Sherry Treco-Jones, who headed the governance task force of PRSA, quit the day after the board voted 8-6 in a teleconference in March to reject proposed reforms of the nominating process, sources said.

There was no immediate comment from Del Galloway, president of PRSA, or other PRSA sources.

Treco-Jones' three-year term on the board was due to expire Dec. 31 this year. She is only the second national director to quit mid-term. PRSA continues to check its records on this.

The board of ethics and professional standards (BEPS) had asked the national board last year to investigate a number of alleged abuses in the 2003 nominating process including pushing back the deadline date six days and allowing officers and board members to comment on candidates.

The national board did not take a vote on the proposal, sources said.

Reed Byrum, 2003 president, had promised in an e-mail to the O'Dwyer website to take up the complaint of BEPS with the 2003 Assembly but this did not happen.

Jeff Julin and Cheryl Procter-Rogers worked with Treco-Jones on proposed Nomcom reforms.

Treco-Jones and her two committee members, Cheryl Procter-Rogers and Jeff Julin, worked many hours on proposed nomcom reforms, sources said.

The Jan. 30-31 board meeting in New York discussed the proposals at length, running over the scheduled time by an hour, sources said.

Since there was no final decision, a teleconference was scheduled in March.

Among the reforms proposed was one requiring the nomcom, which was headed by Kathy Lewton in 2003, to inform any candidates about negative comments made about them and to give the candidates the right to rebut such comments.

Current rules are that candidates can ask to see comments but ordinarily are not told about them.

Some 2003 candidates claimed they were slandered by highly negative comments made about them and that they were even considering legal action.

Newcomers Help to Kill Proposal

Tom Vitelli made the motion to kill Nomcom reforms.

The teleconference voted 8-6 to kill the proposals for the reforms, with Tom Vitelli reportedly making the motion.

Reportedly voting against the reforms were Sue Bohle, Marie Russell, Michael Cherenson and Anthony D'Angelo, who joined the board this year, plus Byrum, Rhoda Weiss, Debbie Mason, and Judith Phair.

Galloway reportedly did not vote because it was not a tie.

The 2004 list of committee chairs and co-chairs, published earlier this year, showed that Treco-Jones was replaced on the governance task force by Mason.

Voting for the changes were Procter-Rogers, Treco-Jones, Julin, Rosanna Fiske, Steven Lubetkin and James McCall.

Chuck Wood, 2003 chair of BEPS, and Vivian Hamilton, vice-chair, were not appointed to the 2004 BEPS. All BEPS members except one had signed a three-page letter detailing charges against the 2003 nomcom and asking the board to investigate.

Pres. Del Galloway didn't vote on Vitelli's motion because there was not a tie.

BEPS gave up its powers of investigation several years ago after former BEPS chair Bob Frause said the code was unenforceable because objects of complaints would threaten legal action and because it was hard to tie any alleged wrongdoing to a PRSA member.

Members refused to cooperate in providing evidence, he said in a memo urging the code to be dropped. A new code replaced it.

Wood said he was appointed as BEPS chair for one-year terms by 2002 president Joanne Killeen and 2003 president Byrum and that he served at the pleasure of the president and board.

When he was not reappointed by Galloway, he said he neither resigned nor was fired but simply was not reappointed.

However, the bylaws say that there are nine members of BEPS who each serve three-year terms.

One of them is appointed chair each year by the president or national board.

Some members say the rules are clear that everyone on BEPS is there for at least three years and the chair should not serve at the whim of the president and/or board.

Even if not renamed chair, the person in that position should still remain on BEPS, the members said.

Otherwise, they noted, the independence and integrity of BEPS would be compromised.

Resignation questioned

Treco-Jones headed the governance task force that was looking into alleged improprieties on the 2003 nominating committee headed by Kathy Lewton.

Critics of the 2003 nominating process said the board was "spinning" the governance committee's work as studying and possibly revising the guidelines.

Instead, they said the actual assignment should have been chastising the 2003 nomcom for disobeying several rules including setting more than one deadline for receipt of entries and the rule against officers and board members interfering in the nominating process by expressing opinions about candidates.

Treco-Jones cited 'work load' for her resignation as director.

They were also concerned that one candidate, Maria Russell, got 90 lines of type in the 2003 PRSA Bluebook as "senior counsel" to nine different boards and committees. Russell was later nominated and elected as treasurer.

No such senior counsel post had existed previously and it has been dropped this year, say the critics. They note that the task forces, committees, etc., already have national board members who are assigned to give them advice.

Critics want to know who gave Russell such major play in the Bluebook, positioning her as one of the most active members in the history of PRSA.

The 2003 nomcom courted a corporate PR executive who had none of the technical qualifications for the national board including voting at an Assembly.

The executive, a client of Fleishman-Hillard where Lewton was also employed, was informed he had been nominated to the board.

The nomination was withdrawn the next day when his lack of qualifications was pointed out. He then quit the Society to protest his mistreatment.

Treco-Jones Cites 'Work Load'

Treco-Jones, in an e-mail to this website, said she had been thinking about resigning for "several months" and finally did it.

She said she resigned due to her "work load" and that it had "just come to a point where I had to make a choice."

"I chose to focus on my business and try to achieve a more balanced life," she said, adding: "My experience on the board was a terrific one and very collegial and productive, and I think Gary McCormick will make a fine board member. I have no idea who will do what on the board in future times, but I sincerely wish everyone my best."

Treco-Jones, besides her own PR firm in Decatur, is in a partnership with counselor Nancy Wood of Atlanta in Agency ID, which helps clients find PR firms or ad agencies. Wood was the APR board chair in 2003.

The Treco-Jones website (trecojonespr.com) says she is a Connecticut native with a B.A. in English who worked for Ketchum in the 1980s and was senior VP of Fleishman-Hillard in the late 1990s. She was president of PRSA/Georgia in 1999 and co-chair of the PRSA conference in Atlanta in 2001.

Headed Governance Committee

She was named to head a governance committee in late 2003 that was apparently formed in response to the three-page request for an investigation of the 2003 nomcom that had been made by the board of ethics and professional standards.

Other members of the committee were directors Cheryl Procter-Rogers and Jeff Julin.

Treco-Jones reportedly did make some recommendations to the board in January but no action was taken on them.

Chuck Wood, chair of BEPS in 2002, and Vivian Hamilton, vice chair, both either quit or were asked to leave their posts as of Dec. 31, 2003. Wood had only served two years of what is normally a three-year BEPS directorship.

Another break with tradition was that BEPS chairs usually serve five or more years, which had been the case with previous chairs Robert Frause and James Little.

Dave Rickey of AmSouth Bank, Birmingham, Ala., was named chair of BEPS for 2003 and Gary McCormick, program manager at URS Coleman, Bel Air, Md., was named vice chair.

McCormick has been named to fill the unexpired term of Treco-Jones, which extends to Dec. 31, 2004.

PRSA said that three other candidates were considered for the Treco-Jones board position.

Two reportedly were members of the Georgia chapter and one was from Memphis. Some chapter members feel that a Georgia chapter member should have been chosen to succeed Treco-Jones.

Dissident members of PRSA ask why it's necessary for a member of a 17-member board to resign, particularly when there are only a few months left on the term.

One member who slacked off on such a big board would not particularly be missed, they said.