Parliamentary Procedure – Oh, Contrarian!

A Parliamentarian Looks at POP

POP home page — *POP’s Home Page*, https://www.pop5.org

POP has a self-perpetuating closed governance structure in which the members’ only role is to fund the corporation.
Author’s conclusion

This post will be of interest primarily to Ohio public employees, particularly those who are retired. Approximately a quarter of American public employees–Ohio’s among them–participate in public retirement systems separate from Social Security.

I am pretty good at keeping up with email, but I tend to get behind on postal mail. Just last weekend I opened a mailing that I received, probably weeks ago, from Protect Ohio Pensions, Inc. If you’re one of the thousands of Ohio retirees who got their mailing, perhaps you’ll want to read what follows.

OEA’s RA: Questions about Proposal 1

If you’ve read my last post, “OEA’s RA: A Contrarian Considers,” then you know that I think we needed to do a better job of deliberating about the issues at OEA’s virtual Representative Assembly on Saturday. Today I want to explain why I expect to vote against Proposal 1 when the mail ballots come out.

OEA’s RA: A Contrarian Considers

On Saturday, along with about 600 fellow delegates, I attended a virtual meeting of the Representative Assembly, the governing body of the Ohio Education Association.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, Saturday’s OEA RA was held using an electronic format. Delegates met by telephone, with a managed system handling the speaking order and voting. On a technical level, the system worked well, and OEA’s leadership and staff did a good job of keeping the agenda moving and providing necessary information. If this is how we meet in other emergency situations, we could do worse.

But on reflection, I believe that my fellow delegates and I performed poorly in our task of governing OEA, the state’s largest union. We missed an opportunity to debate amendments to OEA’s Constitution and Bylaws. Delegates will now vote on those by mail, and no one has a clue what we will decide or why–because there was no debate: no one spoke for or against any of the four proposals. Perhaps no one spoke against any of them because no one opposed them. But the duty of making the case for a change belongs to the proponents.