http://ozreport.com/14.244#3

Dave Wills <<dave>>
writes:

I wanted to send you some comments regarding a previous Oz
Report.  Though your questions were pointed and valid, I believe they may have
misled some members.

The text in black is copied from the Oz Report.  The text in blue are my
comments:

Dave Wills, the chairman of the By Laws Committee that handles
changes to the SOPs, and now the USHPA Vice President, wrote to me:

That SOP (SOP 6.01.04F) was completely re-written and so change bars were not
possible.  This was noted in several places prior to and during the Board
meeting, but I can't cite specific places right now.  I also can't say whether
the minutes reflect this.

The minutes don't reflect this change.

On 10/7/10, Martin Palmaz sent the Board a packet of information
for the Board Meeting. Included in that packet were all the draft SOPs.

On 10/8/10, I sent a note to the Board which listed all the SOPs with proposed
modifications. One paragraph in this email stated:

"SOP 06-01 Chapter Support: This entire SOP has been re-drafted. It is on the
Chapter Support Committee agenda and changes will most likely be made, but many
changes to strengthen requirements on chapters have been added."

I also made announcement to the Board during general session that the final
draft versions of the SOPs were available on the server for review, as I do
every Board meeting.

The minutes would not reflect these events because they are not part of the
Board meeting or discussion.

There were only three BOD members at the By Law committee meeting
where this section was added to the SOPs.  Dave Wills, Ken Grubbs, and Mark
Forbes.  The By Laws were passed by the whole BOD with minimal discussion.

An important part of this discussion is an
explanation of how the Organization and Bylaws Committee operates.  Each SOP is
the responsibility of one particular committee.  You can find the responsible
committees at the end of SOP 03-04.  Any Director and any committee can make a
motion to amend an SOP, but typically changes are referred from members,
Directors and other committees to the responsible committee.

If a committee approves changes to an SOP, O&B does not have the authority to
re-write the SOP.  Changes to SOPs 12-02, 12-05, 12-07, 12-10, and 06-01 were
approved by the appropriate committee(s) prior to being presented at the O&B
meeting.  Since draft versions were already available, all O&B had to do was to
confirm that the language was written appropriately.  O&B is not able to make
substantive changes to the SOP.  So typically, O&B meetings are not
controversial and attended by very few Directors.

O&B has always had a problem where other committees make non-specific changes to
policy that are approved by the Board.  This creates difficulty in trying to
figure out how to make the SOPs match what the Board decisions are.  To try to
prevent this problem, I did something different this past Board meeting.  As new
ideas were coming in from the committees and the Board members, I tossed those
ideas into the draft SOPs.  The proposals that went into SOP 06-01 came from
many places.  The intent was to have draft SOPs with various proposals available
to the committees in order to make discussion and modification easier during
their committee meetings.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.  Not just between
USHPA members (and chapter officers) and the USHPA (specifically, Dave Wills)
but between USHPA BOD members.  How many knew what was going on here?  Dave
indicates that this change was noted in several places.  Were BOD members
sufficiently aware of it?  Apparently not enough to make it to the By Laws
committee meeting.

There was not a failure to communicate the
proposed changes to the Board.  But there was a failure to communicate how draft
SOPs were being handled.  I believe many Directors thought the draft SOPs were
vetted by the committees either prior to or during the Board meeting.  As I said
above, they contained proposals for committees to consider.  The committees
themselves may not have understood the significance of the draft SOPs and so may
not have spent much of their time vetting the changes.  Obviously, we all need
to pay a little more attention.  I know I will be stressing this point prior to
every Board meeting from now on.

Why wasn't this proposed change to the SOPs sent out to all the
chapters before the BOD meeting?  Doesn't Dave think that they might have some
useful input on this proposal?

I think it would be extremely difficult to
try to adjust national policy in discussions with individual chapters.  The
Board of Directors are tasked with the responsibility to keep USHPA strong. 
This sometimes may lead to policy which benefits one chapter but is detrimental
to another.  On the other hand, chapters are responsible only for their own well
being and typically are not involved in USHPA operations.

Sometimes we don't get it right.  But as Rich pointed out, we're all trying to
do what we think best for USHPA.  When told us we got it wrong, we listened and
we fixed it. It is always important to hear from the members, not only when
we're wrong, but when we're right.