Cynthia Sharpe, former chair of the Sunshine district (seven Florida chapters), has quit the bylaws re-write task force citing “differences of opinion over process.”
She said she quit in February although that was not announced and the task force continues to list her as a member.
Her reasons for quitting were spelled out in a PRS e-group governance posting Sept. 4. She condemned the “deliberative process” that is “mostly via e-mails, phone calls and blog posts” and said national elected officials would not “debate and decide laws mostly via electronic means of communication.”
Neither bylaws chair Dave Rickey nor any of his remaining nine committee members has appeared in person before any chapter for debate on the proposals.
Cynthia Sharpe |
Rickey spoke on the proposals to the “Leadership Rally” June 6, to which 109 chapter presidents-elect are invited, but the entire two-day meeting is confidential.
Rickey and PRS chair Mike Cherenson have been asked by this website to appear in person before New York chapter members and non-members and answer questions but they have not responded.
The Assembly is not until Nov. 7, leaving plenty of time for in-person discussions, senior members say.
The main thrust of the bylaw changes, including shifting the power to elect board and officers from the Assembly to the “general membership,” for which a quorum is defined as 500 members meeting “in person or by proxy,” has been available since March.
Entire Process Is Invalid—Senior Members
Senior members said the resignation of Sharpe puts the focus on the bylaws group and the fact that ten of the 11 original members are APR and therefore the entire bylaws-rewrite is invalid.
APRs are less than 20% of the membership and have no right to be making laws for the remaining 80%+, they said.
There is ample evidence, they note, that the APRs regard themselves as an elite group whose members are better than non-APRs.
A “virtual community” of APRs was formed on Sept. 10, 2008, when Tri-State chair Douglas Fenichel conducted a teleconference to which APRs were invited.
APRs have taken that “further step that makes them leaders,” said Fenichel. One participant said many who claim to be PR people are “five levels down” from what an APR is.
Counselor James Lukaszewski, who conducts many PRS seminars and workshops, said he holds special meetings for APRs when he visits chapters.
The proposed bylaws would restrict membership on the Ethics Board to 11 members who are APR.
Only APRs have been allowed to hold national board or officer posts since about 1975, seniors further note.
APR-dominated boards spent $5,056,075 on the APR program from 1986 to 2002, losing $2,926,080. The subsidy to create one new APR in 2000 was $1,794.
Robert’s Rules Violated
Robert’s Rules of Order, which PRS has been guided by for decades, calls for “revisions” of bylaws, which entail a completely new set of bylaws that replaces previous bylaws.
Such a revision, it says, should involve the “entire membership,” with the new rules and explanations sent to them.
The bylaws committee should be “large” and represent all types of members, Robert’s further says.
“There is no room for politics on the committee,” it says.
Robert’s also recommends that the new bylaws be considered by a “special meeting” or a “series of meetings.” Everything in the revision is open to change by the membership, it notes.
Robert’s Was Ignored
Senior members say Robert’s was ignored by PRS which had a very small committee of 11 members and which failed to call a special meeting for the revision or a series of meetings. Consideration of the revision is set for the regular Assembly meeting.
They say the fact that 10 of the 11 committee members are APR, and therefore unrepresentative of the more than 80% who are non-APR, invalidates the proposals of the group.
The committee should have been 80% non-APR and 20% APR, said the senior members.
Letting the APRs dominate this group is “pure politics,” said some of the seniors.
APRs have been fighting since 1999 the recommendation of the first Strategic Planning Committee that said APR should be removed throughout the bylaws.
Seniors also see politics and lack of fair representation in the geographical locations of the bylaws members.
Bylaws Members Listed
Other bylaws members, besides Rickey and Sharpe, are:
• Susan Chilcott, VP-communications, American Assn. of State Colleges and Universities, D.C.
• Brad Rye, Eric Mower & Assocs., Rochester.
• Carol Scott, counselor, Corpus Christi, Texas.
• Art Stevens, StevensGouldPincus, New York.
• Patti Grey, public liaison, Ohio Dept. of Education.
• Monty Hagler, RLF Comms., Greensboro, N.C.
• Prof. Vincent Hazleton, Radford Univ., Radford, Va.
• Janet Kacskos, Millersville Univ., Millersville, Pa.
• Mary Barber, Alaska Community Foundation, 2008 national secretary.
All are APR except for Chilcott.
Six Bylaws Members from South
Senior members note that Rickey as well as five other committee members are from the South or Southwest (Chilcott, Scott, Sharpe, Hagler and Hazleton).
Members from the South and West have held a disproportionate share of national offices for years, say the seniors.
