[gnso-ppsc-pdp] Issue of who can request deferral of consideration of an issue

[Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@xxxxxxxxx>]

I said I would kick off this discussion.

The issue at hand is the phrase (roughly) "any VOTING Council member 
may request deferral of consideration of an issue for one Council 
meeting" (emphasis mine). It comes up in Recommendations 115 and 37 
and other places in the text.
As an aside, I note that in at least one of the occurrences, it says 
that it must be a WRITTEN request. I don't recall any discussion 
about that and suspect it may be an error.
The first occurrence includes the footnote "The term "voting Council 
Member" is intentionally used by the PDP-WT to refer to only those persons
serving on the GNSO Council that have a vote as opposed to liaisons 
and others that do not."
I note that mentioning Liaisons here is a red herring, as Liaisons, 
by the definition of the GNSO Council in the Bylaws, does not include 
Liaison. Not only are Liaisons not listed when the Council members 
are being defined (Article X, Section 3.1), but the following 
sentence makes it even more explicit:
"Liaisons shall not be members of or entitled to vote, to make or 
second motions, or to serve as an officer on the GNSO Council, but 
otherwise liaisons shall be entitled to participate on equal footing 
with members of the GNSO Council."
I believe that the inclusion of "voting" in our recommendations is in 
violation of the Bylaws Article X, Section 3.1e) which states (emphasis mine):
"three representatives selected by the ICANN Nominating Committee, 
one of which shall be non-voting, but otherwise entitled to 
participate on equal footing with other members of the GNSO Council 
including, e.g. the making and seconding of motions and of serving as 
Chair if elected. One Nominating Committee Appointee voting 
representative shall be assigned to each House (as described in 
Section 3(8) of this Article) by the Nominating Committee."
On the chance that this argument is not sufficiently persuasive, I 
will continue.
First a bit of history on the current Council structure. It was 
developed by a closed WG (a conflict in terms for ICANN) that was 
charged by the Board to come up with a structure acceptable to all 
parties within 1 month after the Paris meeting. Avri was the only 
other person on that group, but my recollection is that the closed 
archives were opened after the fact, so anyone who really cares and 
is a real masochist could check for themselves if I am mangling history.
The final recommendation of the group which was adopted by the Board 
kept all three Nominating Committee Appointees (NCA) to Council, but 
to put one NCA in each house and one on the Council, but houseless 
(or homeless as it has been called more recently). Since all voting 
is done by house, that last NCA has no vote. One could argue that 
since the non-contracted house has twice as many SG Councilors, it 
should also have twice as many NCA, but that argument was not 
successfully made. Avri was the NCA on the WG representing the NCAs. 
I was there as ALAC Liaison, but since I was a NomCom appointee to 
the ALAC, I was similarly tainted. We reluctantly accepted this 
compromise, but it must be understood that this was under 
considerable pressure from some WG members who REALLY wanted to see 
ZERO NCAa on Council.
So we accepted it and that is now history. To use the lexicon of 
Orwell's Animal Farm, we now had a situation of All Councillor were 
equal, but some were more equal than others. It dawned on me when I 
was thinking about this note that it would be completely impossible 
to conceive of one of the SG accepting that one of their three or six 
Councillors would forego their vote.
The origin of the current wording in our report (I *think*) is that 
we first started talking about a deferral request coming from a SG to 
give the SG time to deliberate, and not from the Councillor 
personally. That would have taken the privilege from all NCAs. But on 
reconsideration, I think (but I suspect I missed a meeting because I 
am a bit vague on this) it was decided that this was a personal 
request. I find that quite reasonable, since it is not only the vote 
that is critical, but the DISCUSSION. All the more so since several 
SGs allow their councillors to vote their conscience and do not bind them.
I don't know when the concept of voting councillors came in, but I 
know I found it objectionable. It takes yet another privilege from 
the homeless NCA, and without any real justification, or any real 
benefit to Council. It means that this NCA may be denied the right to 
meaningfully partake in the debate on an issue, and debate is the 
ONLY tool that this person has.
I strongly suggest removing the word VOTING from all of the 
occurrences. It has no subtle side-effects as the footnote mentioned 
above implies. It simple serves to give the homeless the same right 
as all 20 other Councillors, and removes a new, seemingly 
mean-spirited, insult to the injury already caused by the new Council 
structure.
If the WG feels that SOME restriction must be added, then I suggest 
it be restricted to Council members who are allowed to make motions, 
as this is pretty close to a motion (one that does not require a vote 
to be accepted).
Alan