[Ground-station] ARRL's "Confidentiality vs. Transparency" Emergency: Rescue ARRL With Your Vote This Month!

Tue Oct 2 23:17:59 PDT 2018

ARRL's "Confidentiality vs. Transparency" Emergency: Rescue ARRL With Your
Vote This Month!

*Please pass this message on to other Radio Amateurs, until November 2018.*

We are writing to inform you of a series of events at ARRL, and to ask you
to vote for these director candidates to put ARRL back on track, making it
a more transparent organization that represents its members properly.
Please visit their web sites:

   - *Central*: Valerie Hotzfeld NV9L <https://nv9l.com/>
   - *Hudson*: Ria Jairam N2RJ <https://hudson.n2rj.com/>
   - *New England*: Fred Hopengarten K1VR <https://www.hams4newengland.org/>
   - *Northwestern*: Michael Ritz W7VO <http://www.w7vo.com/election.html>
   - *Roanoke*: George "Bud" Hippisley W2RU <http://www.w2ru.net/>

The rest of us should be talking with our friends in those divisions. ARRL
represents *every US ham* to government and elsewhere, and is the International
Secretariat <http://www.iaru.org/international-secretariat.html> of IARU,
representing *all hams worldwide. *Thus, every ham, everywhere, has a stake
in the operation of ARRL, and a right to see this calamity resolved.

In 2016, ARRL had corporate attorneys provide a director and officer
code-of-conduct
<http://www.arrl.org/files/file/ODV/ARRL%20Code%20of%20Conduct.pdf>. This
code was designed for a *for-profit corporate board,* and stressed
*confidentiality*, just the wrong thing for a non-profit board that should
be representing its members! The ARRL board majority, including every
incumbent in this election; voted this code, officially called the *ARRL
Policy on Board Governance and Conduct of Members of the Board of Directors
and Vice Directors,*  into the bylaws in January, 2017.

The code required that directors act to the membership as a *unanimous
bloc* and
prohibited dissent from board decisions in their public speech, even if
they voted against those decisions. It even restricted directors from
discussing the results of votes until ARRL officially announced them.

By suppressing reports of their *own* dissent by ARRL directors, this new
policy deprived you, the membership, of control of ARRL. It made it very
difficult for the membership to understand what a director stands for, and
thus to have the knowledge necessary to vote for them. Even discussing your
own division director's decisions with them will be difficult, if they
aren't allowed to disclose their own opinions.

At the 2017 International DX Convention (Visalia) ARRL Forum, ARRL
Southwestern Division Director Dick Norton N6AA got up on stage and told us
about all of this. *That was the first time that most hams heard about the
new director and officer code.*

For Dick's efforts to inform us, the members, he was publicly censured by
ARRL
<https://perens.com/2017/11/21/arrl-board-publicly-censures-southwestern-division-director/>,
with the censure published on the front page of the ARRL web site
<http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-board-of-directors-publicly-censures-southwestern-division-director>.
An open letter from NCCC <https://www.nccc.cc/> to ARRL claims the reasons
given for the censure were inaccurate and that there was no issue with
Director Norton's conduct
<https://dxnews.com/forum/forum/clubs/7380-nccc-open-letter-to-arrl>. Many
of us feel that ARRL's censure was defamatory
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation>.

You can watch Dick's polite and eloquent discussion at the Visalia ARRL
forum in 2018, a year after the event leading to his censure: Part 1
<https://youtu.be/PdPbbHJ7fs8>, Part 2 <https://youtu.be/Ww1Vu1a-mMk>. At
that meeting (and probably others), Dick stated that the ARRL board was
divided between a *confidentiality bloc *that wished to retain the terms
preventing directors from expressing public dissent, and a *transparency
bloc *which wished to keep the membership more in the loop of ARRL
decisions, allowing directors to speak freely.

In December 2017, ARRL's Executive Committee proposed a set of amendments
to facilitate punishing or expelling directors and officers who "got out of
line" by publicly dissenting with a board decision. There does not appear
to have been any plan to inform the *membership* of this proposal until it
had been voted upon at the January, 2018 board meeting. Fortunately, the
proposed text was leaked, resulting in a great outcry by the
already-inflamed membership. The changes have been withdrawn, *but only for
now.* The board voted to create a white paper explaining the changes to the
membership (which they have failed to produce), and to bring them up for a
vote again at a later date.

A second proposal was made, about the same time, by Hudson Division
director Lisenco: this would add four new voting members of the board who
would not be directly elected by the membership
<https://www.kkn.net/~n6tv/N2YBB_Motions_To_Change_ARRL_ByLaws.pdf>,
further reducing the representative democracy of ARRL. After membership
outcry, this proposal was shelved.

