Mark your calendars to vote next Thursday, August 5

Hello, Friends.

I know there are reminders everywhere, but obviously it is very important that you remember to vote next Thursday, August 5th, for the four persons you deem best qualitifed to help lead NCRA into the future.

Obviously, I am calling for a change in thinking and a change in direction. And I'm hoping the members will tell the Board that they want a change as well by voting for me for Secretary-Treasurer.

Hopefully, you have all registered your email address with NCRA, but if you haven't you need to go to NCRAonline, making sure you can get into that site with your user name (membership number) and password, and then make sure your email is up to date on the site. Look at your settings to be sure. If you are receiving email from NCRA, you should be good.

Next, mark your calendar, by cell phone if possible, and make an appointment for yourself to vote online on August 5th, 2010.

Check your email on August 5th in the early afternoon and keep checking it, including your spam, until you see an email from NCRA which will give you the needed link to the voting website. You'll again have to have your log-in information available to you, so write that down and keep it handy as well. Know your NCRA membership number and your password.

If you have any problem, call headquarters at 1-800-272-6272 or email them at msic@ncrahq.org. Check to be sure you can get into the site before August 5th! There may also be a phoone number listed in the email NCRA sends you concerning voting if you need help. The voting will begin about two hours after the business meeting and then will remain open for 12 hours, so you can vote from home after work if you like.

I'm ready, willing and able to serve you, so please don't forget to vote!!

Thanks.

BAM

The Tweaking of the C&B

I don't know who writes this stuff, but sometimes I really do find it comical. I read with great interest the Board's assessment of the proposed bylaws amendments. It's funny how they say that they take no position with the substance of the proposed amendments and then proceed to say they cannot support them for all the following reasons. Isn't that like taking a position?

Speaking only about the Board's comments to the proposed amendment that I wrote and the rationale that I wrote as well, Article V, Section 2, the Board says the number of seven years is totally arbitrary on my part, which, of course, it isn't. First I looked at the fact that a director can serve a full three-year term, sit off for one year, and then run again and serve another full three-year term. In essence, just being arbitrary now with this picking of numbers, a qualified reporter could be a director for 12 out of 15 years. In choosing seven years for officer positions, I felt that if a person served as vice president and then succeeded in going through the chairs of president-elect, president and immediate past president, that would be four years, and then three more would be seven, so it would be seven years before that person could run for vice president again. I hardly consider that logic arbitrary. It ends up being three times more time that the person serving in the officer position would have to wait over what a person serving in a director position would have to wait.

Then they say that piecemealing the C&B is just not a good thing and perhaps the whole thing should be rewritten. I wonder what someone would say if it was suggested that we rewrite the U.S. Constitution? And, oh, by the way, weren't there a few amendments to that document?

And lastly, I have said here and elsewhere more than once, but do it again here, that if I win the election for secretary-treasurer, I will not try to move up the ladder again. I will try to stay on for three years in that spot and then retire from board service. So if anyone gets up and says this is all about Bruce Matthews wanting to be president again, well, I'm afraid it just won't be so.

BAM

Which is it?

Recently, the Deposition Reporters Association of California asked the reporters running for positions on the NCRA Board of Directors questions so that members could be informed of where these reporters stood with regard to the issues of the day.

The first question asked if the candidates believed NCRA should remain a steno organization or become an umbrella organization.

My opponent in the race for secretary-treasurer answered: "We should and will remain what the membership decides. I do not see and would not advocate bringing in audio recording operators into NCRA."

But earlier in a post on the NCRA Forum, he said, "I'm not in favor of supporting an ER/DAR operator push for membership -- again, lacking facts to sway me to the contrary."

So I guess my question is: Which is it? Are you against it or are you only against it until someone can convince you otherwise? Don't we have the right to have an organization that advocates for what we do? Don't we have the right to have an association that advocates only for stenographic reporters? Isn't that what our Constitution and Bylaws say we are all about? And haven't the members already told the board on three separate occasions that they want to remain steno only?

I am growing tired of hearing about what DAR can do. I already know what DAR can do. But I also know what we can do, and we ought to be talking about that. The president of NCRA just admitted that for the past couple years, the NCRA board was too engrossed in becoming an umbrella-type testing organization and an umbrella-type membership organization. And my opponent has been a member of that board for four out the the last five years. She said they are now going to listen to the membership to see what direction they want the association to go in. That's great! I do question the timing of it all, coming out one month before the convention with all of these contested elections taking place, but let's advocate for steno. Let's advocate to the public and our members for realtime. Let's do what we should have been doing for the last several years.

