[Osmf-talk] Board term limits and term lengths

[Simon Poole]

As the author of the original term limit proposal, just a couple of
comments:

a) while you can take the position that it is the voters own fault if
they continue to elect somebody for a long time, you can only really
blame them if they had a fighting chance of actually vetting the
behaviour and voting of the board members against their platforms and
their pre-election marketing. For example for a while it was very
popular to quote increasing transparency as one of the important points
in the platforms, which didn't stop every proposal for more transparency
(for example including actual voting behaviour in the minutes) being
immediately shot down. For a non-board member it was more or less
impossible to determine what had actually happened. This seems to be
less of an issue currently, but that may simply be due to there being
less controversial items on the table.

b) my proposal was a bit complex because it allowed former board members
to return after a cooling off period and certain other complications
there were required at the time. I do not see an issue with retaining
the staggered renewal system together with fixed term lengths and a
maximum number of times you can be re-elected, for example 3x2 years or
maybe 2x3.  We may need to provide a transition period to avoid current
elects having their terms shorted more than reasonable, but that should
be doable. There is naturally always the possibility that we will have
people stepping down early, but we can cater for that with elections for
such seats when that happens, instead of suddenly forcing people to
stand for election out of turn as can happen with the current system
(which removes some of the motivation for stepping down early in the
first place).  

Simon

Am 21.04.2017 um 01:16 schrieb Frederik Ramm:
> Hi,
>
>    as you might remember, we had a vote on term limits a couple years
> back. A majority of the OSMF members who voted (56%) were in favour of
> somehow limiting the maximum time someone can be a board member, but the
> resolution failed to reach the threshold of 75% required to change our
> Articles of Association.
>
> At the time, the OSMF board was against holding this vote at all, and
> the fact that a resolution was forced could well have made some members
> vote "no". A well-considered proposal that had the board's support could
> have a chance of garnering 75% of votes.
>
> The main motivation for having term limits is that currently, a person
> can be re-elected as many times as the voters like. If someone does (or
> appears to do) a good job, this can lead to them dominating the
> organisation, cementing their personal influence and being a hindrance
> to renewal.
>
> The main counter-argument is that if voters want to re-elect someone
> repeatedly for a long time, why shouldn't they be allowed to? There are
> organisations run by the same people for very long and it can work well.
> With strict term limits, situations could arise where the board loses
> many experienced people at once due to them reaching their term limit,
> which would undesirably weaken the organisation.
>
> Another point that plays into this and that may or may not need a rule
> change is our current term lengths. The Articles of Association say that
> in every election, those two board members whose election was longest
> ago have to retire (but may stand for re-election). This rule means that
> voters never know for how long they're actually voting someone in - it
> might be anything from 1 to 4 years depending on who else is quitting.
>
> We discussed the matter in our recent board meeting and while we're not
> generally opposed to term limits if the membership wants to have them,
> we don't have a good idea that would elegantly deal with all these issues.
>
> How important are term limits for you? Do you think board should revisit
> the issue? Do you perhaps even have a concrete suggestion? Or are things
> ok the way they are and we can shelve the issue?
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>


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