Thread on the Blue Ribbon Panel hearing

Triathlon Forum
41

Dawg,

Believe me I have been thinking about it but didn’t want to muddy up the situation as it is. If Dan and Lew can change their petition so it would be broken up into separate voting issues that might be cleaner.

I have asked Lew above if his and Dans petition can be amended so I will wait to see what he says.

If they cannot amend the petition here is what I believe they could do without gumming up the process.

Submit separate issue petitions with the 100 signitures each.

Ask, thru this forum, that we vote no on the original combined petition and vote as we feel on the separate issues.

I would guess if they would not do this there may be someone in the waiting that will.

Thanks for the advice, Willy

42

I belive Dan and/or Lew have said before that there isn’t any way to amend/change the current petitition, it is what it is. Like GatorDawg and I have said, you can start your own petitions now if you’d like.

You seem intent on throwing the baby out with the bath water, and mostly because you think Dan and Lew are taking advantage of you by including multiple reforms in one petition, one of which you feel increases the burden on you if you want to make changes.

Term Limits: I don’t know the status of any of the current board members, but I think you have a few years in which to collect **100 **signatures and amend the by-laws at the annual vote before it would affect anyone.

Signatures needed for petition: You are focusing on the 2,500 signature number. If the current petition goes through, it’s almost a moot point. The BOD won’t be able to institute any changes before you would be able to have a counter proposal. The BOD would only be able to submit changes to be voted on during the following election, and you would be able to vote them down, or submit your own changes, with ONE 100 SIGNATURES. What do you think the entire membership wants to change before the next regular vote?

43

“What do you think the entire membership wants to change before the next regular vote?”

I don’t know, but before a few months ago neither did Dan or Lew but they were able to use this Article that they are now making next to impossible for anyone else to use. We are losing the “Anger” factor that they were able to use by having to wait over a year to get our vote. A BOD can use this to make changes in a timly mannor where it could take over 12 months to see it on the ballot.

They could have submitted separate petitions but chose to force their issues on everyone with a take it or leave it only option. I have seen similar combined petitions fail due to one out of a dozen issues where the public was not in agreement.

Dan and Lew have this forum to push their issues but I would guess there may be 1,000-2,000 regulars. How is Dan and Lew going to feel when their petition fails due to it being combined. Have they considered that there are over 40,000 memebrs that they cannot reach that will read the petition and disagree on one issue not knowing what the fallout will be?

One person doesn’t like their term limit issue - Fail

One person does not like their election re-do - Fail

One person does not like their 2,500 signiture requirement - Fail

Result - BOD makes changes to the By-Laws without membership approval and we all lose. That is the risk they are taking for you , me and the other 49,996 members.

Willy

44

Hello,

Just wanted to give a different perspective to this discussion. I am one of the 160 people who signed. I was asked because I have known Lew for about 4 years and Lew had my number. Like you I also didn’t/don’t agree with 100% of the petition.

I signed because A) I believe change is necessary, B) I believe that this petiton is a major step in the right direction and C) while I had the opportunity to lobby for changes in the proposal I recognize that if all 160 people did this it would die with be submitted.

I guess my message to you is to keep lobbying for changes that you think are needed (we certainly need passionate people in the sport), also recognize the if you like 90% of the changes that is likely about as good as its going to get. I certainly wish there was a presidential candidate I agreed with 90% (or could even understand 90% of what they were saying).

Shawn Tyrrell

45

Shawn,

I probablay would have signed as well as I would not have had the benefit of debating it with others. But I would guess Dan and Lew put in many hours thinking about this and knew the option of submitting separate petitions was available.

But if enough people would have said, “I would love to sign this but only if it were separate petitions” they would have had no option but to make the change. But they were counting on the “anger” in the membership over a few of the issues to push all of their issues thru.

Why do you think you get hit with five separate petitions outside Safeway instead of one petition with five issues. It has a better chance of passing is separate.

Willy

46

“A BOD can use this to make changes in a timly mannor where it could take over 12 months to see it on the ballot.”

The BOD won’t be able to make changes without a membership vote, at least to the by-laws. If the BOD does something during the year that upsets you, yes, you have have to wait until the next election by either voting the BOD or board member out, or submitting a petition to change the by-laws to keep them from doing it again. The “anger” factor is a double-edged sword. You don’t want someone getting upset the the BOD painted the USAT offices blue instead of yellow, and finding 100 people to sign a petition to try to change it, and having the petition cost USAT (the rest of us) $$.

