NACo bylaws changes go to a vote at Annual Business Meeting

NACo members assemble by state at the 2104 Annual Conference. Photo by David Hathcox

Voting formula change up for vote at @NACoTweets Annual Conference July 22-25 in @CountyofLA

As part of President Sallie Clark’s promise to review and revise the NACo Bylaws and other policies, a professional parliamentarian was hired to review the NACo Bylaws this year. President Clark also appointed a Bylaws Review Committee to assess the parliamentarian’s recommendations and consider other issues that have arisen recently regarding the bylaws.
Subsequently, the Bylaws Committee has developed a series of proposed changes that will be considered during NACo’s Annual Business meeting, Monday, July 25 during the Annual Conference in Los Angeles County.
Among the proposals is a change to the voting formula. In 2015, the NACo Elections Review Committee recommended changing the formula for member counties at annual business meetings. This proposed change would update the weighted voting formula to account for changes in association dues as well as population growth over recent decades. It is meant to maintain a balance within and across the association. For a summary of what this voting formula change means see below.
For a summary of all proposed changes, bylaws edits and other information, go to www.naco.org/governance.

Proposed Changes to the NACo Voting Formula from the Election Review Committee

What Change is Being Proposed?
Each year during the NACo business meeting, member counties may vote for resolutions, bylaw changes and NACo officers.  According to the NACo bylaws, member counties may cast one vote for every $500 in dues paid by the county.  Counties paying $0-$499 in dues have one vote, counties that pay $500-$999 in dues have two votes, and so on.  Dues are capped at $60,000, therefore a county’s potential votes are also capped at 121.

Under the new, proposed formula, member counties would be eligible to cast one vote for every $1,200 in dues paid by the county.  Counties paying $0-$1,199 in annual dues would have one vote, counties paying $1,200-$2,399 in dues would have two votes, and so on.  The maximum number of votes a county would receive (due to the dues cap of $60,000) is 51.

The proposed bylaw amendment would NOT change the dues formula, but only the formula for weighting voting.

Why is this Change Being Proposed?
Based on recommendations by the NACo Election Review Task Force, the NACo board voted to recommend an update to the weighted vote formula during the 2015 NACo Legislative Conference.  The main purposes of this proposal are to:

• Update the weighted voting formula to account for changes in the association’s dues (including minimum and maximum levels) as well as the nation’s population growth over recent decades
• Maintain a balance within and across the association

Overall, the proposed change would roughly restore the vote balance that existed in 1991, the earliest year for which we have dues records in our computer system.  Since 1991, the United States population has grown from 253 million to 320 million today.  
Combined with the association raising the maximum dues from $31,740 in 1991 to $60,000 today, the addition of more than 65 million people across our counties has increased the county membership votes from 5,914 in 1991 to 9,772 today. The proposal would reduce the total membership votes to approximately 5,027 while adjusting vote totals for each member county.
The proposed amendment would make an adjustment to account for these shifts and to maintain balance across the organization.  This is needed since adjustments were not made previously at the various times that dues were raised and/or adjusted in recent decades.

How Would This Affect My County’s Vote?
This would be a shift for each county and each state. There would be fewer total votes, but each vote would have more of an impact.  One vote under our current system is worth 0.01 percent of the total.  Under the proposed system each vote would have almost twice as much of an impact, as each vote will be around 0.02 percent of the total.  After the adjustment no county would see a change of more than 0.22 percent on the impact of their total votes.  

How Would This Affect Votes for My State?
After the adjustment no state would see a change of more than 1.77 percent on the impact of their total votes in the state.