Peter, That sounds good, but it is a bare minimum. You have not dealt with the issues of whether the Senate is bound by the provisions of OPML or of ORS 174.130, either by Law or by the Governance Document. If the Senate is so subject, you may have to deal with two situations that you will not find in Robert's Rules: 1. No motion can be passed in the absence of a quorum. State law does not allow the presumption of a quorum just because the meeting started with one and nobody made a call (according to M. Grier). 2. If 174.130 applies, a motion can be passed only by a Yes vote of 26 or more.
These uncertainties, raised in 1995 and again in 2003 by the Administration that is passing, should be resolved ASAP in order that the Senate can be confident in the validity of its actions.
Frank
Frank.
Can I post your letter (copied below) on the Senate Website? I'll probably post it as the first entry of the 2009/10 Senate letters and documents page. I am copying this to Paul Simonds and Gwen Steigelman just to be sure I have the proper procedure firmly in mind.
a) If I am the presiding officer at a meeting of the Senate, I intend to ask Gwen (as the secretary of the Senate) at the beginning of each meeting of the Senate before any substantive business is transacted whether or not we have a quorum. That is 26 senators, right?
b) For votes on substantive motions, I will ask Gwen to count the number of "yes" hands and the number of "no" hands. And to record the numbers. Right?
PBG
Peter
I respond in situ below.
On May 20, 2009, at 10:41 AM, Peter Gilkey wrote:
Dear Frank.
My notes for the last senate meeting are hard for me to read. But they go something along the lines as recording you saying something along the lines of: "I am worried about the effect of the Oregon public meeting laws. I take seriously the granting of degrees. So we need to be confident these actions by the senate will hold up. The minutes will not so indicate." I also have a very vague recollection that at the meeting of the statuatory faculty you raised a similar question about the validity of certain actions of the UO Senate (was it in relation to a 9-7 vote or something) that is perhaps relevant.
These two concerns both relate to the applicability of ORS174.130. That is the infamous State quorum requirement which has, for more than thirty years, been interpreted by DoJ as requiring an aye vote of a majority of a public body's membership in order for the body to take action. You may recall that you advised me that you would "call a quorum" on the March 2003 Assembly meeting, and President Frohnmayer advised the petitioners that he would require an aye vote of a majority of the Assembly membership before declaring that the Assembly had taken an action. Apparently both of you presumed the applicability of ORS174.130 to the Assembly.
However, the DoJ opinion of 27 November 2008 declared that the Assembly (and Faculty as a body) had no State-mandated quorum requirement, but was not explicit with respect to the Senate. One can find arguments on both sides as to whether or not the DoJ opinion relieved the Senate of the restrictions of ORS174.130. One of my lawyerly friends cites the DoJ statement that "It would be illogical to conclude that ORS 174.130 must govern the Assembly when the Assembly is the discretionary creation of a body that is not itself subject to the requirements of the statute." He takes that to mean the Senate is not subject to 174.130. In so doing he assumes
(1) that this opinion, written for a body of undefined size (Assembly), is perfectly applicable to a body of defined size (Senate), and
(2) that the Law is logical.
I can advise you no further on the legalities of the ORS 174.130 issue.
However, while I have your ear, we should think about the applicability of the Oregon Public Meetings Law to UO internal governance. My belief, arrived at after much study, is that the OPML does not apply to UO internal governance. (In brief, school board meetings are subject to OPML but teachers' meetings are not.) However, others seem to feel differently. For instance, President Frohnmayer, at 6 May 2009 meeting, stated that he considered it likely that OPML did apply to UO governance, citing the public's interest in our activities, especially with respect to granting degrees. This would seem to put the Senate in the spotlight. There are other Law School faculty who lean the same way, though I consider their leanings unsupported.
Even if it were demonstrated that OPML does not apply, by law, to the Senate, we must wonder whether the Faculty at the 6 May meeting applied the provisions of that law to the Senate when it ratified the March 1996 Charter.
Now, if the Senate is obliged, for one reason or another, to obey OPML, what are the consequences? With respect to quorum and voting requirements, I don't know. I had assumed that a body subject to OPML was necessarily subject to ORS174.130. This assumption seemed reasonable to me (even though OPML does not mention 174.130), because both laws were written for public bodies. If one law applies, the body must be a public body, and the other law must ipso facto also apply. Also, I had bought into Prof. Forrell's opening remarks, made on the advice of the University Counsel, at the 17 May 1995 Assembly meeting.
What about other consequences of OPML applicability to the Senate.
Regarding parliamentary procedure, the following thoughts may help:
I think that a Senate President who believed in process would seek responsible legal resolution of the uncertainties regarding ORS174.130 and the OPML, which were raised for the first time in the governance document of 1995. If my sometimes brusque intrusions into Senate meetings have such a consequence, I would be delighted.
Best regards,
Frank
As incoming Senate President (presumably) I take procedural matters of this kind very seriously and I intend to adhere to the rules of parlimentary procedure with the kind help of Paul Simonds more closely than perhaps has been done in the past -- and I do not imply by this in any fashion that we have been deficient in the past it is only that I am a somewhat more formal person. So given your obvious concerns and thoughts on the matter, could I perhaps impose on you to send me an email outlining your "worry" as expressed at the last Senate meeting (and perhaps at the meeting of the Statuatory faculty as well) in a bit more detail so that I could post on the web and take into consideration fully during the forthcoming year.
PBG
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