Thursday, August 12, 2010

Free at last!

Congratulations to the newly elected or re-elected officers of the St. Louis County (Missouri) Libertarian Central Committee:

- Julie Stone, Chair
- Jeff Coleman, Vice Chair
- Ray Harbert, Treasurer
- Eric Harris, Secretary (re-elected)

Going into this meeting there was one certainty and one uncertainty.

The certainty was that this would be my last meeting as chair.

The uncertainty was whether or not the committee would continue to exist.

A change in Missouri law, effective August 28th, takes county party committees out of the "political party committee" campaign finance reporting loop and requires them to function as PACs if they continue to exist.

My opinion was that the committee should dissolve itself and, if its members wanted, re-organize as a PAC, building new bylaws from the ground up instead of having to go through a cumbersome amendment process if the new law required additional changes.

The majority's opinion -- and there were some sound arguments for it -- was that we should just become a PAC in mid-career as it were.

It would have been really, really sweet from an anarchist cred standpoint to be able to say "at the end of my term as chair the county party voted to dissolve itself." Alas, it was not to be. I think the committee has good leadership going forward and wish it the best.

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