The Plan of Organization Review Committee has released a rather lengthy report making numerous changes to the NCDP Plan of Organization. Mostly these recommendations are made under the pretext of streamlining the SEC meetings which have gotten bogged down over the years and are made even more unbearable with the advent of virtual meetings. Yet with everything done with virtual meetings since mid March 2020, much of what the party presents to us is done with even less transparency than ever before. Now they want to turn the SEC members into rubber-stamps for the state party officers, staff and consultants - all but eliminating our ability to amend what is brought to us from other committee meetings were we have little to no input or other involvement.
PORC Recommendation 1 (Local Alternative Plans of Organization)
Due to the hardship in holding a County Executive Committee with several hundred members; the SEC, in 2019, approved lowering the quorum required for the CEC in Mecklenburg County. We recommend renewing that Alternate Plan of Organization from Mecklenburg County.PORC Recommendation 2 (Local Alternative Plans of Organization)
Vote YES with amendments:
I'm not really buying the argument for that it's that much harder to hold a CEC meeting with 40% quorum requirement vs. 35%. With virtual meetings, we have not had a problem making or exceeding quorum – we've had more problems handling the overwhelming number of people who want to participate both as credentialed CEC members as well as non-credentialed attendees.
There are many things that could be done to hold meetings where you make quorum of 40% - like holding the meetings on a weekend during the day instead of a weeknight with people having to commute across the county from work and miss dinner.
My real objection to these two recommendations is the fact there is little if any input or discussion/debate within the county party over the language of the LACPoO for any county. Pretty much only the county party officers or even just the County Chair and a few others write the language up to the last minute with little to no input from knowledgeable members of the county party who deserve to have input into the county party Plan of Organization. Here in Wake County, I might want to have input on including the District Coordinators and Tech committees into the LACPoO, which would also cover minimum qualifications for selection, and limits to how they can interfere with precinct organization. I might also want to formalize the Resolution and Platform Committee process so that it's handled the same way year after year and we don't have to reinvent the wheel.
I favor voting YES on both plans, but submitting language to the PORC to amend the PoO re these Local Alternative County Plans of Organization to require that any county contemplating creating their own LACPOO must create a LACPoO committee to accept amendments from active Democrats and hold meetings to discuss and debate proposed language and then vote on a final document published and distributed to the CEC members at least 14 days before a CEC meeting where that document can be discussed/debated/amended by members of the CEC. Otherwise, these LACPoO documents end up being solely written by the County Chair – which is not very small “d” democratic.
PORC Recommendation 3 (DEC Voting In Districts Wholly In A County)
I favor voting YES on Recommendation #3.
PORC Recommendation 4 (County BOE & Chair Appointments)
I recommend voting YES on recommendation #4.
PORC Recommendation 5 (Appointed Treasurer)
Lately we've had a lot of problems with Treasurers who aren't doing their jobs in an accurate and/or timely manner. Having an appointed Treasurer means that you don't have to ask an elected Treasurer to resign or file a petition to remove them, which can take time and still result in a problem with the SBE. That being said, once the Treasurer is appointed, it should at least take a meeting of the elected county party level officers to remove the Treasurer for cause, so the appointment process can begin.
I recommend voting YES for #5 with an amendment to require a vote of the elected county part officers to remove the appointed Treasurer for cause. Any Treasurer can resign from office by notifying the County Party Chair and the elected county party officers in writing.
PORC Recommendation 6 (Immediate Past Chair Ex-Officio Officer)
There is absolutely no reason why a current Party Chair can't reach out to an immediate past Chair for advise and share their experience. But why should they get a vote? It's bad enough that most Chairs are picked by the Governor and this would give the governor yet another vote on the Executive Council and SEC. And what happens if an incumbent Chair is beaten by a challenger – if the SEC members wanted that person to have a vote, they'd have voted for them to be Chair. And what if a Chair has to resign due to some conflict or scandal – would you want them to have a vote?
I recommend voting NO on #6.
PORC Recommendation 7a (NCDP Finance Committee)
I'm not buying that a Finance Committee report would help streamline SEC meetings. We still have to vote for the budget, and except for the most recent SEC meeting where the budget was provided on-line, the real time-killer is the need to look at the budget for the first time at the SEC meeting. As for the often purported reason that we don't provide advance copies because we don't want the Republicans to see what we spend – so what? We've lost two decennial elections in a row for all the good this secrecy has done us.
I recommend voting NO on 7a unless it is amended to include advance publication of the budget along with all other SEC meeting documents a minimum of 14 days before the SEC meeting.
PORC Recommendation 7b (SEC Candidate Filing Period)
I recommend voting against 7b because it might cause conflict with diversity requirements. Also – it would allow for “rigged elections” - what would happen if all but one person dropped off the slate for each position – and no one else could run?
It would need to be amended to allow floor nominations to fulfill diversity requirements and to allow for increased communication for SEC members and other interested active Democrats.
