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

Tue May 24 18:22:22 EDT 2016

sent from my phone, apologies for brevity and autocorrect
On May 24, 2016 5:37 PM, "Mike Rylander" <mrylander at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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