&Questions Answers

is not a member of the society, is a member only of the board or committee he or she is serving on and does not become a member of the society by virtue of being on a particular board or committee

[RONR (12th ed .) 47:3] .

QQuESTION:

I serve on a board of directors where we have one person who always likes to bring up motions that could be harmful to the group. I learned about the motion, Objection to the Consideration of the Question, so that I could stop consideration of these harmful motions, as long as the rest of the board is in agreement with the objection.

However, at the last meeting, a motion was made to include a paragraph in the minutes of the current meeting, and this paragraph had some comments that I found to be objectionable and false. I therefore objected to the consideration of the motion to include this paragraph in the minutes, but the president ruled that the objection was out of order and could not be applied to this particular motion. I thought that I was able to object to any potentially harmful motion. why couldn’t I object to the motion to include this paragraph in the minutes?

ANSwER:

The purpose of an Objection to the Consideration of the Question is to allow a group to avoid any consideration of an original main motion when it believes it would be undesirable for the group to even bring it up [RONR (12th ed .) 26:1] . An objection cannot be applied to incidental main motions .

Briefly, original main motions are substantive questions that are new subjects . Incidental main motions are incidental to or relate to the business of the group, or its past or future action . So, a motion to include something in the minutes would be considered an incidental main motion, since the wording of the minutes are incidental to and relate to the business of the group and include its action (which will be in the past once the meeting adjourns and the minutes are drafted) .