as many of you know, lew kidder and i submitted a petition to USAT that triggers a vote of the entire membership (all of you who are annual members, and you’ll probably get this petition in the mail embedded in triathlon times in probably 3-4 weeks. the petition is a rewrite of about a third of the bylaws. i haven’t found anyone yet who doesn’t like 90% the proposed bylaws, but i also haven’t found anyone who likes them 100%. everybody has one thing they don’t like.
one of those sticky issues is that the new bylaws call for board members to have to be reelected every year. there is a reason why lew and i thought 1yr terms were best, at least at this time. here is our reasoning:
accountability: there is no way we could legislate that board members MUST report back to you (the members) what it is they’ve done, and what it is they intend to do next year. except, that is, if we make them run for reelection every year. campaigning for reelection shouldn’t take any more time or work then would reporting back to those who elected you.
2: engagement: the root reason our federation is now in receivership is because of voting procedures that were adopted. the were adopted because we thought we needed more membership engagement and a bigger voter turnout. if you the voters feel disenfranchised and impotent, it seems intuitive that the quickest way to reengage you is to allow you a more frequent voice in the process. plus, maybe with 1yr terms your representatives will be more responsive to your needs.
smaller regions: we’ve increased the number of regions from 5 to 8, which decreases the size of each region. this means any candidate will have a much smaller pool from which to cull voters. in this past election, texan jack weiss was running against a candidate from louisiana and one from michigan, because his region was huge. if these bylaws were in force last year, he’d have run unopposed, because his region is now just texas. the point is, the work it takes to get reelected would be significantly lessened, and his ability to reach his constituency quickly and easily would be enhanced.
automatic nomination: lew and i received a lot of criticism about this from people who thought incumbents should have to be renominated. but, we’ve done away with the nominating committee, and you just have to get yourself 50 signatures of annual members and you’re on the ballot. except if you’re an incumbent, you don’t have to get signatures. why? because if you’re going to have 1yr terms, you shouldn’t overburden incumbents with extra work to be reelected.
that’s it. i’d like to hear the arguments against what i’ve written above, and how big you feel this issue is. mind you, there’s no changing the petition. it isn’t my petition. legally i’m just one signatory. not only can i not alter the petition, i can’t even “un-submit” the petition. it’s all or nothing.
what i’ll keep coming to is this: this is the ONE bite at the apple. it’s the ONE vote you’ll EVER get to cast on this, if the petition is not carried. if the petition IS carried, then about 30-60 days later you’ll be asked to vote again, for a new board, and then for each of these testy items individually. but if the petition is NOT carried – that is to say, if these new bylaws are NOT enacted – then your right to vote directly on these items is likely to be gone forever, and your only hope for representative voice is when you cast your vote for a prospective board member every 2 or 4 years.
I am not in the US, nor have I ever done any races in the US (although I might some day).
I feel that I must point out that a one year term for the board is very cumbersome. If a candidate must begin to focus on the election 2 months out then you are down to 10 months then you need 1 month to organize the first meetings of the board and get everyone up to speed (assuming a reasonable turnover of board members) and organize the various committees.
You then have to consider that it is likely that a significant portion of the board will turn over every year, You are then starting from scratch on all the issues that were never fully resolved in the previous year.
One of the major flaws of the democratic system at any level is that the candidates are self-interested (all humans are to a degree) and will find it difficult to enact measures that may be painful in the short-term but beneficial in the long-term. This is why at the federal level in the US you keep getting a higher and higher trade deficit - it is easy for a government to try and spend its way into the people’s heart (and vote) but very difficult to convince people that spending cuts are necessary for the long-term health of the nation. A two-year term doesn’t solve this but may help to reduce the negative impact of so-called election politics.
I would work to try and bring in some sort of revolving 2-year term. I.e. half of the board turns over every year. Maybe have two members from each region. Then you will have a reasonable level of continuity but the membership gets to express their opinion every year.
