to anyone's attention until he runs for re-election. Some other organizations address this by requiring annual recertification of one's status. This does not have to be burdensome -- in most cases people would simply certify that nothing had changed since the previous year and no review would be necessary. Dave K1ZZ -----Original Message----- From: Brian Mileshosky [mailto:n5zgt@swcp.com] Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2005 11:16 AM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13243] Re: Thoughts on Article 11 All -- One question that pops in my mind is what happens if an already-elected Board member changes jobs that might entail work that can be considered a conflict of interest? Is he/she expected to resign then, considering he/she would have been considered inelegible by the Election committee if he/she were running in an election? Just another thing to think about as we deliberate... I like the idea of full disclosure and recusing oneself from voting on matters that can be affected by that conflict of interest. I also like the idea of changing the language such that it doesn't address "potential" conflict of interest (too many ways to interpret what "potential" means), but rather "current" (i.e. already existing) conflict of interest. 73, Brian, N5ZGT On Thu, 27 Oct 2005, Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ wrote:
Most associations do not address the conflict of interest issue by precluding service by anyone who might conceivably have a conflict. Instead, they require disclosure of any potential conflicts and abstention from voting on matters where personal and organizational interests are in conflict.
Our current and longstanding conflict of interest policy is to preclude conflicts by basing eligibility for office on the potential for conflicts: if the potential exists, the person is ineligible for office.
Kay cites a number of examples where, without such a policy, Board members' paychecks might come from our advertisers, our competitors, or our regulators.
There is one recent example of a candidate being declared ineligible because he worked for a publisher of classified ads aimed at radio amateurs. However, most candidates who have been declared ineligible have not had business connections with amateur radio. For example, in one case the business connection was that the person owned a small railroad and served on the railroad association's spectrum management board. In another the person owned a private cable company. In both cases the amount of potential overlap between the ARRL's interests and the business interests of the individual was small, but was found to be sufficient to preclude their service as Vice Directors.
Dave Sumner, K1ZZ
ARRL Vice-Director, Rocky Mountain Division