Holiday Greetings to you all!

Welcome to the 2015-16 Constitution and Bylaws Committee, pending Education

Minnesota Governing Board approval on December 11.

Thank you for your willingness to serve. I look forward to working with you as we
prepare for the 2016 Representative Convention (RC) on April 29th and 30th.

This will be my first year serving as the C&B Committee chair, although, I have been on
the committee for several years. Deb Corhouse will again be the staff person working
with us. And, our support staff person will again be Lisa Enwright Bruzek, one of our
legal secretaries.

The Constitution & Bylaws Committee is charged with the most challenging task that
shapes and molds our Union's direction. As some of you may remember, and to those
of you who are new to the committee, our work is intense, but brief. The committee
generally has one in-person meeting per year, plus a conference call or two (or three or
four…). Appropriately, the timing for the meeting is driven by deadlines that are built
into the Constitution and Bylaws.

This year’s deadline for submitting proposed amendments is January 20th. So far, I am
aware of at least three expected submissions. With that in mind, I would like to
schedule our first meeting for Saturday, January 30th. (This is a change from the date
of January 23rd, which was referenced when you were asked for your participation. I
hope that this date change does not cause any inconvenience for you.)

Our focus for the January 30th meeting will be on the tasks of reviewing the submitted
proposals, identifying any problems or questions, and drafting impact statements for the
new proposals. My goal is to finish all other work by conference calls, email, and/or
Google Docs.

This year’s deadline for getting the RC call into the mail is February 29th. Ideally,
however, we would like to be able to get drafts to the Governing Board for its February
6th meeting.

Thanks again, and I look forward to seeing all of you soon. Please reply to this email if
you have any questions for Deb or me, or call me at 218-349-8541.

Heidi Morris
Committee Chair