I seriously doubt that Dan and Lew considered filing seperate petitions, why would they? They put in a lot of effort to come up with what they thought was a very good, workable solution to the current crisis, and make changes to keep us from getting to the same point in the future. I also doubt that they were ‘padding’ their reforms with pet project or reforms for their own sake. There were a lot of problems with the current by-laws, and they are seeking for correct all of them. Your concerns with the details of a couple of the reforms can be addressed in the future. Nothing is set in stone. The reforms gives control back to the membership, if it fails, the BOD can do almost irrevocable harm to USAT.

47

Willy & Dawg:

At the risk of becoming a broken record, let me touch upon some issues I’ve dealt with in previous posts:

PULL OR AMEND THE CURRENT PETITION. Dan and I can’t do this by ourselves, even if we wanted to. The petition is not ours - it belongs to each of the 160 athletes who signed it. The only way to accomplish that would be to take a “cancel” or “pull” order back to each and every person who signed the original petition. I suppose that could be done, but the task would be enormous . . . and if but one did not agree, useless as well.

PREPARE, CIRCULATE, AND SUBMIT SEPARATE PETITIONS TO AMEND EACH INDIVIDUAL SECTION OF THE BYLAWS. Someone COULD do this . . . but the current petition would, by virtue of the time it was submitted, still go out by itself. And if it passed, any subsequent petitions would be treated according to the amended bylaws.

RIGHT TO AMEND IF THE CURRENT PETITION PASSES. If, for example, one of you drafted, circulated, and submitted a petition to amend the provision on term limits, and if it was found to contain at least 100 valid signatures, that proposed amendment would be submitted to a vote of USAT’s membership on the next regular ballot.

So, hypothetically, let’s say the current petition is sent out for a vote on May 1, 2004. The last day of the vote would be June 29, 2004, and results would be announced a couple of days later (say July 1). If you then prepared, circulated, and submitted a petition to amend the provision on term limits by August 30, 2004 (and by the way, Dan has a standing offer to help people with such efforts), it would go on the ballot at the next regular election - which would be the 2005 election, with the ballots being mailed to the membership on January 15, 2005 and the voting concluded by February 28.

In other words, by using the 100 signature route (rather than the 2,500 signature route), the vote on your proposed amendment would be delayed - when you factor in the time it would take to prepare and mail a 2,500 signature petition - by about three months. And because the issue would be term limits, and because under the current petition, the provision on term limits doesn’t even take effect until July 1, 2006, the delay would have absolultely zero effect on your proposed amendment.

WHY DIDN’T WE SUBMIT A WHOLE BUNCH OF PETITIONS, EACH CONTAINING AN AMENDMENT TO A SINGLE PROVISION OF THE BYLAWS? Geez, where do I start with this? Perhaps with the observation that because so many of the provisions in any constitution or set of bylaws are so interrelated (even referring to each other by Article and Section number), such a method would almost surely lead to a huge interpretative mess. Or perhaps with the realization that for every person who favors one-year terms, there will be a second who wants two-year terms and a third who wants something longer. Or that for every person who wants the board to be seated on July 1 (as the current petition specifies), there will be 364 other opinions. But the one I subscribe to most is this: in no other democratic institution that I know of is this done. You rewrite a State Constitution (as we did here in Michigan in the 1960’s), it is submitted to the voters as a single document. There is something to accumulated wisdom.

PRIORITIES. Willy, I don’t mean to make light of your concerns, but it strikes me that while waiting for Bo Derek, you are a person who would cast aside Jennifer Lopez because she has a mole on her neck . . . and end up stuck with the same old Roseanne. Everyone has to make their own choices, of course . . . but, speaking for myself, I would be thrilled with a 9.5 any day . . . especially if the only REAL alternative was a 1.3

48

Lew,

If someone submitted a petition with 100 signitures today why would it not go out on the same ballot as yours?

I’m not sure if I have the timing down right but wasn’t the board not allowed to act on your petition due to the issue with the prior BOD vote and the arbitration going on now?

So legally speaking, is it not true that the Board has not officially had the oppotunity to review and act on your petition or anyone elses if there are others?

