The next regularly scheduled State Central Committee meeting is this Saturday, 9 a.m., Utah State Capitol, Room W135 in the West Complex. I got my announcement on Saturday. I threw away the envelope so I don’t know the postmark, but my County Chair didn’t receive his on Saturday, so it seems very unlikely it met the State Party Constitution requirement for two-week notification. Thus the legitimacy of the meeting is in question.

There are several significant Constitution and By-law changes on the agenda which I will describe below. None of the details were included in the meeting notice. They are on the website (www.utgop.org) now, and the Party office called my house, I think on Tuesday to inform me of the posting, presumably because they received complaints that the information was not mailed with the announcement. My hopeful distrust leads me to wonder if the intent was to withhold the information as long as possible to avoid opposition and cram it through.

With the exception of the first item, I see this as move to silence grassroots efforts, disenfranchise delegates, remove checks and balances to the abuse of power, and centralize control of the party. If you see it this way, please contact your Central Committee reps and make your opinion known before Saturday, or come to the meeting and speak to them directly. (Your County Chair and Vice Chair are members, and they can tell you who the elected persons are, or sometimes they are listed on the County webpages, links at www.utgop.org)

AGENDA ITEM 1: Addition to the By-laws to ensure neutrality during election. I support this change, quoted below:

7.2 Party officer neutrality
A. State Party officer or National Committee member shall provide, without discrimination or restriction, equal access to Party information and services within the officer?s responsibility to all Republican candidates.
B. State Party Officers and National Committee members shall not publicly endorse or oppose any Republican candidate for partisan public office in Utah while the candidate is opposed by another Republican candidate for the same office.

AGENDA ITEM 2: Imposition of draconian rules for Platform Amendments and Resolutions that will effectively shut down grassroots generation of them, and solidify centralized control of the Platform. Here?s the proposed By-law addition:

7.5 Standing Convention Rules
PRE-QUALIFICATION OF PLATFORM AMENDMENTS AND RESOLUTIONS
To be included on the agenda, platform amendments and resolutions must be:
1. Reported favorably by an elected committee of the State Party or by the Platform Committee,
2. Endorsed by the conventions of three county parties, OR
3. Endorsed at the respective filing deadline by five percent of the total number of state delegates. These motions are not amendable, and will be considered and voted before any nominations for statewide party or public offices. The State Party shall include the text of these motions and arguments for and against each motion with the convention notice sent to the delegates. (Deletes the following from 7.5)
3. The Platform Committee shall forward non-redundant, significant amendments to the Convention for consideration. (end of proposed deletion)

I presume the intent is to establish some controls over Platform changes and Resolutions. Most convention attendees remember time spend on ?way out there? proposals, so I have some sympathy if this is the intent, but I don?t think we should silence grassroots issues and suppress generally popular proposals that the Party leadership would often prefer to avoid. Here are some problems:

There are only 3 elected committees that I?m aware of: Constitution and By-laws (C&B), Platform, and Audit. So the Audit committee could approve Platform proposals? Platform committee could approve C&B proposals? Or leadership could establish an ad hoc elected committee to push through a proposal?

Coordinating proposals through 3 county conventions with exactly the same language (so they wouldn?t be counted as multiple proposals) is nearly impossible, and besides, convention rules often require early submittal of proposals, which due date may be prior to the completion of County conventions. (This assumes party leadership continues their current practice of suppressing grassroots proposals by establishing a convention rule that requires submittal before the rules and agendas have been published.)

5% of the delegates is about 175 people. At least during precinct meeting years, getting lists of delegates in time to contact and get responses, then convince the Party leadership that it?s valid before convention deadlines is highly unlikely.

Then proposals that make it to the convention are not amendable by the convention! You will only get an up or down vote.

Folks, you are being unnecessarily silenced! I?d like to think this kind of thing only happened in communist counties and fascist dictatorships. I?m dismayed any group of republicans would make such a proposal.

Perhaps a rule that a proposal has to make it through 1 county convention (and assurance that it could be heard and the next state convention), or 1% of delegates (35 people) would be more appropriate.

AGENDA ITEM 3. Reverse the delegate action at the last organizing convention that requires State Delegates be elected at precinct meetings. This deletes whole sections of the By-laws passed two years ago because the Constitution says,

?Each County Party shall, by its central committee or its convention, adopt a Constitution and/or Bylaws, which shall govern its procedures, including the selection of those party officers, delegates, and representatives who represent only that county or its parts. Any provision of those documents that is contrary to state law or to a specific provision of this Constitution is null and void.? (Art VII, paragraph A)

On the technical point, they are likely correct in striking the By-law clauses that further specify County procedures. However, the Constitution still requires that ?The County Party shall designate, based upon the relative Republican strength of each precinct, the number of delegates to be elected in each individual caucus meeting.? (Art XII, Sec 1, para A) and ?The voting precinct caucus shall elect the number of delegates to the county convention and state convention that the voting precinct has qualified to elect.? (Art XII, Sec 1, para B(2))

In other words, even if all the provision in the By-laws were struck, any County with a process that did anything other than allocate the delegate positions to the precinct according to the republican strength formula and ELECT them at the PRECINCT MEETING is in violation of the Constitution and delegates selected by other means would be null and void!

Setting the technicalities aside, why is the party leadership trying reverse what the delegates decided two years ago with this proposed additional language: ?This Section does not create a requirement that the county parties allocate all delegate positions to the precinct caucuses, nor does it prohibit such an allocation.?? I?ve heard the claims from the opponents to precinct allocation and election that they didn?t understand that?s what the changes meant. Well, I was there. I read the changes. I heard the debate. And there was no doubt in my mind what I was voting on. I believe the opponents knew it too, they just won’t accept the answer.

What they should be proposing is an affirmation that this party allocates delegates to the precincts fairly and equitably, and that delegates are elected at the precincts.

They should not be proposing language that contradicts other Constitution language.

AGENDA ITEM 4. Last is an odd recommendation suggesting that the Constitution and Bylaws committee of the Utah State Republican Party being the ONLY authorized body or individual allowed to ?propose changes to the Party Constitution and Bylaws.? This probably is a correct interpretation of our governing documents. I?m not sure what the Central committee is supposed to do with this. I suppose it just goes into the minutes to use against delegates or central committee members who wish to propose a change. Fits in very nicely with shutting us up on Platform changes and Resolutions!

Instead of disenfranchising delegates and entrenching the C&B committee as a dictatorship, why not recognize the need for distribution of control, with checks and balances, and figure out a Constitution change where the C&B committee reviews and analyzes proposals from the Central Committee and from the State Conventions?

As you can tell, I?m not happy with the late notification, nor the content. I do not believe it is right or good. In fact I?m pretty upset about it, including the time and expense I?m having to spend on this. If you?re unhappy, I hope you?ll pick up the phone and call your Central Committee Reps or attend the meeting.

If John Solomon, chair of the C&B committee cares to provide a rebuttal, and gets it to me quick, I?ll publish it. I?ll also publish an explanation from the Party officers and staff on the late notification, and how this meeting will have any validity.