PORC Recommendation 7c (Streamline SEC Meetings)
(1) Shift the approval of Affiliated Orgs to the odd numbered Summer SEC - YES
(2) Only hear Resolutions from the P&R once per year (during the summer meeting) - NO
(3) POO Amendments presented to SEC for an up/down/refer back vote – HELL NO!
(4) Following DNC model, create a Finance Sub-committee of Exec Council to deliberate and modify draft budget from staff. Council still can amend. Present Summary to SEC for an up/down/refer back vote only. No amendments on the floor. This is already covered under 7a - I recommend voting No – the DNC is a poor model where consultants & lobbyists who are also DNC members who can rig contracts without other member input or amendments. Too much of what our party does is done by a few people who wear too many hats without enough transparency - why make it worse?
(5) Create filing period ahead of SEC for officer/DNC elections, prohibit running from the floor. This is already covered under 7b - I recommend voting NO – would cause conflict with diversity requirements. Also – would allow for “rigged elections” - what would happen if all but one person dropped off the slate for each position – and no one else could run?
We recommend these amendments.
I have (numbered) these bulleted items for discussion. I do know lately we've tried to cram too much stuff into any one meeting. I long for the days when we had competent Chairs who could run a meeting smoothly without having to turn around and ask staff for advice. And we would know a year in advance when we'd have SEC meeting and state conventions – in even years those meetings would take place on the same weekend to save on travel and other expenses. And that would give people enough time to make arrangements for childcare, rides, etc. And even give people time to plan for the meetings that would lead up to the conventions and SEC meetings.
I'm not buying the pretext that these items are being proposed to streamline meetings. If we really wanted to streamline meetings, the committee that came up with these ideas would have been much more diverse and taken suggestions from a wide variety of active Democrats. Right now there is little input from SEC members elected from the counties – it seems like the suggestions offered up allow for more top-down control of the party and make the SEC members little more than a rubber-stamp for decisions they have little to no input in.
If we really wanted to streamline the meetings, we'd elect people who really knew how to run meetings effectively. I long for the days when we'd have an effective Chair like Jerry Meek or David Parker who could not only get meetings done on time, but also got an even bigger agenda taken care of during the meetings then we are doing now. Just because the Governor likes a particular person to run the party for them, doesn't mean that person is gifted at running the meetings in a streamlined matter. I for one am not willing to give up my voice in the party because we have officers who can't lead meetings effectively.
Back on February 29, 2020, I urged the SEC to table the discussion of and vote on the Code of Conduct to discuss the virtual meetings we were undoubtedly going to start having in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Certain people wanted to shove that Code of Conduct down our throats even though it was a piss-poor document with no definitions of the conduct/behavior they sought to prevent/control. So now we have a Code of Conduct that is still too overly-broad and overly-vague (and therefore unenforceable), but even more importantly we failed to use our last chance to meet in person to discuss how we'd hold virtual meetings that would give members the same rights to participate as we have at in-person meetings. And we never considered how to research ways to make sure the meetings take place in a balanced way for both our rights of participation and not running too long and wasting time.
The problem with most of them is that if for some reason the Chair doesn't include these items on the agenda for the specific meeting, the business won't be dealt with. We've had State Party Chairs or Executive Directors forget to schedule resolutions for the second meeting in an odd year (like in 2015), meaning all the work done to handle resolutions at the precinct/county/district level was wasted. And we've even had state party officers and staff fail to schedule SEC meetings at all until virtually the last minute (in 2014, 2016 and 2017) which screws everyone up. So any of these items that pass must have language controlling the state party and committee chairs to make sure they do their jobs to schedule and notice these meetings in a timely manner.
(1) I've long since favored moving the approval of affiliated orgs from first meetings of odd numbered years. There is simply too much to do at the first SEC meeting of an odd year to deal with approving affiliated orgs.
(2) I do not favor only hearing resolutions during the second SEC meeting. The reasons we started hearing resolutions at all SEC meetings was 1) that a previous Chair didn't hear resolutions during the 2nd meeting of an odd year (in 2015) for reasons that defy rational explanation, and 2) that so much work goes into resolutions during a year that we cannot afford to run out of time to pass those resolutions at the SEC by limiting them to the second meeting of the year. That will force people to start fresh at the next round of precinct meetings without knowing that the process might fail them again at the state level.
(3) I do not favor only having POO amendments presented for an up/down/refer back vote. Over the last few years, active Democrats have had their rights to amend the POO severely curtailed by creation of a committee that was originally created to eliminate conflict and ambiguity in the Plan, but instead has become a creature with a mind of its own, making more work for itself and in one instance created an Auxiliary Organization Council of Review which was later shot down because the Auxiliary groups said they didn't need it. We need more not less input on the Plan of Organization - so this section is a very bad idea!
I've already covered my reasons for voting NO on items 4 & 5.
PORC Recommendation 7d (Clarify PORC process).
This amendment turns everyone on the SEC except for elected state officers and members of the Executive Council into nothing more than rubber stamps. That is not what our county delegates and/or CEC members elected us to be and do.
I recommend not only voting NO but HELL NO on item 3 under 7c and make 7d unnecessary.
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