Thanks, Willy

49

Here’s why not:

In Article VI, Section 7 of the current bylaws, it provides that this type of petition by the members “shall be mailed to the membership NO LESS THAN 30 DAYS (emphasis added) after presentation of such petition to the Executive Director”. Everywhere else in that James Joyce-like paragraph, the operative wording is “NO LATER THAN 30 DAYS”.

Dan, I, and the original attorneys for the board think that “NO LESS” is a typo and would be reformed as a clerical error upon application to an appropriate court. But the current board was looking for some way to delay, and the current attorney for the federation (Craig Stewart of Holland & Hart in Denver) has given them cover by saying “well, maybe it was intended to give the board some sort of safe harbor for due diligence”. Of course, his argument reduces to absurdity if you take it to its logical extreme - i.e., there is a floor, but no ceiling - but that’s what the board is holding onto right now.

What does the board have to do before the petition is mailed? The only reference to the board in Article VI, Section 7 is in a sentence that reads: “The Executive Director shall prepare and include with any written ballot a statement which clearly and sufficiently informs the membership of the matter on which a vote is solicited and the purposes proposed to be served thereby, together with a summary of the recommendations of the Board of Directors with regard to such matter, IF ANY”. (Emphasis again added).

But later, in Article XX of the same bylaws, Section 2 reads as follows: “If proposals for adoption, amendment, or repeal of the Bylaws are to be considered by mail ballot of the membership, all proposals, together with a report and recommendation from the Board of Directors and any proponent(s) of the proposal, shall be mailed to the members at least sixty (60) days prior to the deadline for receipt of the votes.”

By virtue of Article XX, Section 2, and by ignoring the plain intent of Article VI, Section 7, the current board is contending that the ballot MUST be accompanied by a statement from them, and since the Blue Ribbon Panel has forbid them to meet as a board during the pendency of the arbitration proceedings, they can’t prepare that statement and therefore the ballot can not be mailed.

As soon as the BRP renders its decision, however, all rationale for board delay is gone and the current petition will have to be mailed within a few days. If someone decided to author another petition now, it would take at least a week or two to write, circulate, and then submit it to the executive director - and then it would face the same “no less than 30 days” problem of Article VI, Section 7. Plus the signatures would have to be vetted (that has been done for the current petition).

In other words, as a practical matter, it doesn’t seem likely happen. Moreover, I don’t see anything in the bylaws that would remotely support an effort to double up on separate petitions.

50

Lew,

Since you claim that you aren’t too concerned with certain issues, then why don’t we now, here on this board with the help of Hid who can host items on his site, create 4-6 separate mini-petitions that deal with each separate issue. You then have the same people who signed your last petition sign these in person or on-line (nothing in the by-laws indicated that electronic signatures won’t count as far as I know). Then, since the signatures have already been vetted for your petition, the vetting for the smaller petitions will fly through. They can all go out on the same ballot (to save the huge expense of separate petitions).

That way, you give the USAT membership a true CHOICE. They can select those items that they feel is in the best interest of the USAT, not the all or nothing that you and Dan feel is in the best interest. If you agree, I will have the four-5 mini petitions e-mailed to you be the close of business today by using your original petition. I will also include a couple new ones that propose alternatives, such an alternate term-limit petition, etc. This is a win-win for you if you and Dan truly are sincere that you have no hidden agenda other than doing what is best for the USAT.

Willy

51

Lew,

I just finished creating 8 mini-petitions. They contain your exact language proposed in most of them, with 2 or 3 having slightly varied language. There are two election reforms initiatives - one exactly as you wrote; a second one that is nearly identical but also calls for a on-line voting program thus totally eliminating any possibility that a candidate can collect ballots. With regards to the petition process, there is one that is identical to what you wrote, and there is an alternate that maintains the signature process as-is (we can raise the 100 to 250, 500, something reasonable, I’m OK with that) but also includes a perpetual ban on the USAT board from ever restricting, modifying or abolishing this important membership right.

Let’s work together and do this now! That way we can address your and Dan’s concerns regarding timing. Together, we can make this work for the USAT members. E-mail me and I’ll send you the drafts right now.

Hid - can you host these on your site like you kindly did for the Ironman training program?"

I have stared a new thread as this one is getting a bit long.

Willy