This just arrived in my inbox:
AGENDA
Special Meeting
ARRL Board of Directors
By Webinar
9:00 PM EDT Thursday, May 22, 2014
- Roll call and announcement that the meeting is being recorded
- Consideration of the agenda for the meeting
- Explanation of procedures for the conduct of the meeting
- Review of a recent decision of the Ethics and Elections Committee with regard to the application of the conflict of interest policy
- Adjournment
As some of you may know, I ran for Great Lakes Division Vice Director a couple of times, failing both times. The second time around, I was almost disqualified by the Ethics and Election Committee because at one point, although not at the time of the election, I was selling amateur radio books online. I had given up on that because it was just too hard to compete with Amazon and with the ARRL, given that the ARRL was able to advertise freely in QST.
When I demonstrated that the bookstore was no longer active to the committee, they rescinded the disqualification, and I was allowed to run. Unfortunately, it didn’t do any good. I lost that election by 12 votes.
I suspect that the board is going to be reviewing a similar case tonight.
Just received the minutes for this special board meeting. As it turns out, Katie Allen, WY7KRA, who is now ad sales manager for CQ Communications, is married to Dwayne Allen, WY7FD, Rocky Mountain Division Vice Director. The Ethics and Elections Committee thought that this might be a conflict of interest. That is to say that WY7FD might be privy to ARRL information that might be of interest to CQ Communications, and might at some point be in a position to cast a vote that would favor CQ Communications, and thereby he and his wife.
WY7FD has agreed to “diligently recuse himself, as per ARRL By-Law 45(d)(i), from portions of any Board, Committee or other ARRL meeting (including any and all discussions or votes) regarding ARRL advertising rates; advertising policies; advertising campaigns or strategies; marketing and financial plans, policies, and campaigns; marketing strategies; publication sales, plans, and policies; the ARRL Financial Plan as it pertains to the above mentioned issues, and matters directly related to the foregoing, and any other discussion or vote where a conflict of interest might arise.”
This kind of director accommodation through selective enforcement of arbitrary rules is standard for the League. This is how they ensure only the “correct” people become candidates, so as not to disrupt the good ol’ boy/inner sanctum of the League.
This behavior goes back as far as when the E&E committee was formed and is a convenient way for the board to bypass what limited input members have as to how the League is run.
But of course this is all just League bashing on my part, so pay no mind to it.
Mark K5LXP
Albuquerque, NM
All the Ethics Committee needs to do is to look at the BOD minutes and they will see a questionable pattern where directors are not representing the true interests of its members and are supporting special interest groups. BOD minutes also reflect directors stacking committees that have no inputs from the user based that is affected or running off members of the committee who express concerns about interference to the majority.
BOD minutes also detail the ARRL taking review and critique responsibilities for Winlink and a “prominent role in the management of Winlink”. Once you peel the EMCOM layer of Winlink you see the real picture where the ARRL’s Winlink system competes with other commercial radio services, causes interference to other amateurs already operating on the frequency (due to no busy frequency detectors), and transmits a pseudo-encryption so that no one can determine the payload being sent or the identify the callsigns of who is causing the interference.
Then you look at how the ARRL’s RM-11708 petition that will allow 2.8 KHz signals to be mixed in with narrow band CW and RTTY. RM-11708 will take interference to a whole new level by removing the 300 baud historic protection that currently keeps a lid on QRM for the multitude of CW and RTTY and digital ops. RM-11708 will allow the use of PACTOR4 (2.2 db increase in power spectral density, i.e. interference) and other nasty waveforms like STANAG that have a 40 db immunity over CW.
The Ethics Committee need to also take a look at the CTO as when asked about multiple incidents of Winlink interference to ARRL Centennial Operations said just go spin the dial.
Details at:
http://savecw.com/Rm11708Interests.htm
Terry AB5K