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Committee Workplan

This is a list of potential and pending bylaws tasks. As we prioritize them and add detail, individual tasks will be given their own pages.

Contents
Consent Calendar
Policy vs Business Decisions
GPCA Purpose
Undefined Positions
Finance Committee Items
Committees (core vs admin committees; elections; accreditation; dispute resolution)
Removals, Suspension, Censure
County (Dis)Affiliation
Bylaws Reorganization
CC Meetings
GA Proposal Authority
GA Agenda Approval
GPUS Affiliation Agreement
Term Limits
Other Items
Proposed & Failed
Proposed & Passed

Consent Calendar

Timing: next plenary

Simple and noncontroversial items can go on the plenary consent calendar once we have specific language.

None.

None.

Policy vs Business Decisions

Timing: next available plenary (overdue).

The Bylaws Committee has committed to the General Assembly to develop guidelines for distinguishing policy decisions from business decisions. This distinction determines the voting threshold of a proposal, as well as whether material belongs in the bylaws or in a rules & procedures document.

Collected material from past bylaws committee work is available here.

GPCA Purpose

Timing: tbd (overdue).

Article 2 in its entirety:

Article 2. Purpose

(unadopted)

This is embarrassing. Here's a proposal.

Article 2. Purpose

The Green Party of California and its affiliated county organizations will act to affect the policies, laws and activities of local, state and national government as a means to promote change in society, in keeping with our Ten Key Values of ecological wisdom, grassroots democracy, personal and social responsibility, nonviolence, decentralization, community-based economics, feminism, respect for diversity, global responsibility and future focus.

Undefined Positions

Jonathan Lundell
Timing: next available plenary (simple; possibly consent)

There are several positions mentioned in the bylaws but never defined.

6-2.6 refers to the "Coordinating Committee secretary".
7-7.3 refers to the "Green Party of California's Press Secretary".
7-7.3 also refers to "designated Spokespeople".

What are the duties and qualifications for each position? Who is responsible for filling the positions? What are the terms? Removal?

Finance Committee Items

Jonathan Lundell
Timing: next plenary; needs to be approved before next budget cycle.

We will work with the Finance Committee to develop specific language for these items.

Change fiscal year from May-April to July-June, to allow for the fact that our spring (budget-approving) plenary can be as late as May, as it was this year.
Revise budget creation timetable to ensure that we pass a budget before its fiscal year begins. This might require mandating a plenary in the fourth fiscal quarter (to be Apr-Jun).
Require two-year budgets. We don't have language from the Finance Committee yet, so we'll wait for it to show up.
Prudent reserve. The Finance Committee has agreed to say more about what constitutes a prudent reserve. I've suggested a general approach, but we don't have specific language.

In general, we need to decide how much of the budget language actually belongs in the bylaws, and then move the remainder to the (to be created) Rules & Procedures archive.

Committees

Core vs Administrative Committees & Working Groups

Jonathan Lundell
Timing: tbd.

Should we distinguish between core committees (bylaws, platform, finance) and purely administrative committees, and working groups?

This ties in with the bylaws/rules separation. We'd reduce Articles 6-8 to a single article that defines the core committees with bylaws-mandated functions (bylaws, platform, finance) and authorizes additional administrative committees (IT, Elections, Clearinghouse, etc) and working groups to be defined through rules & procedures.

Such a change recognizes the fact that our committee and working group structure is fairly dynamic, and with few exceptions needn't be frozen in bylaws.

Elections Committee

Jonathan Lundell
Timing: next available plenary.

There should be a standing committee for administering elections, and putting together election rules and procedures.

Accreditation Committee

Jonathan Lundell
Timing: next available plenary.

General Assembly accreditation and registration has been handled for a long time now by an ad hoc committee. It's time to formalize this necessary function, covering accreditation of delegates and counties.

Dispute Resolution Committee

Do we need one? We've said yes in the past, but have made no progress toward establishing such a committee.

Removals, Suspension, Censure

Jonathan Lundell
Timing: two plenaries: discussion, then decision.

I've posted a longer message on this topic, which please see. In general, should the CC or GA have any disciplinary power? Should we be defining rules for censure, suspension and mediation (right now the only process is removal or resignation)?

County (Dis)Affiliation

Cat Woods, Ric Newbery
Timing: two plenaries: discussion, then decision.

CW: "Possible clarifications of the process for disaffiliation of a county if conditions of affiliation are not met. I brought this up for discussion a while ago, and so far discussion hasn't gotten off the ground. Yet it is the only idea that seems to be brought up from both sides of the decentralization vs. grassroots democracy debates that crop up regarding affiliated counties. Perhaps one answer is to draft a clear process. This would tie in with the dispute resolution committee item."

RN: "I've been thinking about the accreditation issues and it occurred to me that perhaps one of the on-going requirements for a county to maintain accreditation should be to provide evidence of an active campaign to contact/inform/recruit the registered greens in their county."

Bylaws Reorganization

Timing: ongoing.

This is an ongoing process, separating the current bylaws into a smaller body of core bylaws and a set of rules and procedures.

