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- Committee on Committees, Rules and Jurisdiction -
Report for Spring Assembly 2005
Committee on Committees, Rules and Jurisdiction
Report to the Assembly, for discussion at the Spring Assembly meeting
May 7, 2005
Background
As provided for in LAUC's Bylaws, President Terry Huwe requested CCRJ
to review the LAUC Bylaws. More specifically, he asked us to "conduct
a comprehensive review of the LAUC Bylaws, and present a draft for discussion
and deliberation in advance of the Spring 2005 Assembly." Due to
other obligations, I was not able to devote significant attention to
the Bylaws review until March. The committee has been conducting its
work diligently and effectively since then, via conference calls and
email. Although we are not yet ready to present formal recommendations
to amend our Bylaws and to establish Standing Rules, we do want to share
with you the current state of our thinking. We hope that this report
will generate useful thought and discussion within the Divisions, among
Assembly members on the Assembly email list, and at the Spring Assembly
in-person meeting on June 2. These discussions will inform the finalization
of our formal recommendations.
After I became LAUC's Parliamentarian in 2002, I read our Bylaws, and
since then have been interpreting them for LAUC leaders and groups. It
became clear pretty quickly that our Bylaws needed an overhaul. There
are some sections that are outmoded, contradictory, confusing, etc. When
Terry talked with me about his considering me for chair of CCRJ for this
year, I quickly developed a rough draft of new Bylaws and Standing Rules
as a way for me to show him what my thinking was before he decided whether
to appoint me as chair.
Sturgis (LAUC's parliamentary authority) describes the purpose of bylaws
as establishing the fundamental framework of an organization, the outline
of its structure. It states that bylaws should be concise, and that "many
organizations keep their bylaws simple and brief by including only essential
provisions and supplementing them with adopted procedures [aka standing
rules]." My goal for our recommendations of new LAUC Bylaws and
Standing Rules is to:
- achieve that conciseness,
- provide an easily understandable
and rational infrastructure that will enhance LAUC's ability to
focus on its core purposes, and uphold the parliamentary values of:
- effective
and efficient transaction of business,
- equity across the membership
as to rights, privileges, and obligations,
- majority decision,
- protection
of the rights of minorities,
- open discussion, and
- fairness
and good faith.
Authority
The highest parliamentary authority for an organization consists of
the various laws that apply to that organization. The next highest is
a charter, the document from a government or a parent organization that
establishes the organization. For LAUC, that is the Presidential
Statement on the Status of the Librarians Association of the University
of California, which appears as APM 360 Appendix B. Our next level
governing document is our Bylaws. Article XII, Section 6 of our Bylaws
states that "these Bylaws and all amendments thereto shall be subject
to the approval of the President of the University, to assure that they
are in accord with the Standing Orders of The Regents and with the rules
and regulations of the University" (which is the case whether so
stated in our Bylaws or not). Therefore even after LAUC approval of amendments
to our Bylaws, the UC President (or designee--I am under no illusion
that they actually go up that far) still needs to approve them before
we can implement them.
Process
I began CCRJ's review of the Bylaws and Standing Rules by distributing
to committee members the rough redrafting of the Bylaws and new Standing
Rules I had done the previous summer, as a place to start our consideration
and to serve as the basis of our working drafts. I then identified around
50 issues for us to consider, such as LAUC's purpose, the roles of the
Executive Board vs. the Assembly, and committee appointment responsibility.
We have come to consensus on most of those issues, and I have been updating
the working drafts accordingly. We have had some discussion of each of
the other 4 issues, and I expect we will come to consensus on those before
the Spring Assembly meeting. The last phase of our work will include
such tasks as reviewing other documents (such as the APM and the MOU)
for compatibility, ensuring that the Bylaws and Standing Rules as a whole
are cohesive, and improving the wording, order, style, etc., of the documents.
Changes
This sections outlines various significant issues, and how we are planning
to handle them in our recommendations.
Changes to Bylaws/Standing Rules and current practice
Assembly
- restrict the term to the event
- rename the body the "Council"
- composed of a Council meeting and a program
- simplify the section on meetings
Bylaws amendments
- streamline process
- modify the size requirement for a group of LAUC members to propose
amendments via a petition, from 50 members to 5% of the membership
- change the requirement for the UC President to approve all amendments
to a requirement that all amendments must comply with UC policies
(this allows us to implement amendments right away, but still gives
the UC President the full right to nullify any amendment by declaring
that it is against UC policies)
candidate restrictions
- in order to ameliorate problems we've had in recruiting members to
run for LAUC office:
- loosen campus restrictions (while still disallowing more than two
officers to be from the same campus)
- allow a current first-term Secretary to run for a second term
committees
- give enabling language in the Bylaws, with the actual list (other
than the Nominating Committee) in the Standing Rules (as many of our
professional organizations do)
- meetings are open to any LAUC member, after notifying the chair of
planned attendance
Council
- rename the body from "Assembly"
- purpose = expand to determination of official LAUC advice to UCOP
and the ULs, LAUC professional development initiatives, and policies
that govern LAUC and its membership
- simplify and rationalize delegate allocation (trying to balance the
advantages of both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives
approaches)
- make the Parliamentarian an ex officio, non-voting member
- have a standing agenda item something like "Issues from members",
which would be a time for any LAUC member to raise an issue from the
floor
Divisions
- report to the Executive Board Division actions, including advice
to its campus and library administrations, as a way for the Board to
monitor trends, etc.
