[Eg-oversight-board] Draft of Executive session wording

[Mike Rylander]

Terran,

Regarding calling an Executive Session: "the Chairperson, the Vice
Chairperson, or any three (3) Board members may call an Executive
Session of the Board."  No change to meeting and voting quorum is
mentioned, so my reading is that those remain the same as for any
other meeting.  Does anyone read that differently?  Should we make it
explicit that, unless otherwise mentioned, all meeting rules remain
the same?

Participation seems clear to me: "only members of the body that is
meeting and special invitees as the body or its officers determine to
be necessary are allowed to attend."  Grace and Ruth, maybe "the body
that is meeting" in the third paragraph should be replaced by "the
EOB" to be explicit?

As to explicitly prescribing specific acceptable reasons for calling
an Executive Session, I worry that would have a chilling effect on the
ability of the Board to address potentially sensitive issues.  That, I
think, is something we don't want to invite.  The point of creating a
framework for these rare cases is to remove the chilling effect of
publicly discussing sensitive topics, and I don't think we should
replace one with another.

Public announcement is an interesting question.  An Executive Session
is often, by its nature, a "time is of the essence" issue, so I don't
think a public announcement before hand should be required, or even
desirable in some cases.

I am on the fence as to whether publicly reporting the existence of
such a session after the fact should be required, since the relevant
individuals, present and future Board members, will have access to the
institutional memory and content of the event.  Also, the timing of an
Executive Session may well imply its content -- out of band
information leakage, to put it in technical parlance -- so maybe
reporting the occurrence of such a session should be something that is
addressed as a matter of course during the session, with the default
being "no disclosure."  I'm open to any opinions here, but I see it as
a mild chilling risk to important action the Board may want to take to
protect the Project.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to evaluate some non-normative examples
of reasons for a session in this discussion, so that everyone is on
the same page.  Terran, do you have any you would like to bring up
specifically?

Thanks,

--
Mike Rylander
 | President
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / Open Your Library
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  miker at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com


On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 4:56 PM, Terran McCanna
<tmccanna at georgialibraries.org> wrote:
> Grace and Ruth,
>
> Thank you for the hard work that's been put in already.
>
> I've been mulling it over since yesterday, and I think overall it reads very
> well, but that it should be more explicit about what types of situations
> would constitute the need for an Executive Session or for a private email
> list conversation to ensure that they are only used if absolutely necessary.
> The current language is somewhat vague and words like 'sensitive' and
> 'prudent' can be subjective.
>
> I know that none of us want to give anyone a reason to think that the EOB is
> making decisions behind closed doors, or even worse, for a private meeting
> to actually end up causing accusations of  unfairness / abuse of power /
> conflict of interest / etc. that may have been avoided had the meeting been
> open in the first place.
>
> Perhaps incorporating a few example scenarios of situations that would call
> for an Executive Session would be useful to help clarify the need, both for
> the community members, and for those of us who may be on the fence as to
> whether a problem should be discussed openly or privately.
>
> I think it would also be useful if it were clearer about the scheduling and
> participation of an Executive Session... Do these meetings follow the same
> quorum rules as the public meetings? Do the meetings get posted when
> scheduled so that the community knows that they are happening? Do they have
> to be scheduled with a certain amount of lead time to allow all board
> members to arrange their schedules, or can they be called at any time?
>
> Regards,
> Terran
>
>
>
> Terran McCanna
> PINES Program Manager
> Georgia Public Library Service
> 1800 Century Place, Suite 150
> Atlanta, GA 30345
> 404-235-7138
> tmccanna at georgialibraries.org
>
>
> On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 2:18 PM, Grace Dunbar <gdunbar at esilibrary.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>> Ruth and I have been working on the wording of adding language to the
>> Rules of Governance regarding the Executive Session.  I have not checked in
>> with the SFC yet for their input as I wanted to hear from the group if they
>> felt that this was on the right track.
>>
>> Any/all thoughts are welcome.
>> Cheers!
>> Grace
>>
>> --
>> Grace Dunbar, Vice President
>> Equinox - Open Your Library
>> gdunbar at esilibrary.com
>> 1-877-OPEN-ILS  |  www.esilibrary.com
>>
>>
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>
>
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