https://perens.com/static/ARRL/Transpar ... r2018.htmlYou've probably heard of problems at ARRL over the past year. We are writing to inform you of a series of events at ARRL, and to ask you to vote for these director candidates to put ARRL back on track, making it a more transparent organization that represents its members properly....
The rest of us should be talking with our friends in those divisions. ARRL represents every US ham to government and elsewhere, and is the International Secretariat of IARU, representing all hams worldwide. Thus, every ham, everywhere, has a stake in the operation of ARRL, and a right to see this calamity resolved.
In 2016, ARRL had corporate attorneys provide a director and officer code-of-conduct. This code was designed for a for-profit corporate board, and stressed confidentiality, just the wrong thing for a non-profit board that should be representing its members! The ARRL board majority, including every incumbent in this election; voted this code, officially called the ARRL Policy on Board Governance and Conduct of Members of the Board of Directors and Vice Directors, into the bylaws in January, 2017.
The code required that directors act to the membership as a unanimous bloc and prohibited dissent from board decisions in their public speech, even if they voted against those decisions. It even restricted directors from discussing the results of votes until ARRL officially announced them.
By suppressing reports of their own dissent by ARRL directors, this new policy deprived you, the membership, of control of ARRL. It made it very difficult for the membership to understand what a director stands for, and thus to have the knowledge necessary to vote for them. Even discussing your own division director's decisions with them will be difficult, if they aren't allowed to disclose their own opinions.
At the 2017 International DX Convention (Visalia) ARRL Forum, ARRL Southwestern Division Director Dick Norton N6AA got up on stage and told us about all of this. That was the first time that most hams heard about the new director and officer code.
For Dick's efforts to inform us, the members, he was publicly censured by ARRL, with the censure published on the front page of the ARRL web site and in the ARRL Letter. An open letter from NCCC to ARRL claims the reasons given for the censure were inaccurate and that there was no issue with Director Norton's conduct. Many of us feel that ARRL's censure was defamatory.
Is Ham’s ARRL starting to act like the NRA?
1I’m Posting this as a person that still holds a Amateur Radio License even though I no longer am on the air. It seems the governing board of the ARRL is trying to become more like the NRA in its governing practices of close meetings and decisions. Since I know there are ham radio operators on the LGC forums I felt this might be of interest to them.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,
