A couple of you have requested my opinions on what is happening at the
national level. You can read the real thing at:
www.usgenweb.com/official/amendments.html
There are 3 proposed bylaw amendments: 1. Recall vote 2. States
Rights and 3. the Archives. None, at this writing, have received the
required support of 5 states as co-sponsers.
John A. asked early on, if we were going to vote to support any of these
amendments and we all know I left town, mentally. After much
encouragement, I have tried to make sense of all this and all the email on
the related subjects.
Now, you must keep in mind, that we have never set up any bylaws for
Washington state. As I understand it, when the bylaws were passed, we
fell into a grandfathered state. We have never had an election for state
coordinator and until we do so, I am the state coordinator, for good or
bad or whatever.
If you, as county coordinators, want to design some bylaws and call for an
election of the state coordinator position, plus an associate state
coordinator, you are welcome to do so. Although, Mike Sweeney has served
as assistant for as many or more years as I have. We do keep in touch
when one of us leaves town, but not much more.
I just want it clearly stated that I have not denied a general election
for this state.
John and others, I would not have encouraged a vote in this state on any
of the amendments mostly because like a lot of national level activities
them seem to be designed in haste and with outside agendas. But mostly I
would not have encouraged a vote because most of us do not seem follow
what is going on close enough to make an intelligent descision. This is
my opinion based on the activity of discussions on the WAGen-L and few
people respond in any form to questions or political concerns. I don't
care which way it goes, but from informal comments people seem to want to
do their own thing as best as they can.
Now the specific amendments: These are my opinions only!
States Rights: A desire to give individual states more to do; would seem
to pull the states too far apart or at least encourage separation. I
don't like to be told what to do at every corner, but neither can an
organization work together to a common end without some guidance. The
only trick is agreeing to the guidance. Section 2: wants to reduce to a
simple majority for national level elections, except for bylaw
amendments. I have a problem with that when there is now agreement on how
voting requirements are determined.
Archives: An attempt to clarify what the archives is; name to be USGenWeb
Archives Project rather than Project Archives, seems to be a strange
naming process. Bringing special projects under the archives, seems
logical to me.
Sorry, but I have to sign off for now. If you want to have more to say,
do it on WAGen-L. The above are my opinions only, do not use them as
anything more. You are equally able to make up your own minds based on
how involved you want to be. I don't think I said anything amazing
tonight, or if I have even given anyone pause to consider. It may not
even make sense. Whatever the case, you have something to say, you do
have a forum. You do not need my permission to speak to the group or ask
for a state wide election or whatever.
Celia
P.S. Several of you made recent trips to your pages in the last
week. Good job! If you have not been to your counties, at least change
the last update date.