[GPSCC-chat] Fwd: Re: [SC-SM] Fwd: GPCA Fiscal Policy [was re Th. 15th Meeting / Party Draft Agenda...]

[Jim Stauffer]

This is in response to Warner's 1/1/12 message to this list.



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [SC-SM] Fwd: GPCA Fiscal Policy [was re Th. 15th Meeting / Party
Draft Agenda...]
Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:31:33 -0800
From: Jim Stauffer <jims at greens.org>
To: sc-sm at cagreens.org

Warner -

I'm afraid your dismissive comments don't even begin to address my concerns
about this poorly written and ill conceived fiscal policy. And this is the
same reception I got when raising these concerns at the GA.

I believe the response to my question about who wrote this was that Mike F
wrote the first draft and sent it to some finance committee in Humboldt for
review.

So the first problem is, this policy does not apply to the people who wrote
and submitted the final draft. This policy applies to the party officers
(including committee coordinators) of the GPCA, it does not apply to Humboldt
or any other county. Meanwhile, the people to whom this does apply, the
stakeholders in the GPCA, where never offered an opportunity to contribute to
its creation nor offered an opportunity to review it. Mike's response to that
was that it's in the agenda packet for anyone to review. That's a very poor
rationalization. We have communication channels set up just for the purpose of
communicating with party officers. When public policy is discussed in our
platform we're always advocating for inclusion of the stakeholder in its
creation. But we don't apply this principle to our internal policies?

The document is poorly written. I'm a professional writer and I have two
decades of experience writing policies for the GPCA. This one handles bylaws
quotes improperly and erroneously uses the same numbering scheme as the
bylaws. Both of these will cause confusion with the myriad of question that
are bound to arise when trying to apply this thing.

What parts of this proposal were pre-existing policies that didn't need GA
approval and which were new concepts that did? That needs to be specified in
any proposal that has this mix.

The objectionable parts I find in this policy are the hyper-detailed
accounting requirements being levied on a group of volunteers who don't
necessarily have an accounting background. For example, now a committee's
budget must be accounted at the project line item level. Before, a committee
had a pot of money that they estimated would be distributed among their list
of projects. If one project doesn't take off, it's funds could be used on the
other projects if they ended up needing more funds. Now, any committee will
have to go through a re-budgeting process if they find they need to use their
funds in different proportions than they originally proposed. This is not an
improvement, nor does it solve any known problem. It just creates more work
and more bureaucracy for committee coordinators.

I'll also point out that our state treasurer, Jeanne Rosenmeier, was in line
behind me with her list of concerns about this proposal. Jeanne has a lot of
experience with fiscal policies and agreed with me in private that this was a
poor one. Are you as dismissive of Jeanne's concerns as you are with mine?

Warner, your statement, "Some may consider such procedures unnecessary. Others
may believe it is a benefit to have a clear statement on the included
subjects." misses the point entirely and ascribes motives that are only
conjecture. There are right and wrong was to go about authoring such policies,
and this one was more about Mike's ego than any need of the GPCA.

I also take exception with your conclusion about why the GA delegates accepted
this thing. This was a low-attendance GA with only 36 delegates present for
this proposal, and 29 voted in favor of it. This was an LA meeting. When have
we ever had an LA meeting that wasn't dominated by Mike and his followers. No
one I know went to this meeting thinking it would be anything but another
Feinstein romp for getting his pet projects adopted as party policy. Is this
news to you?

Jim



On 1/1/2012 11:24 PM, WSB3ATTYCA at aol.com wrote:
> January 1, 2012 Below is an email that I wrote tonight to the GPSCC general
> discussion email list. I am reposting it here because my comments may be of
> interest to the GPSMC County Council members on this email list. Warner
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
From: WB4D23 at aol.com
> To: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org Sent: 1/1/2012 7:56:38 P.M. Pacific
> Standard Time Subj: GPCA Fiscal Policy [was re Th. 15th Meeting / Party
> Draft Agenda...] January 1, 2012 Folks! I am writing to disagree with a few
> things that Jim Stauffer wrote about the Fiscal Policy that was adopted at
> the Los Angeles General Assembly in December 2011. As was noted at the
> Plenary in response to Jim's question of "who wrote this?", Dana Silvernale
> wrote the initial proposal text. Dana (Humboldt County GP) has been on the
> GPUS Delegation for a number of years. The GPUS has a fiscal policy
> somewhat similar to what she produced and apparently served as a model for
> the proposal (with some modifications). Some may consider such procedures
> unnecessary. Others may believe it is a benefit to have a clear statement
> on the included subjects. Since it was adopted by the Plenary Delegates, it
> would seem the larger group of County GP representatives agreed with the
> latter perspective. Ordinarily, the Finance Committee would have been the
> group to receive the proposal for initial review. However, that committee
> has mostly been inactive since June 2011. That situation is getting better
> since the CC has appointed some additional members to the FC. However,
> under the circumstances, the GPCA Coordinating Committee agreed the
> proposal should go to the GA and approved the CC as sponsor. I suggest
> people go to the GPCA webpage and use the "Party" button to find it (either
> under procedures or Finance Committee, maybe). Or go to the Plenary page
> and find the proposal in the agenda. Write me privately if you can't find
> it. My view is that there is nothing wrong with the contents. If someone
> sees something troublesome, post your concerns to this list and we all can
> discuss whether some kind of amendment should be submitted to the Finance
> Committee for its review. Warner In a message dated 12/20/2011 12:53:26
> P.M. Pacific Standard Time, jims at greens.org writes:
>
> The fiscal policy passed with just a few of us voicing objections about
> its necessity, accuracy and the bizarre way it became a proposal.
>
>
>
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