Executive Board
- purpose = narrow to managing the internal business of LAUC and performing
other functions as directed by the Council
- meetings are open to any LAUC member, after notifying the chair of
planned attendance
- reduce the membership to just the 4 Officers (now that the purpose
is being reduced)
- handle the informal interaction of Division Chairs by formalizing
the group dinner the night before an Assembly
formal relationships
- in addition to representation on SLASIAC, the Shared Library Facilities
Board, and the UL Group's advisory structure, pursue representation
on:
- Academic Affairs' Standing Committee on Copyright
- Academic Senate's University Committee on Library
- allow for representatives from other UC units (such as CDL and Systemwide
library Planning) to LAUC
- allow for joint committees with other UC units
membership oversight
- new article in the Bylaws
purpose of LAUC
- flesh out what we advise on
Standing Rules
- we're moving many pieces of the Bylaws that we want to be able to
change more easily to Standing Rules
Vice President responsibilities
- add a duty to plan Assembly programs
- change the committee responsibility from chair of R&PD to member
of a committee that the VP selects (the VP's Division will still
have its regular member on the committee)
Changes to Bylaws/Standing Rules to match current reality
Alternate Parliamentarian
- make this position optional (the President appoints one if needed)
Assembly
- make clear that Assembly programs are open to all
committees
- give Divisions the authority to appoint or not appoint a representative
to each standing committee (Merced, for example, does not have representatives
on every standing committee due to low staffing)
Divisions
- while adhering to LAUC Bylaws and policies, they have the autonomy to
advise their campus and library administrations and conduct their internal
affairs as they see fit
meetings
- they are in real time, but can be conducted in person, via a conference
call, or via a videoconference
membership
- added "Deputy University Librarian"
membership meetings
- remove concept of general membership meeting, but retain the option
to hold special membership meetings
Parliamentarian
- stays appointed until s/he is no longer a member of LAUC, or a President
either appoints someone else or decides not to maintain the appointment
purpose of LAUC
- expand from just advisory to also include professional development
and peer review
- make clear that the Divisions, as opposed to LAUC, advise campus
and library administrations
Past President
- clarifying that this is an Officer position
Issues on which we have not yet completed our discussions, which may
lead to changes
committees
- whether the standing committees are of the association, the Council,
the Executive Board, or the President (our current Bylaws are self-contradictory)
- whether final authority for appointing Divisional representatives
to committees should lie with the Divisions or the President
- whether the chair of a committee should also represent his/her Division,
or whether the chair's Division should get a separate representative
Council delegate allocation
Changes we considered but discarded
affiliate membership
- expanding the category from less-than-half-time librarians and retired
LAUC members to include CDL staff, other professionals working in our
library systems (programmers, development staff, etc.), and/or Library
Assistants
affiliated librarians (those outside a UL hierarchy)
- mentioning them explicitly in the Bylaws
business year
- changing to UC fiscal year
committee appointments
- allowing non-members to be appointed to LAUC committees
committees
- differentiating between committees, subcommittees, task forces, working
groups, etc.
finances
purpose of LAUC
- lessening the restriction that "matters which are covered by
a Memorandum of Understanding or are otherwise subject to negotiation
with an exclusive bargaining unit"
- explicitly allowing the ability to communicate/interact with organizations
beyond UC libraries and UCOP (such as CLA, ALA, or CSU librarians)
- explicitly allowing LAUC to take stances on non-UC issues (such as
the planned closure of the Salinas Public Library)
Attached documents
The documents attached to this report are the current version of our
working drafts of Bylaws and Standing Rules. We have included these drafts
as a way to show how our ideas are coming together toward a cohesive
whole. These documents do not constitute formal recommendations at this
point, as we have not completed our work on them. As described above,
we have concentrated our energies thus far on determining our positions
on issues, rather than on editorial aspects of the documents, such as
wording, order, and style.
- Bylaws Working Draft (.doc)
(as of May 7th, 2005)
- Standing Rules Working Draft (.doc) (as
of May 7th, 2005
Members
- B = Maryly Snow
- D = Carol LaRussa
- I = Susan Lessick
- LA = Caroline Miller
- M = none
- R = Kuei Chiu
- SB = Andrea Duda
- SC = Karen Mokrzycki
- SD = Paul J. Weiss, Chair
- SF = David Owen
Submitted by Paul J. Weiss, CCRJ Chair
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