Three of the four top national officers in 2009 are from the South: chair-elect Gary McCormick, Knoxville, Tenn.; treasurer Tom Eppes, Charlotte, N.C., and secretary Leslie Backus, Davie, Fla. Chair Cherenson is from Parsippany, N.J.
McCormick will be succeeded by Rosanna Fiske of Miami unless there is a successful challenge to her nomination.
Rickey addressed the North Florida chapter by telephone Aug. 20. However, there appears to be no record of him addressing chapter members in person with reporters present.
Sharpe was chair of the Sunshine district in 1999 and president of PRS/Tampa in 1996. She says leaders “missed an opportunity last year to involve the Assembly delegates in meaningful, specific discussions” of the ideas in the bylaws re-write.
There was no discussion of re-write proposals although leaders had promised that a full set of proposals would be made available at that meeting. Instead, hundreds of slides were presented during 5.5 hours of pre-arranged programming. For the second year in a row, there was not time for a “Town Hall” at the end of the day.
National Chairs in Assembly Opposed
Northeast district chair Mark McClennan, in a posting yesterday on the PRS governance e-group, questioned “the rationale” for making national committee and task force chairs Assembly delegates.
There are about 25 such chairs, all of whom are appointed by the national chair/CEO. He said bylaws has presented no “explanation” for this and notes such chairs “already have a strong voice and can address the Assembly. Why do we want to change this? Is this how most other associations do this?”
He said members “have yet to see an argument” for adding the chairs.
Already members of the Assembly are the 17 national directors, 20 section heads and 10 district heads.
PRS/Houston in the 1980s protested the presence of the national directors and other leaders in the Assembly, saying they were in the position of casting votes on their own proposals. The chapter’s criticisms were disregarded.
Stevens Sees “Democracy” in Bylaws
Stevens, in a posting Sept. 6, said the “good news” about the bylaws is that “democracy is at work within the Society as different opinions on the major issues are considered and debated.”
He said the goal of the committee was to be “more responsive to our members’ needs and make certain changes that would allow the Society to grow and prosper” and that “democracy would be extended to all 22,000 members.”
Dissident members, in postings on the governance e-group, have called the bylaws a “power grab” by the board and executive committee.
Stevens acknowledged the charge of “power grabbing” and said that there is “misinformation circulating about the rationale behind the changes advocated.”
McClennan and others have asked for details of how elections would be conducted before permission is given to shift this responsibility from the Assembly to the general membership.
Current proposal is to allow 500 members, voting in person or proxy, to elect officers and board members.
Stevens disagreed with this objection, saying that permission should be given first and details worked out later.
“Why should the rights of members be denied while we decide on whether they will vote by e-mail, snail mail or voice mail? This is no reason to hold up a full discussion on this guiding principle,” he said.
E-Voting Available
Some members have asked why the PRS bylaws committee is not talking about the several e-voting systems that are being marketed.
BigPulse.com says it has “Ten years of harvesting secure online votes” and has served “hundreds of clients and thousands of polls in many countries and industries.” E-votes save “time, money, effort, paper, and trees,” it says. It claims to have the “most flexible, feature rich online voting technology in the world.”
Candidates Would Have to Campaign
PR Society veterans said that the election process would have to radically change if e-votes by all members were sought.
Candidates, instead of opting for silence from the time they are nominated in early August until the election in November, would have to campaign for their posts and state their views on issues before the Society and the industry.
Currently none of the seven candidates is answering any questions from this website on where they stand on such issues as use of proxies and ending district representation on the board.
Deadline for candidates filing to run from the floor of the Assembly is Oct. 8.
The nominated candidates, besides Fiske, are: Philip Tate of Liquire George Andrews, Charlotte, N.C., ad/PR firm, for treasurer; counselor Gerald Corbett, San Bruno, Calif., for secretary; Mickey Nall of Ogilvy PR Worldwide, Atlanta, S.E. director; counselor Blake Lewis, S.W. director; counselor Bob Frause, N. Pacific director, and counselor Barbara Whitman, Honolulu, at-large director.
Their biographies and presentations for the PRS posts were removed from the Society website when they were nominated.
Gary McCormick of Scripps Networks is chair-elect and will automatically become chair in 2010.
McCormick asked Ofield Dukes, who sought nomination as at-large director, to join the 2010 board as a non-voting “senior counsel.” Dukes, who would have been the only African-American on the board (and only the fourth in the 62-year history of the Society), declined the offer. He has yet to say whether he will challenge Whitman, who won the at-large nomination.
Supporters of Duke said they were surprised that Whitman, being based in Honolulu, would be picked over Dukes who is based in Washington, D.C., and who is working closely with the Obama Administration on the mortgage crisis. |