LISTEN TO THE MEMBERS!

I just received my June issue of the JCR, and as I usually do, I opened it to the President's Page to read what President Morgan had written. Much to my surprise, she wrote: "Almost two years ago, the NCRA Board of Directors attempted to launch a similar discussion, but, in the process, we were thinking too much about the future of the Association rather than on the furture of the profession. To frame the conversation, we focused too extensively on the potential inclusion of those using other methods of making the record within an 'umbrella-type' testing or membershiip scenario. To say the least, this was an approach that served no one well."

They have finally admitted what was going on. They were panicking about their numbers and felt they needed to bring in other people and money either by way of testing or by way of membership. The problem is the membership has been telling them for years, many more than two, that they want NCRA to remain a steno only organization. At the presidential planning meeting I attended earlier this year, SueLynn Morgan told me that NCRA could not afford to have another motion-to-rescind-type scenario happen again. She stopped short of what she is saying now, but it's obvious if the board would not have been looking to test or bring in other "methods," the motion to rescind would have never taken place.

So now, right before the convention, they come out and say, "We are now going to listen to the membership." Well, I say it's about time.

Clarification in ED cost

The following question was asked of me by the Deposition Reporters Association from California, and I have new information regarding the cost to members of the Executive Director of NCRA. I am only including question and answer 4, because DRA is planning on publishing this in their newsletter in July. I will publish the entire thing here when it comes out. I am posting this on this blog site on June 11.

4. Do you think $30,000 a month is an appropriate salary for the executive director?

Let me first explain that when I posted on my blog site that we pay the ED $360,000 a year, that was salary and benefits. I did not use the word “salary” and should have been more careful in my wording. However, let me explain that I have been working with a group of people in the election campaign who are very interested in the money that is spent on the ED position, as well as other positions at NCRA. I have the IRS Form 990 for the year 2007. All non-profit organizations have to file these. And one of the items is the ED’s pay. For the year 2007, the form listed the ED’s compensation at $313,782 and his benefits at $48,969. Adding those together, it comes to $362,751. That is where I came up with the $360,000 figure.

Now, the people I have been working with have been trying to get those numbers for quite some time directly from NCRA and could never get them. So they went to a service that deals in obtaining this information and we got the numbers submitted to the IRS through this service. You do not even need to be a member of a non-profit organization to be able to obtain this Form 990 IRS tax data. Understand that 2007 is the latest Form 990 that we have. The one for 2008 will come out after this year’s convention. So this is the latest information we have. I have now been told that due to some sort of overlap, the information on the 2007 990 is for more than one year.

I have been told directly by the ED himself that his salary is $273,858, and I certainly believe him. So that would come out to about $22,821 per month.

I have also been informed that sometime next week, which will be the week of June 14th, NCRA will send out a notice to all members explaining what the ED’s salary and benefits are.

Having said all that, there are two things to keep in mind as far as I’m concerned. One is that over the period of time the current ED has been employed at NCRA, the membership numbers have been dropping. When I left the board as immediate past president in 1996, I believe we were at right about 33,000 members. We now have approximately 20,000. You can do the math. That includes all membership categories. I am not trying to say this was the ED’s fault. I’m just saying those are the numbers.

The other thing is this whole concept of confidentiality. Why would what we pay a staff member be a secret from the membership? If I pay someone to come and clean my house, I guess I should know what I’m paying them. If I’m going to hire a lawyer, I guess I should know what I’m going to have to pay the lawyer. It’s my money. They will be working for me. I have every right to know.

When there was a teleconference I believe in January of this year with all the people who had been nominated for a board position and were going to be interviewed by the Nominating Committee, the ED was explaining about a confidentiality form you have to sign if you become a member of the board. Actually, they asked you to sign even before you become a member of the board. They wanted it signed before you were interviewed by the Nominating Committee. And he said that this confidentiality thing was somewhat unique to NCRA. Well, I refused to sign the form and said that if I do get elected, I’ll have a discussion with the board first to try to do away with the requirement before I would ever sign it. So the fact that the information relating to the total compensation we pay the ED is going to be released to the entire membership of NCRA, I think is a real plus and consider it a win for those people who really like to know what’s going on. I think we have been able to kind of kill two birds with one stone as far as gathering information and dealing with the confidentiality issue.

