[arin-ppml] Advisory Council Meeting Results - May 2010

[Smith, Bill]

Comments below:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On
> Behalf Of Owen DeLong
> Sent: Friday, May 28, 2010 8:24 AM
> To: michael.dillon at bt.com
> Cc: arin-ppml at arin.net
> Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] Advisory Council Meeting Results - May 2010
> 
> 
> On May 28, 2010, at 8:07 AM, <michael.dillon at bt.com> wrote:
> 
> >> I believe summary judgment to be an accurate definition to apply to
> > the
> >> behavior you describe.
> >
> > Summary judgement is a legal term referring to judges who make a
> > judgement
> > without a full trial.
> >
> > In this case, the AC meetings are not trials, and the AC members are
> not
> > judges. There was no judging, no judgement. The AC simply discussed
> the
> > policy proposals and assessed them according to the PDP and to the
> AC's
> > own agreed practices.
> >
> > To call the AC decision a summary judgement is out of line.
> >
> > The fact is that the only policies that ARIN ever adopts are the ones
> > Which have the *SUPPORT* of a majority of the AC. This is by design,
> > i.e. the ARIN Charter and Bylaw writers intended it to be this way.
> >
> I won't entirely agree with this.  It requires an affirmative vote of
> the majority
> of the AC, but, that is not the same as support.
> 
> I have voted yes for several proposals which I did not support, but,
> which
> I felt met the tests described earlier and which had support from a
> majority
> of the community.

To do otherwise might be construed as a conflict of interest. Of course any individual can also recuse themselves from any vote in which they have a conflict.

> 
> > Remember that the public does not vote. In a voting situation it can
> be
> > worthwhile to split hairs and argue about marginal issues because if
> it
> > changes even one vote, it can make a difference.
> >
> The public does vote, but, those votes are purely informational in
> nature.
> 
> > But there are no votes here. If a policy does not have strong
> support,
> > then a slight shift in the level of support is meaningless. The fact
> is
> > that only policies with strong support get through.
> >
> Yes, this is how it is intended.  However, there are votes. There are
> votes by the community in the public policy meetings which are advisory
> in nature and there are votes by the AC and the Board which determine
> the final outcome of policy proposals.

If the "votes" taken in public policy meetings are advisory (and I think they are), then the votes at the *Advisory* Committee could be considered advisory as well. It takes formal Board action, and presumably a simple majority vote, to *enact* a new Policy.

Determining if consensus exists is typically relatively easy. It's done routinely at any number of organizations where a priori guidelines and rules have been established to help the participants and leaders make informed consensus decisions. In those same organizations, it can be monumentally difficult to *achieve* consensus.

The PDP is quite clear that the AC is charged with determining consensus of the community. In my experience, it is relatively easy to determine if consensus exists. Achieving consensus may be monumentally difficult and time consuming but the determination of its existence is straightforward.

As I understand the PDP, the AC is charged with the simpler task. 

> 
> Owen
> 
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