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Report from Council
at the 233rd Meeting of the ACS The Council meeting at
the spring ACS meeting in The Region II Caucus on
Sunday afternoon provided a hint of what was to come when
Councilors debated the faults and merits of a petition that
would require members of the Nominations and Elections Committee
(N&E) to wait one year after leaving the committee until they
were eligible for nomination for District Director,
President-Elect or Director-at-Large. Petition proponents’
argument was the avoidance of the appearance of impropriety and,
besides, N&E members could always be nominated by petition,
thereby bypassing the waiting period. Petition opponents
argued that we shouldn't make it more difficult for members to
volunteer and, because of the election cycle, the waiting period
is more like two or three years, not one. At Council, it was
argued that committee rules bar N&E members under consideration
for nomination are barred from the nominating process and the
ballots are secret. Furthermore, only a few candidates
have come from N&E with less than a one-year waiting period.
In addition, several members of N&E made it clear that they
found insulting the petition in question because it questioned
their ethics. Councilor Ken Anderson, in a preface to
calling for a recorded vote, said that where he comes from
(somewhere in Action on another
petition that would have normally set the Council aquiver was by
comparison rather pedestrian. The
Council voted to split consideration and action on the Petition
on Election Procedures 2006 into two parts: Part 1 changes
the timing of runoff elections and specifies an election process
for situations in which only one Director-at-Large position is
open. Part 2 addresses consistency in national election
procedures by proposing changes to standardize the petition and
election processes for President-Elect and all Director
positions based on percentages of voting members. It
replaces language specifying a required absolute number of
petition signatures for nomination of candidates for
President-Elect, and Director-at-Large with language specifying
a higher requirement for petition signatures as a percentage of
the membership for nomination of candidates for these offices.
Petition critics said that these increases — by a factor of 7 or
8 — are much too large; the required number of signatures for
nomination by petition would be larger than that typically
received in the general election by the winner! Petition
advocates pointed out that the last election had two petition
candidates (in addition to the two selected by N&E), requiring a
runoff election and a large monetary cost to the Society.
Furthermore, the two candidates in the runoff were the ones
chosen by N&E! The Council voted to accept Part 1.
For Part 2, the Council voted to recommit this petition back to
N&E and ask that they reconsider the signature requirements,
procedures for processing electronic signatures, and those
suggestions arising from the Governance Review Task Force
pertinent to election procedures. N&E presented to the
Council the four nominees for selection as candidates for
President-Elect, 2008 — Pat N. Confalone, I voted for Confalone and
Nugent but Council elected Confalone and Lane, ruining my
perfect record. N&E announced the
results of the election to select candidates from the list of
nominees to represent District II and District IV on the Board
of Directors for the term 2008-2010. Nominees for District
II included: Robin J. Hood, Joseph R. Peterson, Diane Grob
Schmidt, and Steven W. Yates. Nominees for District IV
included Paul F. Barbara, Eric C. Bigham, John P. Fackler, Jr.,
and Gregory H. Robinson. By mail ballot, the councilors
from these districts selected Joseph R. Peterson and Diane Grob
Schmidt as District II candidates; and as District IV
candidates, Eric C. Bigham and Gregory H. Robinson. Ballots will
be mailed on or before October 10 to all members in District II
and District IV for election of a Director from each District.
Candidates for
Directors-at-Large The Committee on
Nominations and Elections announced the selection of the
following candidates for Directors-at-Large for a 2008-2010
term: Janan M. Hayes, Helen A. Lawlor, Kent J. Voorhees,
and Frankie K. Wood-Black. The election of two
Directors-at-Large will be conducted in the fall. Ballots
will be mailed to the Council on or before October 10. Committee Performance
Reviews As part of a regular
review, the Council voted to continue the Committee on Science,
the Women Chemists Committee, and the Younger Chemists Committee
- subject to concurrence by the Board of Directors. The
Committee on Science provides an organizational framework to
facilitate policy formulation, actions, and planning in several
areas of ACS activity directly related to the science of
chemistry. The Women Chemists Committee was established to
recognize women chemists and to encourage them to take an active
interest in Society activities; and the Younger Chemists
Committee facilitates communication of ideas and attitudes
between the governing bodies of the Society and younger
chemists.
Future National
Meetings The Council VOTED to
approve dates and sites for 2017 national meetings as follows:
April 2-6, New Local Section The Council VOTED to
establish the Snake River Local Section with headquarters in
Member Statistics
ACS closed 2006 with
160,491 members, the highest year-end membership since 2002.
Of the 17,857 applications processed in 2006, more than 1,000
came from the Member-Get-A-Member campaign, in which many
councilors participated. Governance Review
The Council received a
report on the recent activities of the Governance Review Task
Force. Councilors were informed that since the last
Council meeting, the task force has met twice and action teams
have been actively addressing those areas under the “Advance”
category. Councilors also learned that the Council Policy
Committee and the Board of Directors VOTED, as recommended by
the Governance Review Task Force, to accept four recommendations
under the “Refine” category. Chemical
Professional’s Code of Conduct The Council VOTED to
approve the Chemical Professional’s Code of Conduct as submitted
by the Committee on Economic and Professional Affairs.
This document offers guidance for Society members in various
professional dealings, especially those involving conflicts of
interest. Resolutions:
The Council adopted resolutions in memory of deceased councilors
and ACS Past Presidents Robert Parry (1982), and Fred Basolo
(1983). Your faithful Councilor, Steve Trohalaki
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