California Libertarians,
I wanted to let you know that the Libertarian Party of California Executive Committee has appointed someone to fill the position on the Libertarian Party's national Platform Committee that the California LP was entitled to fill.
The person appointed was Bruce Dovner, a longtime Libertarian and former chair of the L.A. county party who has served on the committee before. I believe Bruce is committed to libertarianism, and expect him to help fight on the committee for a strongly libertarian platform.
Unfortunately, the *process* by which this vote occurred was seriously flawed. The ExCom did not put out an announcement of the vacancy and pending vote so that LPC members would have the opportunity to nominate themselves or others to the office. We did not even have a nomination process within our own committee. There was no discussion or debate. In fact, I never saw the nominating motion or the second to the nomination, and those committee members I've spoken with since the vote did not see them either, presumably because the emails were sent privately to the Secretary rather than copied to all members of the committee. It was simply announced, out of the blue, that we were to vote up or down on one individual's nomination.
This is not how we fill positions in convention, and it is not the way we should be operating by email either. It is not being accountable to our membership, and it is not good governance.
Unfortunately, I am sad to say it is not an aberration, but rather is symptomatic of the way our committee has been functioning -- or not functioning. Let me give you a few more examples.
At our most recent gathering in Sacramento on October 9th -- which had been announced the previous month as a "meeting of the Libertarian Party of California Executive Committee" -- I was surprised to be told by our Chair upon arriving and asking to see a copy of the agenda (I'd made the same request by email the previous day before traveling to Sacramento by train, but received no response) that there was no agenda, and in fact we were *not* having a meeting, but more of an informal "retreat", where we would discuss things but not make any decisions or take any votes.
It has been speculated that this apparent last-minute decision to not hold a formal meeting occurred because some members were not in attendance, and our Bylaws specify (Bylaw 12, Section 8) that "Failure of an Executive Committee member to attend two consecutive Executive Committee meetings shall be cause for removal." Whether turning a meeting into a non-meeting was done to protect certain members, or there is a more innocent explanation, either way I believe it was irregular and improper.
Nor is that (at least to my mind) the most troubling thing that's happened. Earlier this year on April 10, the first meeting I attended after being elected to the Executive Committee, I had to fight just to get our committee to hold role-call votes in which each member's vote on each item that comes before the committee is recorded by the Secretary so that LPC members will be able to see how their representatives are voting. Although this seems to be generally happening now as a result of my pressing the issue, the ExCom has yet to set a clear policy on the matter, and I have no confidence that individual votes will continue to be recorded and preserved going forward, without continued vigilance.
Meanwhile, the most recent minutes posted on our state party website ( http://ca.lp.org/by-laws-minutes ) are from December 2010. There appear to be no minutes posted from before 2009. Where are the rest of our minutes? I don't know. The most recent minutes that are posted are very bare-bones; they don't record who voted how, and unless you happened to be there, reading them would probably give you only a very vague idea of what really took place.
I believe the Libertarian Party should serve as a model for openness, transparency, and bottom-up governance. How we run our own organization should give voters confidence that we can be trusted to increase governmental transparency and accountability to the public if we are elected to public office. Instead, in many cases we have *worse* sunshine and open governance practices than I see being practiced by local government agencies in San Francisco. This is outrageous and embarrassing, and needs to change!
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
LPC ExCom At-Large Rep. (2010-2012)