See the full text of the Colorado resolution at  http://www.coloradodiocese.org/gcresolution.html
Here is my summary:

• They would move General Convention  from every 3 to every 5 years
• They would reduce the maximum number of deputies per order per diocese from 4 to 3
• They would increase the Presiding Bishop's term from 9 to 10 yrs
• They would limit the President of the House of Deputies to 2 terms
• They would reduce the number of legislative days to 6 days (in Denver we will have 10).

I applaud all efforts that would make us leaner if they will make us more effective, or to use the terms of one of the proposers in his note to deputies and bishops, efforts to help us "model a better stewardship of our collective time, talent and treasure."  I am not yet persuaded that these proposals would make us more effective.  I am open to being persuaded.

I would like to see any reductions tied to explicit ways to preserve the functions of General Convention.  General Convention, not staff and with exceptions, not even Executive Council, should set the agenda for ECUSA.  If GC does not have adequate time to deliberate program proposals, staff will define our agenda.  Many major shifts occur even within the 3-year intervals we now have; moving to 5-year intervals would throw much more decision-making to Executive Council and to staff.  Any proposals at GC would have to be quite clear about those implications, and we should think hard about whether we want to do that.

Imagine a board of stock-holders that decided to meet only every 5 years, or a congress.  Think past your initial "Woopie!" to many of the other consequences of such a decision.

I favor the reduction of deputies more than I favor fewer conventions.  I would favor fewer conventions if that were tied to formal ways deputies might act legislatively in cyberspace over the interval between conventions.   We already have a huge waste of resources by having three-year terms that in effect are only 15-day terms.  We also need to structure ways that deputies report to dioceses and receive the advice of dioceses.

I see no reason at all for us to think of "Convention" as needing to be asynchronous or geographically specific anymore.

I also have problems with reducing the number of legislative days, especially if those proposals are not tied to proposals that assure that the legislative days are used completely for legislation.  It is too easy for those who don't want legislation to fill legislative days with other fare.  Currently in a 15-year period GC would meet 5 times for 10 days each, or a total of 50 legislative days.  Under the proposal in a 15-year period GC would meet only 3 times for 6 days each, or a total of only 18 legislative days.  That's a reduction of 64%.  Does that seem wise?

I regret that the proposers of these important resolutions allowed political overtones, despite their best efforts to keep them out.  Their rationale states: "If the Episcopal Church continues to elect this form of governance, General Convention will become more and more irrelevant, misunderstood, and ignored by those it claims to represent."  That grammar ("more and more") says that the Episcopal Church has already become irrelevant, misunderstood, and ignored.   That is a view held much more by those who don't like what GC has done than by those who do like what GC has done.  Including that rhetoric in the rationale does not promote trust of it as a non-partisan document.

The proposal also ignores the politics implied in its call to utilize "all voting, balloting, and reporting procedures of the General Convention, i.e. electronic voting, the Hare balloting system, etc."   I happen to approve of the politics of the Hare balloting system, but some do not. (It favors minority groups, e.g.) The proposers do not help the proposal to list the Hare preferential system as if it has no political consequences.

In their announcement of this initiative to the Bishop-Deputy discussion list, Colorado alternates Gary Thompson and Stuart Brooks Keith stressed:  "More sacred conversation and decision-making would occur at the provincial, diocesan, and parochial levels."  General Convention needs to be quite specific about any decision-making that it turns over to provinces. Some provinces are much better organized than others.  Those without much organization may well see that programs on which they depended disappear, or that resources which they thought appropriately used suddenly get redirected by people newly empowered to manage them -- persons elected without the presumption of those responsibilities.  I am open to new arrangements, but I am nervous about the caprice of musical chairs.  The last time I played it as a child, the chair on which I depended had been yanked.

Moving to a maximum of 3 deputies would radically effect how votes by orders work, in doing away with the tied ballot (which is treated as a negative vote).  I would welcome the shift, but the proposal ought to be upfront:  votes by order would have less of a restraining effect on resolutions than they now have.

The proposal could benefit from some hard data regarding the expense of earlier conventions relative to the economies in which they were held.  We need Gideon efficiencies, but we need to be just as vigilant in assuring that we will remain good stewards.  Without hard evidence of relative values of the dollar, I am not sure whether GC in 2000 is or is not costing radically more than did the first convention of the 20th century, in 1901 in San Francisco, or the first one of the 19th century, in Trenton, NJ in 1801.

The proposal could benefit by a close and objective comparision of the amount of time that we gave to  resolutions at the last 3 conventions, first the time given to resolutions about program and institutional policy,  and second the time given to resolutions related to social and political issues.

I cannot know the motives of the Diocese of Colorado, but I do note that for many conventions its deputies' voting record has been as partisan as that of the deputies of my diocese, often on opposite "sides."  I was candid about the partisan slant to my structural resolution in 1994 to have proportional representation, and I suspect that much of what drives some conservatives' initiatives for structural reform is partisan as well, namely a fear of the resolutions about social and political issues. I am not convinced that reducing the time that we meet addresses those concerns in responsible ways;  I fear that reducing the time we do our work could have some dreadful consequences for everyone.  I am certainly not persuaded that we waste a lot of the legislative time:  persons who served on the committees with me in the past have been up early and stayed up late hard at work.

I personally think we ought to continue to be concerned with resolutions of both kinds, but if some want to minimize the time we spend on social and political issues, they might better serve us by saying so rather than by radical surgery on a structure that has served us remarkably well.

In spite all of these concerns, I applaud the Diocese of Colorado for prompting this conversation.  I hope others will help to refine legislation so that that most of us can support it.

Lutibelle/Louie, Chair
The Newark Deputation

Louie Crew, 377 S. Harrison St., #12D, East Orange, NJ 07018-1225
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew   973-395-1068

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