January 6, 2010: Reading Reports

Following up on yesterday's post: if my first suggestion is going to be "read", then it might make some sense to know what to read, where to find it, and how to organize your thoughts about what it is you are supposed to understand.

What to read? Everything. Sort of.

Different things are read different ways.

Yesterday, I looked at an overture. Today, I want to look at a report.

Right now, there are not many reports posted for the 219th General Assembly. They are on the way, to be sure. To illustrate how to approach reading a report, I went back to pc-biz and clicked on the "Explorer" tab, changed the "Event" from 219th GA to 218th GA, hit search without putting anything in the "keywords" section, and scrolled down. The first report listed is the General Assembly Nominating Committee. That's a rather lengthy discussion and not the easiest report to figure out (I will cover this later and describe the election process that is involved), so I kept scrolling down. It is the "Report of the Stated Clerk Nominating Committee."

(Digression and disclosure: I am using this as an illustration despite the fact that I stood for election to be Stated Clerk at the 216th General Assembly (2004) in Richmond. It works because the term of the current Stated Clerk, Gradye Parsons, continues through the 220th General Assembly (2012). Thus, there is no political hay to be made by looking at this as an example.)

If you go there, you will see a format similar to the overture I covered yesterday. The action is in bold. The rationale is in normal typeface. What I want you to see here is both a "Rationale" and a "Background". The rationale gives you the explanation for why the entity making the report thinks their recommendation is the best action for the Assembly to take. The background is an explanation of the process undertaken that led to the decision that is being recommended; i.e., the how.

Because entities making reports are encouraged to be brief, often there is not a discussion of alternatives considered for a particular recommendation. In the case of the Stated Clerk Nominating Committee, the rationale talks only about their nominee, Gradye Parsons. There is no mention of the qualities of other persons who either self-nominated or were submitted as nominations. In the background section, it refers to the committee conducting telephone interviews with several of the fourteen other candidates.

The point here is this: reading reports is a little more time-consuming and requires a little more footwork to be fully informed than reading overtures. That said, not every recommendation and not every report is controversial. It is not good stewardship for me to send you on wild goose chases looking for controversies that do not exist. How can you tell the difference between reports with controversial recommendations and those that are normal, matter-of-course? Read analytically:

1. Does the reasoning provided in the rationale make sense?
2. Who benefits? Who does not - or - who bears the burden?
3. What alternatives can you imagine that were not chosen?

If you read with that grid in mind, you will soon be able to distinguish between those likely to be debated and those that would fit neatly on the "consent" docket of any session. In addition, you are likely to start receiving mail from interested groups who will want to highlight their particular issue -- that's another good clue.

So, to re-cap: read the bold carefully. Read the other casually; but know that there is likely more to the story than can be printed in a report.

 

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