" . . . I would work to try and bring in some sort of revolving 2-year term. I.e. half of the board turns over every year. Maybe have two members from each region. Then you will have a reasonable level of continuity but the membership gets to express their opinion every year."
You’ve touched upon the strengths of rotating two-year terms, but here are a couple of the problems:
**If you have two-year terms, people in four of the eight regions will have no say in the federation election every other year. But if you think (as do I) that the primary problem with federation governance is a feeling of disengagement and even alienation by the vast majority of eligible voters, this is likely to make that problem even worse.
**If you elect a director to a longer term and also impose term limits, what is the incentive for the director to be accountable to his constituency?
Those of us in the United States have varied feelings on the philosophy and performance of the U.S. House of Representatives - but there can be little argument that the members of that body are more closely attuned to their constituencies than are members of the body across the hall with its six-year terms. Why? Having to run for elections on a frequent basis may indeed be a bad thing for the typical politician, but I’m not so sure it is quite so much of a problem for the ordinary citizen.
“a candidate must begin to focus on the election 2 months out”
thanks for replying.
i’ll very likely run for the board if the petition passes. i have no fear of one-year terms, and i wouldn’t consider it a burden to report back to my constituency every year. i’d consider it a responsibility. since i’m ALREADY planning to tell them what i’ve done on their behalf, what the federation has done, and what we’re planning to do, why is campaigning an extra burden? in fact, my reporting back IS my campaigning.
i would also seriously doubt that there will be much board turnover. the regions will be much smaller, reducing the pool of contenders, and making it easier for a board member to make his case to his constituents. it’s hard to unseat and incumbant. what’s funny to me is, a lot of people are objecting to term limits of 6yr, because (they say) that’s WAAAY too long for a person to serve on the board. this opinion presupposes the opposite view that you hold, that hte board turnover rate will be way too low.
perhaps because we’re right in the middle, it gives me hope that we’ve struck the right cord.
I will definitely vote to support the petition, it is our right to change our by-laws.
I am not in favor of 1 year terms of office. I think there is a reason that most political positions are single year positions. I think that single year terms will bog down things down. It takes time to build relationships with other board members, time to push platforms, and time to become accustomed to the way things are done. Change is a slow process, I’m a grad student in Criminal Justice, and no where is this more apparent than in my field. One year is simply not enough time to get things done and see if they work.
On the other hand I do like the idea of 2 reps from each district with 2 year term limits and alternating reps up for relection, much like the senate has. I know one of the problems is that you will double the number of people trying to make decisions and that is a dangerous thing that could portentially bod things down even more, its hard to get 11 people to agree on something, let alone 19 (3 pros on the board???). Plus the fact that there just aren’t that many people interested in being on the board.
I tried to resolve the issue of half the country having no say each year by having two reps from each region (with the two positions being elected in opposite years). You would then have every region voting every year, overlap in reps from regions (it would be a very rare case where you would have a region without a rep with at least 1 yr experience - likely only in the case of an early resignation or tragedy), and two year terms to focus on the issues. I know it doubles the number of people and that is a whole other kettle of fish but a team of 19 is not getting out of control for an organization with the number of members that you have.
I have to disagree with you on the unwieldyness of a large board. We had that with USAT’s predecessor (Triathlon Federation/USA) in the late 80’s and it was damned hard to get anything done. Everybody wanted to have a say on every subject, and the meetings got so long that it just about wore everyone out. Finally, we reduced the board size (to nine, as I remember) and things worked a LOT more smoothly. NOTE: The size was increased to the current 11 after USAT joined the Olympic family and agreed to adopt the IOC requirement of a minimum of 20% of the board being athletes who had represented the country in international competition.
Like the one year and especially the 6 year lifetime term limit. Jack will probably go for 12 years with the one year hiatus being the chm of the rd committee where he was in attendance at all the meetings during the year off. For you, Dan, me or Jack Weiss, that’s too long on any board.