Jerry Powell

Les, when are the USCF voting materials supposed to be available?

None of the USCF members on my team (Multnomah Athletic Club) have

received anything.



Jerry Powell





At 9:31 PM -0700 8/20/01, Les Earnest wrote:

 Ethics call for the USA Cycling staff to stay out of the political

processes of the organization, but they are functioning as political

activists in trying to defeat Proposition B and adopt Proposition A

so as to appease the special interests that currently control the

board of directors.



For example, the Staff Response to Proposition B, which should be a

politically neutral review of the effects of that proposition, is

actually a rebuttal composed of gross distortions and outright

fabrications. This note reviews those staff statements and is

fairly long because there is a lot of baloney to slice.



1. The first statement is:

"Mr. Earnest was one of the original authors of the 1995 governance

structure which he now claims is undemocratic."

This is a flagrant distortion. While I did initiate the movement to

organize what came to be called USA Cycling (in 1993-94, not 1995)

and wrote most of the words that ended up in its Articles and

Bylaws, a gross perversion of those words was put together by a

conspiracy between senior staff members and four USCF officers.

They successively hid my proposal, which called for a democratically

elected board of directors, got an unwitting accomplice to change it

into a competing proposal with the board of directors controlled by

special interests and prevented the voters from seeing the

supporting arguments for my proposal until after most of them had

voted.



At the 1994 annual meeting I strenuously argued against the

conspirator's proposal on the grounds that it was grossly

undemocratic. Nevertheless it was adopted by the USCF House of

Delegates. Thus the staff's implication that I was responsible for

the current undemocratic structure of the board of directors is a

flagrant lie.



The board of directors that was thus created has since run USA

Cycling into the ground. The person who restructured my proposal

and two of the conspirators subsequently realized that they had made

a big mistake and came to support our attempts at reform, but they

could not undo what they had done.



2. In response to our observation that "two-thirds of the board of

directors are elected by special interests that constitute less than

1% of the licensees," the staff says this claim is incorrect and

that "the grass-roots associations of USCF, NORBA and NBL comprise

75% of the board of directors." Okay, lets do the arithmetic. Two

directors are elected by the USCF board and two by the NORBA board.

That makes four directors who are elected by boards who mostly

represent licensees. All athlete directors are elected by a small

number of elite athletes and so do not represent the general

membership. The licensees of NBL do not get to vote at all, so they

are unrepresented and the USPRO board represents a tiny constituency

with strong commercial interests.



As shown, only four out of twelve directors are elected by general

licensees. If you add up the constituencies of the other eight

(athlete directors, USPRO directors and NBL directors), they make up

less than 1% of the licensees. Thus the staff claim is at best a

gross distortion that can be described as a 74% lie (75% minus 1%).



3. In response to our statement that "There will be eight classes

of voting members compared with 20 in the existing organization, the

staff responds that "there are actually only 13 classes rather than

20." The staff's statement ignores the voting classes involved in

various association elections, but I have to admit that I

undercounted those -- I now believe there are actually 33 classes of

voting members in USAC and its associations based on the following

tabulation.

(a) Based on Bylaw D, Sections 1 and 2, there are three voting classes

each in USCF, NORBA, and USPRO and four in NBL for a total of 13.

(b) Based on bylaws of the associations I see six voting classes in USCF,

seven in NORBA, four in USPRO, and three in NBL for a total of 20.

Prop. B will reduce these 33 voting classes to 8, which is a

substantial reduction in complexity.



4. The next Staff Response says:

"This proposition eliminates annual membership meetings and replaces

direct membership voting with a non-democratic House of Delegates

where delegates are DESIGNATED rather than elected; as such, this

proposal is decidedly non-democratic."

In fact, Prop. B provides annual meetings of the House of Delegates

based on proportional representation of licensees, much like USCF

had during its first 74 years of operation, in which delegates will

have an opportunity to debate the issues and then vote. The method

used to choose delegates will be left up to the member associations,

just as it has been left up to the racing clubs in USCF for many

years. Some will be elected to their positions and others will be

appointed, depending on the way the association is organized.



Past USA Cycling annual meetings have been shams at which one or two

people show up, the Ballot Clerk announces the number of proxy

votes, then the Chair announces that a quorum has not been reached

so the votes don't count. However we hope the members will be

sufficiently activated this year to achieve a quorum. A House of

Delegates is likely to provide a much more effective legislative

body than the current scheme.



It is truly remarkable that the staff would dare to claim the lack

of democratic representation in this proposal while also claiming

that Prop. A "Preserves direct member voting rights" even though it

would give licensees no voting rights for the board of directors and

that board would be dominated by special interests.



