mmur-@teleport.com
Mike Murray
-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Malakoff [mailto:amb-@eskimo.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 22:10 PM
To: nwcyc-@topica.com
Subject: Les Earnest's rebuttal
Les Earnest, the principal author of Proposition B, replies to the staff
comments. Point 6 indicates a possible future role for the WSBA (and
OBRA). Point 9's discussion of International Licences is relevant to border
regions like ours. Are all those Canadian cat 4's shelling out $150
canadian
for international licences so they can come to our races?
=================================================
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 {HYPERLINK "http://www.usoc.org"}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-
ra-@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
----------------------------------------------------------
A Malakoff The goal is nothing,
Seattle WA USA The movement is everything
http://www.eskimo.com/~ambler - Eduard Bernstein
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