Jim Stauffer has posted an example of such a separation, in this case Article 5: General Assembly Meetings. Additional work on the subject is available here.

Two other candidates for restructuring:

Combine the committee-definition articles (6-8) into a single bylaws article and supporting rules, retaining bylaws definitions of only the core mandated committees.
Create a new article (with supporting rules) that describes all bylaws-controlled decision-making procedures (consensus-seeking proposal process, choice and IRV elections, appoint-and-confirm, nominate-and-elect, etc). Change remainder of bylaws, rules & procedures to refer to this article.

CC Meetings

Timing: tbd.

The current bylaws don't allow for online meetings and decisions or for closed sessions. In addition, there is no requirement for notice of proposals (only notice for meetings).

A question has also been raised about who gets to participate.

GA Proposal Authority

Cat Woods, Jim Stauffer, Ric Newbery

CW: "Adding a petition process for submitting a proposal to the GA. Some of the Sylmar chaos originated from the feeling that the plenary agenda process has become too bureaucratic. I don't see why a proposal can only be vetted through a committee. Grassroots democracy needs to allow a grassroots process for putting forward proposals. I'd like to hear discussion on how many signatures should be required for such a process. I'm thinking 40 registered Greens should be plenty; maybe even fewer would be sufficient."

JS: "There have now been too many instances where a standing group brings forward a proposal that has nothing to do with the purpose of the group, but does affect the work of some other group with which they did not collaborate."

JS: "Another change needed in this section is a requirement to include in any proposal the concerns (and maybe clarifications) that arose during the group discussion. Currently a group is just required to report the details if the decision was by vote."

RN: "My suggestion was along the lines of a petition signed by at least 50 delegates or a number of counties representing at least 50 delegates to the General Assembly. My thought at the time was that it might help encourage the development of a standing General Assembly (sort of like Jonathan's proposal).

"I suggested 50% as the threshold to add something to the agenda since, with a lower threshold, you run a greater risk of having to deal with factional disputes and dueling proposals otherwise."

GA Agenda Approval

Cat Woods

Do we need a better procedure for agenda approval, in the light of the Sylmar agenda debacle?

Cat Woods: The only other change I'm hoping we consider in this regard is either changing the plenary agenda-approval process to require a 2/3 threshold to disapprove the agenda or else to make it a simple majority vote. (It's absurd to give 2/3 protection to total chaos instead of to the months of work and careful process involved in coming up with the agenda in the first place.

GPUS Affiliation Agreement

Cat Woods

The GPUS affiliation agreement has never been brought before the General Assembly. Question: should this proposal come from the CC? What are the bylaws implications, if any?

A copy of the affiliation agreement and relevant CC minutes can be found at cagreens.org/bylaws/gpus-affiliation.html.

Term Limits

Green Party of Humboldt County

On 2005-08-03, we received from GPHC the following proposed bylaws language:

6-1.10 Coordinator Term Limits
Coordinators for all Committees and Working Groups may serve a maximum of one consecutive complete, uninterrupted term of two years. A partial term served to replace a former Coordinator shall not be computed in this limit.

7-1.13 CC Term Limits
Coordinating Committee members may serve a maximum of two consecutive complete, uninterrupted terms of two years each. Partial terms served to replace former members shall not be computed in this limit. The terms of Alternate members shall not be computed in this limit.

7-2.11 Finance Committee Term Limits
Finance Committee members may serve a maximum of two consecutive complete, uninterrupted terms of two years each. Partial terms served to replace former members shall not be computed in this limit.

7-3.3 Bylaws Committee Term Limits
Bylaws Committee members may serve a maximum of two consecutive complete, uninterrupted terms of two years each. Partial terms served to replace former members shall not be computed in this limit.

7-4.3 Platform Committee Term Limits
Platform Committee members may serve a maximum of two consecutive complete, uninterrupted terms of two years each. Partial terms served to replace former members shall not be computed in this limit.

At a minimum, there's some language cleanup to be performed, and the standing committee term limits should be consolidated into one section, associated with section 6-1.4. We should also ask GPCHC to consider making an exception for committees with insufficient qualified candidates for membership.

Other Items

From our Sylmar meeting notes (having removed items listed above or otherwise dealt with):

Provide for multiple candidate procedure (8 votes)
Questions re: internal ad-hoc committees IDE (3 votes)
Open online access proposal (0 votes)

The first has to do with situations like the Sylmar treasurer election. I'm not sure what the internal ad hoc item was; would somebody please clarify? I'm also not sure what the open online access proposal was.

Please submit other items for consideration, and give some thought to the order in which we ought to deal with the entire list.

Proposed & Failed

Ventura 2006-12-24/25

Standing Groups Allowed to Submit Clarifying Language
Modify Quorum
Filling At-Large Rep Vacancies
CC Meeting Procedures
Regional Rep Alternates
CC At-Large Increase by 2
GPCA Purpose statement

Proposed & Passed

Ventura 2006-12-24/25

3-1.3 - added new article for definition of membership
5-8.2 - update standing group definition

Last updated on 02/25/2008 (BH)