5. The Staff Response goes on to say:

"the athlete representatives to the house of delegates are also

designated, not elected by other athletes, which is in violation of

federal law and the USOC constitution."

There is no such requirement in federal law or the USOC

constitution, also known as the Olympic and Amateur Sports Act

(OASA). You can read it yourself by going to http://www.usoc.org

and clicking on "About the USOC" at the bottom of the page, then on

"Documents and Public Notices" near the top of the resulting page,

then on "Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act."



However, the treatment of athlete delegates in Prop. B is admittedly

sketchy and probably should be made more specific in USAC Bylaws,

which must in turn conform with the frequently changing USOC Bylaws.

The USAC board of directors should review such compliance at least

once a year and make any needed amendments in order to conform.



As long as we are discussing federal law, I note that USA Cycling

has been in violation of OASA Section 220522 since its inception

inasmuch as its bylaws fail to provide for "reasonable

representation of both males and females on the board of directors."

There happen to have been both males and at least one female on the

board of directors but that has been a coincidence and has not been

provided for in the bylaws. Furthermore, even though Prop. A pays

lip service to this gender representation requirement it fails to

include provisions in the bylaws to make it come out right. Thus it

too is technically in violation of federal law. Prop. B fully

complies with this federal requirement.



6. Another staff statement about Prop. B:

"Prevents regional membership groups with fewer than 950 members

from submitting new legislation, effectively eliminating the voice

of most members; and groups with fewer than 50 members have no vote

at all."

This is an almost-correct statement. The correct term is "member

associations" not "regional membership groups" and such an

association can be anything from a bike club to a regional

association to a national organization that focuses on some aspect

of the sport. Also, the actual requirement for submitting

legislation is that it be by petition of member associations (not

necessarily a single association) having a total of at least 10

votes, which means that those associations must collectively

represent at least 950 licensees. Compare this requirement of 10 or

fewer signatures of delegates with the 5% requirement under Prop. A,

which translates to a requirement of gathering approximately 3,000

individual signatures.



7. At last a completely true statement:

"Establishes Foundation Directors on USA Cycling Board."

Note that it says the same thing about Prop. A. Both proposals

allocate one-fifth of the director positions to the USA Cycling

Development Foundation.



8. Another distortion:

"Eliminates the sport associations and trustee boards for USCF, NORBA, USPRO,

and NBL; and makes no provision for representing the interests of individual

sports on the USAC Board."

What Prop. B actually does is to turn the association boards into

racing rules committees in recognition of the fact that that is what

they are. These boards have no policy making role and cannot even

establish or modify their own budgets nor can they tell the staff to

do anything. Giving licensees the right to elect directors, as

Prop. B calls for, will give them REAL representation in the main

policy making body.



9. And another slice of baloney:

"Requires all USA Cycling licenses be valid for UCI races thus requiring all

members to purchase international licenses."

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, the idea that international

licenses must be different from domestic licenses and cost more is a

myth created by the staff.



International licenses do require a passport photo but need not cost

more. As long as we do not require a photo for domestic racing,

anyone who doesn't care about racing internationally can simply skip

the photo. The overall cost of putting a photos on licenses is

quite small, especially if few people do it.



10. A non-problem:

"If adopted, the athlete voting provision is subject to USOC

approval before it can be implemented, thus creating uncertainty as

to its effectiveness and implementation."

As mentioned above, USAC Bylaws should be reviewed periodically for

consistency with the ever-changing USOC regulations. If any

non-compliance appears, the board can amend the USAC Bylaws as

needed. In other words, this is business as usual.



11. Finally:

"Budget impact unknown but anticipated to be substantially negative, even

with the inclusion of Foundation Directors on the USA Cycling Board."

It is interesting to align this with the comparable statement given

for Prop. A::

"Positive budget impact assured from Foundation participation."

Note that both Propositions A & B give one-fifth of the seats on the

board of directors to the Foundation, yet the staff says that this

equivalent representation will produce a "Positive impact" from

Prop. A but is "anticipated to be substantially negative" under

Prop. B.



As Charles Howe remarked about this earlier on uscf-@topica.com:

"Translation: Tom Weisel may take his ball and go home if Prop. B

passes." If the Foundation were to withdraw their support for the

sport just because they can't totally control it, then the next step

should be to boot them off the USA Cycling board, which the member

associations can do under Prop. B but cannot make stick under Prop.

A.



If you have any questions about the observations above or other

issues, feel free to contact me: le-@cs.stanford.edu or by phone at

650-941-3984, day or night.



         -Les Earnest

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