LPNC EC structure reform
by Philip Jacobson

At the next state convention, delegates will be offered a bylaws amendment which will restructure the LPNC Executive Committee (EC).  This article speaks in favor of that proposal, which is coming from the bylaws committee with a recommendation to pass.

The current structure established when we were a much smaller organization has limitations, given our current size.  The current structure  is based on the election of most of the members of the EC as  individual officers, with special titles and duties in addition to being voting members of the EC.  The model is much like what a small social club might use, except that as we have grown we have added more and more specialist members.  At this point, in addition to the four major officers and four at-large members, we have seven special positions:  Newsletter Editor, Outreach Director, Ballot Access Director, Press Secretary, Membership Secretary, Political Director, and Webmaster.

All state Libertarian parties have some sort of governing board, called by various names. If you want to do some research, you can reach the web sites for most state parties from the following link at the national party website: http://www.lp.org/organization/states.shtml (my statistics below come from these sources).  40 of the 50 state LPs have websites which give information about their governing boards.

With a couple of exceptions, the state governing boards all have the four major officers called Chair, Vice-Chair, Treasurer, and Secretary.  Beyond that, there is considerable variety, but in most cases only one of two basic models is used.  Just 5 of the 40 state parties which give web information have unique arrangements outside the two basic models.

One of the basic models is the one used by LPNC, but by only 12 of the 40 parties listed.  Most of the parties using them are fairly small.  Most, sometimes all of the governing board members other than the basic four officers have assigned jobs and special titles.  The special officers are typically elected at state conventions, and appear from the documentation to be, similarly to those in LPNC, as autonomous as the state chair, answering only to the membership for the entire term of office.

There are several problems with the current LPNC EC structure.

1.  The EC is too large, most state LP boards are smaller, even if they use the same basic model.  Larger boards mean longer meetings and more difficulty reaching decisions.  Our system encourages increasing the size of the board.  As the party's work has grown, more people have gotten involved, and they have been rewarded with the creation of special board positions (usually called "directors"), similar to the ones already in existence.  

2.  The special board positions, once the original person for whom they were created leaves, become hard to fill, hard to keep filled, and very difficult to supervise.  All too often the special positions get filled by people who were recruited just before a state convention.  Commonly such a recruit has no experience with the job, but takes on a 2-year commitment to both do the job and attend board meetings.  Many of these people quickly lose interest, but do not resign.   Even if they do resign after waiting out most of a year, the board often declines to replace them if there are only a few months before the next convention.  Elected by a state convention, they theoretically answer only to the membership and then only via a convention held two years after their election.

3.  If a new "director" position is desired, or an old one appears in need of reform or elimination, the current system requires a bylaws change.  These are clumsy, often compete for attention with other proposals, and are considered only every other year.  

At the national level and in the state parties using the national model, there are often other leadership positions, which loosely correspond to the special members of our LPNC EC.  These positions are typically called something like "Committee Chair" or "Director".  But these positions do no include a vote on the governing board and attending board meetings seems to be optional (excepting the national paid positions, where such attendance is part of the job).  Nor are those who hold such positions elected to set terms (though a paid position may have a contract with a term).

The proposed amendment to the LPNC bylaws would make our system more like the majority of state parties and the LNC.   The four major officers would remain, but the rest of the EC would be composed of only at-large positions.  The size of the EC would be reduced from 13 to 11.   The EC would, however, be empowered to create, name, and define any number of `Director" positions, who could be assigned the tasks now given to the special named EC positions.  The EC would retain the power to hire and fire directors, but for day to day operations, the directors would report to the state chair.  At-large members could (but would not be required to) hold a director's job, but no more than one.

This new system would give us needed flexibility and accountability.  Those individuals who were willing to make a commitment to a director's position would not be required to make the additional commitment to attend EC meetings or to serve for two full years.  The director's jobs could be adjusted quickly to meet the needs of the party or the availability of those individuals who agreed to do them.  The leadership role of the state chair would be clarified.  Instead of being a theoretical "CEO" with little real authority over internal party operations, the chair would have definite supervisory responsibility over those areas important enough to be given director jobs.  Yet the EC would retain a legislative role, being responsible for allocating funds, setting party policy and establishing the general administrative framework which the chair would run for the party.

There would be no regional representatives per se in LPNC using this new system.  Though there has been talk about regional organization, we have none at the present.  But with 9 at-large positions available, and our use of the proportional representation system for electing them, anyone who wished to run for an at-large position from a regional constituency could easily be elected if their regional delegates wished it.  And other interest groups, any significant minority within the party, could do the same, if they chose to organize as such.