Finishing Our Report

On Monday, October 8th, the committee completed its report to the Board of Directors, and e-mailed it to them. The Board met on October 9th to review the document. Jordan was present for the portion of the call dealing with "Next Steps" and how and whether the document would be released to the corporation membership.

Directors offered numerous small corrections to the document, which the committee gratefully accepted. They also had some substantive concerns. The committee concluded that these were best dealt with through the anticipated "public comment period." In the end, we reminded ourselves that the Board did not have to agree with our report in order to accept it and take it under advisement.

Some members of the board expressed concerns as to whether the report needed to be vetted by the Corporation's counsel. The committee had considered this issue several times, most recently in August, and (given that there are three attorneys on the committee) concluded that there was no material in the report of concern.

Nonetheless, the draft given to the Board was referred to the Corporation's counsel, who expressed a number of concerns, some specific and some general.

Early in its deliberations, the committee considered having a "public" version of its report and a version to the board, which would be free of the real constraints that exist with regard to a public document. We had abandoned this approach as we did not believe it was necessary, but readopted it in the face of Counsel's concerns.

Counsel was asked to review the document in this light, and, in consultation with the attorneys on the committee, agreed to provide us with areas of concern.

Our next communication was from the Board, indicating that there was no form of the document that they could envision releasing.

Our intent had been to review the document with the corporation membership at the October 13th meeting, and invite comments and corrections via this blog, which will open for moderated comments in the afternoon of October 13th. Our intent was then to issue a final enhanced document as our report to the Board of Directors.

Given that this plan no longer seems feasible in the absence of a document to comment on, we have finalized our report and will be delivering it to the board on Friday, October 12th. We will also deliver to the board a version of the document which we believe addresses all the substantive concerns of Counsel with regard to public distribution.

What happens to these documents is up to the board.

This was not at all the distribution mechanism nor ending we had envisioned for our committee, and it has been a difficult process.