The meeting will start soon. Meeting came to order at 8PM Eastern. Start with members introducing themselves and saying what the Judicial Committee should do. They appear to agree that their job is to hear appeals to rule if the bylaws are being violated.
The issue is a dispute over LPWI. The LPWI Chair signed a regional formation agreement. The appellant claims that the Chair did not have the authority to sign the agreement. Sections of the LPWI bylaws are being described. The appellant repeatedly describes points at which the actions of the Chair are claimed to have violated the LPWI Bylaws. LPWI says they are not invalidating the Region Formation agreement, because it was invalid from the start. They propose that the LNC Secretary should have responded politely and investigated; LPWI claims that they did not.
Point is made that LPWI Executive Committee has always discussed the issue in advance of the National Convention. It is claimed that the LPWI Chair did not ask the State Committee because he thought that there might be an argument.
Q: Why would you rather have no representative? The LNC Vice Chair represents us.
LPWI: We voted to censure the chair and suspend him from office.We told the LNC in advance of NatCon that the agreement was invalid. The entire executive committee signed off on the warning.
Q: Why would you prefer to have one rep rather than three? We would rather be in a different region.
We advance to national chair McArdle, and then a Regional Rep and Mr Jacobs. I asked the LNC to ratify the agreement so that LPWI could appeal. McArdle claims the state and national bylaws do not prevent signing. She claims that the national committee ratification was valid.
Haman claims that the agreement does not bind LPWI to spend money, so there is no financial agreement.
Jonathan Jacobs speaks. Claims LPWI did not try hard enough to void the agreement. Claims that Roberts interprets the word “ordinary”. Claims that LPWI ExComm did not revoke the authority of the chair to sign the agreement. Claims that the LPWI ExComm could have revoked the authority of the chair to sign and failed to do so. Blames the LPWI ExComm for not doing what what he claims would have been the right way to do things. Claims the financial agreement is not part of the region formation agreement.
Discussion as to whether or not the chair obligated spending if the dollar amount was not precisely stated.
Question: What happens if LPWI disaffiliates. Does the region go away? McArdle claims cannot disaffiliate, the example being New Mexico, which did not disaffiliate. Haman says financial issue is in the regional agreement, contradicting Jensen.
Q to McArdle: How did you validate the chair’s claim to sign this. LNC passed a motion saying it was valid.
Q to McArdle: How do we validate a region? We receive the document with signatures. Ratification of documents is not normal.
Q to McArdle: What happens if LPWI is not part of the region? McArdle: I would have had to rule.
Q if WI could revoke signature. Appears to be unclear.
Petitioner rebuttal five minutes. We were taken in surprise by the Chair. We did our best to notify the chair that it was unauthorized. We get to interpret our bylaws.
Q: Could you have told the chair to stop? We think we did.
Question as to whether there is one agreement or two. Agreed that there is only one not two as Jacobs claimed.
Rebuttal: McArdle claims that the LPWI Chair had the authority to sign the agreement. Says National Party position is that the agreement is valid.
Question: Does the LNC have any authority to judge the validity of an agreement. McArdle says only LNC review was to check that the region had enough members. Jacobs: LNC could vote on its own membership. That action would be appealable to Chair, LNC, and JudComm.
Tarnoff: What did the LPWI think that would happen with their complaint. What did you think would happen if the chair action was cancelled. A: We would have joined Region 6.
Advance to other Q&A. Q to old LPWI Chair: Why did you think you had authority to join the agreement. Answer: I thought I had the authority.
LPWI requests of the JC that it be agreed that it never belonged to the region.
Hearing is adjourned.
Do you recall who asked why they would prefer 3 reps to 1? That seems quite irrelevant to whether or not the complaint is.
I believe that it was Blay Tarnoff, but may be mistaken. I also did not see why the plaintiffs were asked why they did not prefer three representatives (the actual number is 2, as was eventually clarified) to one representative.
I also claimed that the word “ordinary” has a meaning, in English.
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