[Rets-dev] Governance Document

[Matt Lavallee]

As I suggested earlier, rather than limiting an organization rights or
hindering the participation of an organization, I recommend RESO adopt a
disclosure of affiliation policy, akin to the W3C's conflict of interest
policy:
http://www.w3.org/2000/09/06-conflictpolicy
 
At least then there is no question for the general assembly of any possible
bias, intended or otherwise.
 
-Matt


  _____  

From: rets-dev-bounces at rets.org [mailto:rets-dev-bounces at rets.org] On Behalf
Of Michael Wurzer
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 9:16 AM
To: rets-dev at rets.org
Subject: Re: [Rets-dev] Governance Document


Matt, I think the provision in Section 2.3 is an instance where we didn't do
a good job of harmonizing the document with our intent after all was said
and done.  As some background, we started (with permission) with the MISMO
document, which favors Subscribers more strongly than the more
member-centric model we finally decided upon.  I believe this section you've
identified is a hold-over from the MISMO documents that we intended to
remove.

Further to your concern about work groups being dominated by big companies,
as I mentioned in my first response, the proposal (Section 2.7.2) provides
that, "Each Workgroup shall establish and document its own meeting quorum
and attendance requirements, subject to the approval of the Board of
Directors as applicable."  Granted, this provision is somewhat contradicted
by Section 5.4 but I believe the intent was to allow the work groups some
opportunity to tailor quorum and voting to their particular needs, knowing
that there will be big and small groups, and variances of other kinds.

In review, a person or persons faced with a stacked work group would have
several options:

1.  As Gregg suggested, recruiting of others to participate on the work
group is perhaps the best response, to ensure broad views and participation.
Requests to the Executive Officer to help with such recruiting would not be
out of order, I think, as one of the primary responsibilities of the
Executive Officer leadership position is to help ensure broad participation.

2.  Advocate for special voting requirements in the work group pursuant to
Section 2.7.2.

3.  Quit the existing work group and form a competing work group and
proposal.

4.  Advocate against the proposal at the general membership meeting.

5.  In the event that the proposal passes anyway, advocate for a veto of the
proposal by the Board of Directors.

All of these checks and balances should, if the claim of packing is
legitimate, provide several opportunities for the right result.  If,
however, you continue to believe these checks and balances are not
sufficient, I recommend that you try to formulate language that would
aggregate votes around entities as I believe you'll find that such
provisions tend to concentrate too much power in entities and
disenfranchises many who are actively participating.  We focused on
participation as the voting requirement in order to give voice and avoid
power concentration, while at the same time restrain vote stacking.  Though
some cleanup of the language is necessary, I continue to believe the
participation requirement is the better and easier way to avoid stacking
than vote concentration around entity definitions.

Michael



Michael Wurzer <mailto:mwurzer at fbsdata.com> 
President and CEO
FBS Data Systems - An Employee Owned Company
800.437.4232 x140 (office)
701.306.9341 (mobile)
www.flexmls.com/blog 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.rets.org/pipermail/rets-dev/attachments/20070807/fd3a4eb4/attachment.html