“The [Synod’s] Board of Directors respectfully ask[s] the Bylaw 3.2.5 Nominations Committee to reconsider the lists it has provided for filling current vacancies.”
With those words the Synod’s Board of Directors (BOD) at a specially called Jan. 13 meeting resolved to ask the Synod’s Nominations Committee to reconsider its lists of nominees for vacancies on the Synod’s Board of Directors and the Board of Directors of Concordia Publishing House.
The Nominations Committee, composed of members of the 2004 Committee for Convention Nominations, is required by bylaw to provide lists of three to five people to appointing boards, usually the Board of Directors. In its resolution, the Board of Directors asks the committee to give consideration to the manner in which the committee functioned after the bylaw was first put into effect after the 1989 convention as it reconsiders the lists currently in question.
Referencing a recent opinion of the Commission on Constitutional Matters that disallows nominations from the BOD floor, the Board resolution emphasizes “the important accountability” left to the Nominations Committee “for not exceeding its proper role in the process for filling vacancies by assuming for itself that which is properly the role of the appointing board.”
The Board supported its request by noting that the 1989 convention action that put the committee into place (Res. 5-07) spoke of “a shared selection process.” It also noted that early applications of the new bylaw demonstrated a cooperative and collaborative effort that favored candidates submitted by the board on which vacancies existed as well as those candidates receiving the largest numbers of votes at the previous convention.
Asserting its own “intention to continue to communicate and cooperate” with the Nominations Committee, the Board’s resolution asks that the committee give particular consideration to Mr. Walter Brantz as a nominee for a vacancy on the Board of Directors “in light of the expressed interest of the President and Board of Directors of the Synod as well as his strong background of business expertise and Synod experience.” The Board asked for similar consideration for Rev. Peter Cage as a candidate for the Board of Directors of Concordia Publishing House “given his prior faithful service on that board during the previous triennium, his nomination by the Concordia Publishing House Board of Directors, and his strong showing in the 2004 convention elections.”
Posted Jan. 26, 2006