Now, I guess you can draw this conclusion for yourselves, but while the group I’m working with was trying to get this information directly from NCRA, did the board not know they were trying to get this information? More importantly, did the secretary-treasurer not know these members were trying to get this information? If he didn’t, then there’s some communication problems between staff and the board. If he did, why was the information not turned over? The members have a right to know.

DAR

DAR! Hmmf! Good God, ya'll, what is it good for?

I know I'm dating myself by bringing back that old protest song against the Vietnam War, but I thought it might be appropriate in light of the fact that I keep hearing references from the NCRA board that we should be working with DAR technology.

I've been reporting for 37 years, and since day one, before that really, people have been telling me I will be replaced by a tape recorder, or now, a DAR machine. And I keep telling people I'll have my job for as long as I want it and will leave behind many people who do what I do that will keep their jobs for as long as they want them.

I believe that because I care what happens in the courtroom as it relates to my being able to produce the best possible record that can be made. And I believe that because as the proceeding goes through my mind and I translate the words to steno, then write them on my machine, and then my dictionary matches the strokes I am writing to their English definitions, I know that there is no other technology that does that. That entire process is not done by DAR machines, not even close. It just records what it can process, period. It doesn't think about the words it is recording. It doesn't care about the words it is recording. And it doesn't care about what's going on in the courtroom. It doesn't know if someone is not speaking loud enough so that someone down the line will be able to prepare an accurate record from its recording.

I make this analogy between stenographic court reporters and DAR. Think of a young child who has been left in front of a TV for hours each day either watching what's on TV or playing games. The parent is off doing other things and just checks on the child every once in a while. Then think of the parent who reads to the child, who takes the child outside to experience nature, takes the child to museums, zoos and other interesting places to expand the child's mind. I think of the stenographic court reporter as the child who has been nurtured, educated, and taught to care about what he or she does while performing his or her job. I think of DAR as the child who has been left to fend for itself, just letting the information go in the "brain" but not really processing it.

Some of you might say: So what? We're still losing jobs to this other technology. I say why aren't we promoting ourselves with every ounce of energy and using every resource we can to convince these people who do not make their living in the courtroom that they should be keeping stenographic court reporters in the courtroom. After all, that's what the NCRA Constitution says is the purpose of NCRA. And I can hear some of the past leaders of NCRA saying: Are you crazy? We've already tried that. It doesn't work! And I'm saying, then we need to try harder. DAR can never do what we can do because we have a presence in the courtroom or deposition suite and we can make a difference when things get out of hand. And DAR cannot provide the best product on the planet, realtime.

Some will say that realtime is not needed for every case. Well, we all know that. But it should be available. Some of the most important decisions the Supreme Court has made concern cases from the lower courts. And for crying out loud, if you have the best product, why not tout it? And believe me, I'm not throwing the stenographic non-realtimers under the bus. Those folks are also like the educated and nurtured child referred to above. But we need to put the market's best product out in front.

Does size matter?

When you think of the size of an organization, you think in terms of annual budget and the number of members it has. NCRA's budget is about $7.8 million and it has about 20,000 members, down from around 33,000 in the mid '90's. That's a pretty hefty budget and a pretty significant downturn in the number of members over the past 13 or 14 years.

From time to time, it seems about every three to four years, a proposed amendment is submitted to NCRA to permit non-stenographic reporters to become Participating or Registered members, with the right to vote, and if they become Registered Members, the right to run for and hold office. My opponent in the race for secretary-treasurer of NCRA was one of the reporters who submitted the first proposed amendment to permit voice writers to become full-fledged members of NCRA.

The annual budget for the voice writers national association in 2008 was about $125,000, and for AAERT, their budget was about $30,000. Who would benefit if members of those associations became members of NCRA? And how much would it cost NCRA in terms of setting up programs for them? And how much would it cost in terms of the potential decline in membership?

Size does matter, and we should be using what size we have left to promote stenographic reporters. Our members have spoken three times in the last eight years that they do not want non-stenographic folks to become members. It's time to listen to them, don't you think?