Folks,
For those who don't want to wade through all the posts, here's a summary of the issue posted by EAA member FloridaJohn over on the EAA Forum:
"The purpose started out as simply an idea to elect people to the board that were thought to better represent the homebuilder community. Nothing wrong with that, just some members exercising their rights in a membership organization. The initial idea was to (as a group) figure out who they wanted to vote for.
Then someone wondered exactly what the mechanism would be for a group of like-minded people to cast a group of votes. The obvious answer seemed to be via proxy. After all, that's how the current EAA leadership gets to cast votes for people who are unable to attend the annual meeting.
Since there were rumors that the last time this had been tried all the proxies were rejected by EAA because they did not conform to the proper standard, someone thought the group should ask EAA for a blank "blessed" proxy form so that there was some assurance that the collected proxies would be counted. That led to an entire month of time passing, with no one from EAA seemingly able to approve or locate a simple form. First, the EAA lawyer was required, then the EAA Executive Committee was required, and in the end, that still did not produce a form from EAA that was "pre-accepted." Finally, in frustration, the members who were interested in casting votes just copied the existing proxy that assign the voting rights to the EAA leadership and changed the appropriate fields. This got some tacit approval from EAA, but there was still no definitive statement that these would be accepted as legal proxies.
At this point, the "movement" adjusted it goals slightly. In addition to trying to cast a group vote for those they thought would best represent the group, and new goal was to see if the proxy process is broken, or if a group of like-minded individuals can exercise their rights in voting for who they want to represent them. That part remains to be seen.
As part of the process of trying to squeeze an approved proxy form from EAA, it was discovered that the EAA by-laws, minutes to the Board meetings, minutes to the Executive committee meetings, and several other key documents were impossible to find. These documents were thought to be very important for members of the EAA to be able to review, since that would give them some insight into how the EAA is run, and also which board members were looking out for any particular group's interests. With this information, a member can see if a board member voted for or against the things a particular group of members cared about. So the goals were adjusted a little bit more to try and get EAA to be more transparent in it's governance. After all, as a voting member, you want to make sure the people you are voting for have your best interest in mind, right? In this internet age, making these documents available to members should be no harder than creating a "governance" section on the EAA website that members can access anytime they are interested.
All this controversy came about because a group of members wanted to exercise their rights in a membership organization. They were trying to work within the organization to make changes, not against it. That turned out to be an extremely difficult task that revealed the lack of transparency in the way things are currently run. Obviously, changes like this are not made overnight, so a multi-step process was outlined:
Step 1. Collect proxies and see if they can be used by a group to cast votes for "preferred" candidates.
Step 2. If that was successful, see how board members can be nominated that are preferential to the group for next year. If not successful, find out why.
Step 3. Work with the EAA to make the governance more transparent to the members. Realize this may not happen until said group has enough members on the board to force a change.
This initial group happened to be a group of homebuilders, but the same thing could be done by a group of warbirds, antiques, aerobatics, or others. Over time, the board would begin to more represent the groups that were organized and voting in a block. This is a way to make sure the EAA is going in the direction the membership prefers.
So, the initial push was to get proxies, because that is what can be done now, and before Oshkosh this year. The other stuff will take longer and require more work over a span of several years.
The main goal was well-defined: More transparency in EAA governance. Everything else were just ways to get there."
I got in early and was parked in row 510, so I'd have to walk away from the show gate to get there, so I just skipped it and went on in. I'll have to give it a shot if they're back next year. Did Fratello's run that, or someone else?
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