Just curious..

How has the Rules Committee been put together? Elected? Appointed? Other? Also, how long are their terms?

I'm very interested in the interpretations of the current rules and I've had many productive discussions via email and on message boards regarding gray areas within our current rules. I'd like to know how one becomes a Rules Committee member..

Thank you..

Frederick Doot
#27259

Committee chairs have been appointed by the PDGA Executive Director subject to Board review if there are issues. Committee members have mostly been volunteers or have been asked to join by committee members. There are no terms specified for chairs or members. I believe the RC has had the same members since the mid-90s with several going back into the 80s. I was a member for the first half of the 90s.

Thanks Chuck..

Not saying this is the way it should be but usually the challenge is getting volunteers at all rather than having to turn people away striving to get on the committees.

Chuck is kind of describing how it worked under the old constitution. I'm pretty sure under the last set of By Laws the Board appointed the committee chair, and he organized the committee, subject to the approval of the Board.

Under the new By Laws, the board appoints the committees and any committee member can be dismissed by the Board for any reason. The new By Laws also specify that all committee members must be active members of the PDGA.

That's correct. But most of the committees continued right thru the approval of the new Bylaws with no changes made. Perhaps there was a motion made in the Board to blanket approve them as part of the new business when the Bylaws went into effect? The only new committee since the new Bylaws was the Education Committee headed by Tom Monroe. Not sure if that went thru the new approval process?

Committees have always been subject to BoD approval. I'm not sure how long most of the RC has been on, but here's the members:

Carlton Howard, chair
Dr. Rick Voakes
Harold Duvall
Conrad Damon
Joe Garcia
John Chapman
Jim Garnett

I was nominated to the committee in 2002 by Carlton to fill the vacancy created when Mark Ellis resigned from the committee, and the RC voted to accept me. Jim Garnett was similarly added to the committee in 2004, and that time we added a spot to the committee, because we only had 6 members at the time, and we felt we needed an additional member in case we had a tie vote. The other 5 members have been on the committee much longer, at least since the mid-90s. The Rules Committee probably has been about the most stable PDGA committee as far as adding or losing members over the years.

Jim Garnett has the highest PDGA number of the lot (barely over 10000), Joe is in the 6000s, I'm 5559, and the other 4 are in the 2000s. There's lots of experience there.

Off topic....When I was on the BoD, I had the distinction of being the youngest member on the BoD, and also having the lowest PDGA number. Not sure what that says exactly, but it was a weird fact.

Chap

To answer your question further, Carlton Howard is person to talk to if you want to get on the Rules Committee. I don't imagine we'll be accepting any new members any time soon..I think the Rules Committee is the most asked about committee in the PDGA. But I think Carlton sort of keeps a list of people who are interested, and I'm sure we'll consult that list when an opening is available.

We're always glad to answer questions about the rules using the contact link, but the committee does not spend much time on this discussion board...emails are really the most efficient way to conduct committee business. I'm probably the only person that posts here with any frequency (and I don't post all that much), Jim Garnett used to post more often, and Harold and Conrad sometimes post here, but to a much lesser degree.

Chap

Great, thank you to Chuck, Bruce and John for your information and advice. I'll shoot an email out to Carlton to advise him of my interest.

F Doot
#27259