[Noisebridge-discuss] Bylaws committee

[Jeffrey Malone]

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 8:54 PM, Christie Dudley <longobord at gmail.com> wrote:
> In order to remove the cognitive dissonance without changing the bylaws, we'd
> have to more or less scrap most of our principles and entrust our leaders with
> more authority.  I am opposed to that.

Noisebridge doesn't have leaders so much as you don't recognise them.

We have a board of directors, officers and members.
Officers have the authority to act on behalf of the organisation,
legally.  There is no way to change this -- the positions are required
by law, and the authority is recognised by law.
The officers, however, answer to the board of directors, who can
remove any officer without cause by a simple vote.
The board of directors answers to the members, whom the members can
remove without cause by a vote.

Is this consensus? No, it's voting.
Are these "checks and balances" required by law? Yes.
Has there been any abuse of authority to date? No.
Do the members always have a recourse for abuse of authority? Yes.

The point is to pick people for these positions that you trust not to
abuse their authority.  React if they do -- which is all that can be
said of human nature.

> Now that we have that, it's more a matter of having the powers that be
> approve the new bylaws rather than having them accept us as a public benefit
> organization.  The worst that can happen is they reject the new bylaws and
> we have to go back and fix the bits they don't like.  It'll be far less of a
> challenge than our original public benefit request.

Sorry, but I don't trust any layman's opinion on this particular issue.

I personally will be strongly opposed to any change to our bylaws
without a competent lawyer (ie, one who does this kind of law)
providing us his opinion on any new set -- including his opinion of
potential risks.  And since I personally am not at all convinced that
Noisebridge needs to do this -- specifically, I feel we have been
operating without issue under our current bylaws, I would not support
any attempts to use Noisebridge's funds to pay for a lawyer.

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 8:35 AM, Christie Dudley <longobord at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, I realize people feel that there's a lot better use for our money.  I
> can see the point, but it's my perspective that this is more like insurance.
>  It's pretty worthless... right up to the point where there's a problem and
> then it's absolutely necessary.

Please explain the risks that would require this.

I fail to see how our bylaws, as they are written, interfere with how
we would operate, require us to jump through any hoops that are not
required by law, or otherwise create risk or problems for us.

Jeffrey