Upcoming By-Laws vote – Info and Recommendation

There was a webinar this morning about the upcoming By-Laws vote that starts later this month. I was not able to attend live, but I watched it later. Here are some highlights:

At the 6:00 minute mark they mention that representatives if ISC2 and the Board met with the petitioner. Previously they said that the By-Laws Committee had met with the petitioner. The facts are that the petitioner met with the ISC2 CEO and the former chair of the Board of Directors. Neither of them are on the By-Laws Committee, so any info they have regarding the petition proposals comes only from the written words, or second-hand info from those that the petitioner did meet with.

At the 11:00 minute mark, they left out the words, “in a lifetime” with reference to term limits. By doing so, this could lead to an interpretation down the road that it only means 6 years consecutively, then after a break you could serve again. Given that this comment has been offered to the Committee before, why did they leave those “in a lifetime” words out, other than to purposely allow for reinterpretation later.

At the 15:00 minute mark the details of the upcoming vote were announced. We will be able to vote for either the petition proposals as a block, the board’s proposals as a block, or none of the above. Apparently ISC2 learned nothing with the result of last year’s “all or nothing” vote. By allowing one of 3 choices, it is very likely that none will achieve a 2/3 vote. My guess is that is exactly what the Board wants. Further, the petition deliberately submitted 9 proposals to allow votes for some, but not others. By not allowing that, I believe this is a violation of the petition process of the current By-Laws. My sense is the By-Laws Committee and the Board of Directors simply do not care. I’m not surprised.

It was also noted that the materials will include the Committee’s rationale for the proposals. The petitioner was not given the opportunity to present their rationale for why those should be voted for.

Analysis of the proposals was written about in previous articles, so I will not repeat that here. My recommendation is to vote for the petitioned By-Laws and give the members a chance to run the organization again. I also recommend complaining to ISC2 that voting by block is a violation of the petition process since it called for votes on 9 separate proposals.