Between now and the convening of the 219th General Assembly (2010) in Minneapolis, there are just enough days to summarize an Assembly Committee a day.
Assembly committees will meet — for the most part, today’s committee excluded — on Sunday, July 4 through Tuesday, July 6. The Stated Clerk is responsible for “proposing the number and designation of assembly committees.” (Standing Rule C.1.a.) Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons has proposed 19 assembly committees; they are listed under the “committee” tab on pc-biz. Assembly committees will receive all the business forwarded for Assembly action (overtures, reports and recommendations, referrals, and commissioner resolutions.)
The first committee is called 01-Business Referrals. It is meeting in Louisville right now. This is one of those “read the manual to your BluRay-DVD-CD-VCR player before using” posts, so I am not going to be offended if you do not read much farther. If you are interested in how the Assembly works, this is the note for you.
Standing Rule C.1.d describes this committee:
The moderators and vice moderators of the assembly committees, as a group, shall function as the Assembly Committee on Business Referral. The moderator and vice moderator of the Assembly Committee on Bills and Overtures shall function as the moderator and vice moderator of this committee as well. This committee shall report to the assembly for its action at the first meeting of the General Assembly for the transaction of business.
The Stated Clerk presents the Business Referral committee with a recommendation about the distribution of business. (Standing Rule C.1.e.) Remembering that the Assembly Committees are defined by subject matter, the majority of the business has obvious placement. There are occasions of ambiguity and conflict about the placement of business; but, frankly, I can’t get worked up about it. That said, here’s an example of the kinds of things that could be a topic of conversation for this committee:
Item 03-01 is an overture seeking to amend G-13.0103r regarding Authoritative Interpretations. It is the first item listed for Assembly Committee 3 (thus 03-01), which is General Assembly Procedures.
Item 05-24 is a different overture proposing to amend G-13.0103r — that is, the same section of the Book of Order. Assembly Committee 5 is Church Polity.
(Don’t ask what will happen to these if the proposed new Form of Government is approved – that’s Assembly Committee 7.)
What happens if both GA Procedures and Church Polity recommend amendments? One committee will report to the plenary (entire Assembly, re-grouping Wednesday, July 7) before the other. If the first is approved, what happens to the second? Answer: it would still come to the plenary for action; it is likely there would be some amending going on to reconcile the two. It would just be a little bit of a procedural headache.
I now have spent more time illustrating this issue than the issue is worth contemplating.
The other thing that will come out of these days in Louisville are the proposed dockets for the Assembly Committees. These proposed dockets are the leadership’s best effort to establish an order for handling the business likely to be assigned — including consideration of the requirements for public hearings, discussion and action on the topics, and subjects to be handled. The order of how things are handled has a dramatic impact on the outcome — in many circumstances, later items are “answered” by the action on the first item considered.
Finally, Standing Rule C.1.e. grants the Business Referral Committee authority to operate before the Assembly is convened. This is a little procedural oddity because the proposed committees and distribution of business remain “proposed” until commissioners are officially registered and commissioned on the day the Assembly convenes.
No big drama in today’s note. I suppose the biggest drama is that we are at the point there are just enough regular weekdays left to go through one committee a day. Yipes!