Proposals for 2004 Winter State Committee Meeting

Proposals for the State Committee meeting can be submitted, revised, and commented on here. The State Committee meeting is on Sunday January 11th, 2004. State Committee proceedures say that the last day to submit anything here is Sunday December 28th 2003.

Any two members of the State and Administrative Committees, or any Green-Rainbow Local, may submit a proposal for the State Committee to consider.

If you have proposals that are ready to post, do not hesitate as it gives people more of a chance to read it and comment on it ahead of time and possibly improve it.

If you have the proposal already in a word processor document, please attach the document at the bottom of your post to facilitate the process of making the proposal package for the meeting.

Please read them completely so you are prepared for clarifying questions, discussion, and decisionmaking. If you have comments ahead of time, you can post a follow up here and you can contact the sponsors of the proposal.

Build Mars Colony
Sunday January 11, @07:33PM by Zarkon the Invincible and Tom Finneran
from the Xenobiology committee.
Greens in Space!
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News Policy
Sunday December 28, @11:20PM by David Rolde and Aram Falsafi
This proposal is designed to address concerns about how news stories are selected to be published as Green-Rainbow Party news. There have been a couple instances of news stories posted in the GRP email announcements and on the frontpage of the GRP website this fall that some party members have felt were inappropriate.
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Development Director
Sunday December 28, @11:04PM by Jonathan Leavitt
This is a placeholder as I believe my proposal got tabled from the November meeting and should be on the January agenda already.
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Presidential Debate
Sunday December 28, @03:24PM by Richard Zitola, David Rolde, Mark Laserte
The Green Party will be holding Primary Elections in Spring 2004 to nominate a Green Party candidate for US President or possibly to decline to run a Green Party candidate. Green-Rainbow Party voters and Green Party voters in other states need to have information about the Green Party Presidential contenders in order to make an informed voting decision. Information and publicity about Green Party candidates should also be available to the general public to encourage new members to join the party and in anticipation of the general election in November.

A Presidential Debate for Green Party candidates is being planned to occur in Clinton, Massachusetts on Thursday, January 29th. All declared Green Party Presidential candidates are being invited as well as prominent as-yet-undeclared candidates. David Cobb, Kent Mesplay, and Lorna Salzman are expected to appear. There will also be a debate participant advocating for the no-candidate option. The debate may be televised nationally or will at least be videotaped and made available to Green Party groups nationally.

Adcom may endorse this debate in advance of the statecom meeting in which case this proposal may become unnecessary.

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Full Funding Exception
Friday December 26, @11:06PM by Dan Melnechuk and Gil Obler
from the GRP fundraising and finance committee.
Certain budgetary line items occur only once or twice a year. Examples are the state convention, paying for our PO box, and holding a yearly fundraising dinner.

While the current budgetary process and its associated accounting/reporting practices can handle such events, they do so clumsily. Items tend to have a surplus before the event and a deficit afterward, and it is unclear when an item has been overspent (as last year's convention was).

The current budgetary process is very good for items that occur frequently and evenly through the year, and allows us to track the sustainability of our activity.

However, for items where spending is clustered, it is more natural to fully fund the item on a yearly basis, rather than on a six month basis, and then count the item down to zero.
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Budget Continuity Proposal
Friday December 26, @10:44PM by Dan Melnechuk and Gil Obler
from the GRP fundraising and finance committee.
The current budgetary process does not describe what happens with unspent but alloated funds from previous year's budgets.

This is really a hole in our procedures that needs to be resolved in one of two ways:

1) return all unspent money to the general fund at year end
2) retain unspent money in the line item from year to year

The following proposal chooses option 2) and also specifies the necessary details to handle items which have their budgeted levels changed by the new year's budget.

The principal reasons to choose 2) over 1) are:

A) avoid "spend it or lose it" artificial incentives. We should discourage anything that creates an incentive to spend money without a real need.
B) prevent the artificial suspension of activity in January (which might otherwise occur)
C) reward committees' frugality (rather than punishing it)
D) avoid confusion if the new budget is not passed before Jan 1
E) allows for "rainy day funds" that last longer than a year and for low priority items (higher tiers) to eventually get funded (after a few years of patiently waiting)

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2004 Budget request
Friday December 26, @10:25PM by Dan Melnechuk and Gil Obler
from the GRP fundraising and finances committee.
Placeholder for the 2004 budget request, which is not ready yet.
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State Convention Proposals Procedure
Tuesday December 23, @10:41AM by Rob Crowner, Jim Bosman
from the Procedures, Structures, and Meetings (ProcCom) committee.
The plenary session of the state convention should not be spent hashing out ill-conceived or half-formed proposals. With one hundred members present, for example, every hour of plenary time equals one hundred hours of member time. In order to ensure the most effective use of plenary time, we propose the following procedure be established to govern the review and acceptance of proposals for the state convention. This procedure will be published in the newsletter that announces the convention. This procedure will be incorporated into the procedures manual.
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Add Section 15.3 to bylaws
Saturday December 20, @12:29PM by Owen Broadhurst and Dan Melnechuk
Presently, bylaws offer few checks and balances ensuring that first past the post elected state committee representatives are held accountable to the will of the general membership as expressed in county conventions. This proposal can do that.
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