The "SMGI Board of Directors" issue is one that has burned me up for quite some time. There are some things that I do not understand and some that just don't make sense to me.
Allow me to explain. First of all, why does the Tribal Council make up the majority of the board? As far as I know, council has the right to override the suggestions and decisions of the board anyway. As it stands right now, there are five council members and four non-council members that make up the board. If council makes up the majority, why do we even have a board? If for some reason council does not like what the board has suggested, they can just change the decision to their liking. That doesn't make sense. Maybe I am missing a part of the story that would clear everything up for me.
A few years back, the council gave the membership the right to vote on whether or not they would like to see council on the board. As much as I admired our council for giving us a voice, I felt that the vote should have been worded differently. I personally agree with having representatives from council on the board. I do not agree with them making up the majority. I feel that if there were stipulations stating that council could have representatives on the board but not make up the majority, the outcome of the membership's vote would have been much different. It was "black or white." There could either be council on the board or not. Even as "black and white" as it was, the vote was very close. I believe in the membership. We are not idiots and if we were provided with more of a voice, I believe this tribe could be ran a lot stronger.
There was also a non-council tribal member whose term on the board had expired. This individual was not reappointed based upon a vote made by the other eight board members. This person recently confronted the council members that voted against his reappointment at a Wednesday night meeting. Now, I am not sticking up for this individual and maybe there was justification for their vote against him. All I can say is that the answers for their vote against him to be reappointed did not seem justified to me. In fact, I didn't even make any sense out of most of them.
I would like to see the board's voting history for reappointments over the last three years. I'll bet it is pretty interesting. I would also like to know what the criteria is for denying someone's reappointment as well as the criteria for voting "for" someone's reappointment. I really hope that there are some guidelines in place for these kinds of decisions. These people make big decisions for our tribe and for our casino. Or they at least make big suggestions to our council. As I also feel about voting for Tribal Council, it is very serious business and should not be taken lightly.
Thank you for your time. And remember, TOBY09!!
Toby,
ReplyDeleteWell said. As I was part of the 2007 advisory vote you mention, let me explain some of our thinking. At that time, the decision to remove the Council board members was very controversial, although personally I don't think it should have been. Our reasons were legitimate. Maybe not every Council board member deserved it, there were a number that did. It is sad that our discussion in front of the members one Wednesday night was in Executive Session, because I believe a lot was revealed, not that it mattered to some.
Sitting on the board now, I can plainly see that politics guides some decisions, and that many Tribal member employees see the Council board as an additional outlet to get what they want when following the chain of command doesn't produce the desired outcome. Both of those practices have got to stop, because a lot of time gets wasted, and managers, like anybody else, don't like to have their decisions second-guessed or undermined. I see some passive aggression going that isn't healthy for any organization, much less one motivated to run for profit in order to provide services to our members.
It's not a perfect system, that's for sure. But are the responsible parties willing to be introspective and change? That is the real question.
Thank you for the explanation and the feedback, Chris. It helps out when there is actually an active member of council willing to explain to the people what is going on.
ReplyDelete