After Dick's censure, the revelation of the confidentiality terms, and
outcry over the additional rule proposals, it became clear to ARRL that the
membership was upset. Disgruntled members struck straight at ARRL's
pocketbook: At the Nevada ARRL convention's ARRL forum, it was reported
that ARRL had lost a bequest in excess of *one Million dollars* in reaction
to the confidentiality issue, and that many members had declined to renew.
But ARRL did not handle dissent among its own membership well. In January
2018, ARRL president Rick Roderick wrote to hams accusing transparency
advocates of an "organized misinformation campaign"
<http://www.arrl.org/news/a-note-to-members-from-arrl-president-rick-roderick-k5ur/>,
only to be contradicted by his own board just days later, when they agreed
to review the code of conduct
<http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-board-of-directors-agrees-to-review-of-conduct-code-for-directors>,
temporarily suspending some of its worst provisions
<https://perens.com/2018/02/02/arrl-suspends-controversial-director-confidentiality-requirements/>
while
leaving equally bad ones in place.

At the ARRL Donor Reception during Hamvention, a private affair they hold
for significant financial benefactors; Rick Roderick addressed the donors
regarding the transparency issue, saying "we hear you". In discussion with
Roderick and several directors in the ARRL booth, we were told that they
had obtained a new code of conduct from a national organization supporting
non-profit organizations. They promised to present it to the membership in
August.

But the ARRL board broke that promise. August came and went, and the board
has *no proposed text* to reform the director and officer code. They have
agreed that no revision will be considered until after the October 20 board
meeting.

The deep split on the ARRL board became further apparent over the process
leading to the election of a new CEO. Prior to his election there was a
movement to delay the confirmation of the new CEO. The directors had been
presented with only one final candidate by the selection committee, the
night before the vote, and no information on other top candidates. There
was a movement to delay the vote until the directors had time to research
the the candidate they were presented with, and other potential candidates.
This motion failed by just one vote, and ARRL president Rick Roderick has
refused director requests to disclose the individual votes. We believe that
the six directors who voted to delay the CEO vote all subsequently voted
against accepting the new CEO.

Subsequently the confirmation of the new CEO was voted upon, with Mr.
Carlson, Holden, Norris, Williams, Lisenco, Blocksome, Pace, Boehner, and
Allen voting Aye and Mr. Abernethy, Frenaye, Tiemstra, Sarratt, Norton and
Woolweaver voting Nay. The motion passed 9:6. It is believed that the
*aye *voters
are mostly of the confidentiality bloc and the *nay *voters mostly of the
transparency bloc.  But the most serious issue is that the ARRL board was
*split* on the election of its new CEO. A position like this should be the
result of a nearly-unanimous vote of the directors, or it should not be
filled at all.

And that's where we are today. ARRL's board is divided into a transparency
bloc and a confidentiality bloc, with the  confidentiality bloc in the
majority and the proposal for four officers to gain the vote potentially
adding more votes to that bloc. The members are not currently represented
as they should be, due to the continued application of a policy meant for a
for-profit corporate board. The only whistle-blower on the board was
publicly castigated for informing *us.* The currently-suspended rules that
go against the member's interest are *temporarily *suspended, and could be
restored. Shelved governance proposals and possible new ones adverse to the
interests of the membership wait in the wings for possible action next
January. *Who do you want casting the votes on these proposals?*

We can defuse this situation and restore proper member representation in
ARRL by electing *five new directors who stand for transparency,* thus
removing the power of the confidentiality bloc. The transparency candidates
are:

   - *Central*: Valerie Hotzfeld NV9L <https://nv9l.com/>
   - *Hudson*: Ria Jairam N2RJ <https://hudson.n2rj.com/>
   - *New England*: Fred Hopengarten K1VR <https://www.hams4newengland.org/>
   - *Northwestern*: Michael Ritz W7VO <http://www.w7vo.com/election.html>
   - *Roanoke*: George "Bud" Hippisley W2RU <http://www.w2ru.net/>

ARRL members in those divisions will receive their ballots within days.
Please vote, and please support the candidates above.

*Signed:*

*Bruce Perens, K6BP* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Perens>: One of
the founders of the *Open Source* movement in software, an ARRL Diamond Club
<http://www.arrl.org/the-arrl-diamond-club> Platinum member; pioneer of
embedded Linux and the modern Linux distribution, initiator of the Codec2
<http://www.rowetel.com/?page_id=452> project and evangelist for Codec2 and
FreeDV <https://freedv.org/>, founder of No-Code Internationa
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Perens#No-Code_International>l,  which
led the successful fight for the end of the Morse Code examination as a
prerequisite for Amateur licensing. <bruce at perens.com
<bruce at perens.com?subject=ARRL%20Transparency%20Issue&body=I%20am%20writing%20in%20response%20to%20the%20open%20letter%20on%20the%20ARRL%20transparency%20issue.>
>

*Bob Famiglio, K3RF*: Past Vice Director 2015-17 - ARRL Atlantic Division

*Robert A. Wilson, N6TV*: ARRL Life Member

*Michelle Thompson, W5NYV*: ARRL Life Member. Lead engineer of the *Phase 4
Ground* <https://phase4ground.github.io/> project, creating a digital
Amateur satellite communication system.

*The canonical copy of this document is at this URL:*
http://perens.com/static/ARRL/TransparencyOctober2018.html
<https://perens.com/static/ARRL/TransparencyOctober2018.html>

-- 
Bruce Perens K6BP - CEO, Legal Engineering
Standards committee chair, license review committee member, co-founder,
Open Source Initiative
President, Open Research Institute; Board Member, Fashion Freedom
Initiative.
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