I mentioned last week that proxies were being sought for the purposes of nominating Tom Bakos to the American Academy of Actuaries. Yesterday, there were a couple of additional developments: the Academy started seeking proxies of its own, and Tom added a candidate information page to his website, presumably in response.
In the interest of presenting both sides of the matter, here are key passages of both communications, side-by-side:
AAA Letter to Members |
Tom Bakos’ Candidate Info |
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We are writing to you today to bring to your attention an unprecedented event and our response to it. Since its founding in 1965, the Academy has never had a proxy vote on any matter, either by the membership at large or by the Board of Directors. We are, however, aware that there is an effort underway by some members of the Academy to solicit proxies from members who will not be attending the annual meeting in Boston on Monday, October 26 to oppose the Nominating Committee’s proposed slate of regular directors in the election. Most nonprofit corporations prohibit proxy voting in their bylaws. The Academy’s bylaws were established in 1966 and have been amended at various times since then. At no time have those bylaws prohibited or permitted proxy voting. We believe that proxy voting can easily be abused without proper processes to support it. This year, the Academy’s Annual Meeting is being held in conjunction with the Society of Actuaries’ meeting in Boston. We are cognizant that there are many members of the profession, including members of the Casualty Actuarial Society who might not be attending the Society of Actuaries meeting, and could be excluded from this potentially contentious election process without this option. In order to facilitate fair participation in the election of regular directors by members who support the Nominating Committee’s slate of candidates but cannot attend the annual meeting in person, we have prepared a form to be used by those members to vote by proxy. We hope to ensure a fair process by asking members to print the proxy form attached to this message, date it and affix an original signature, and either (1) return a scanned version of the signed document to the Academy at this email address academyproxy@actuary.org, or (2) fax it to one of these numbers: 1. 202-872-8301 |
Why I’m RunningThis has happened all rather quickly but what has motivated me is a desire to improve the Academy by making it into a organization more accountable, more responsive, and better respected by its members – and, therefore by the public. One way to get this project off the ground is to give all members with an interest an opportunity to vote in a contested election. I have been a member of the academy for 37 years and know it well. I want to leave to members much younger than I an Academy they have an opportunity to participate in and will have great respect for – because they can rightly feel they have some say in its governance. So, in addition to running for election in, even as the Academy recognizes, an unprecedented contested election with proxy voting so that all members will have, at least, an opportunity to vote, I intend to initiate a project very shortly to amend the Academy Bylaws to provide for the direct election of all Board members and Officers by a direct vote of the membership. I hope the current Academy leadership will recognize the great merit in this and will participate in reforming the AAA so that it can better serve its members needs. The American Academy of Actuaries does great work in public advocacy for the actuarial profession in the U.S. It’s leadership, generally, just doesn’t seem to treat its membership with respect and does not seem to understand that it is from the members that it draws whatever power and authority it has. [Tom Bakos’ proxy form is available here.] |
As one poster on the Actuarial Outpost noted, it’s an odd situation:
Tom isn’t really contesting the slate of four candidates; instead he’s running for a position that was inappropriately deleted without member input.
…a reference to a recent, not-widely announced change to Academy bylaws enacted by the Board of Directors, splitting the office of Secretary-Treasurer into two separate appointed positions and reducing by one the number of elected Board members to maintain the size of the Board of Directors. Some have alleged that this sort of a change should be made by formal member vote.
When taken in the context of the unpleasantness of the past couple of months (past posts: [1], [2], [3], [4], and [5]), perhaps interested MAAA’s should give some consideration to both sides of the story behind these calls for proxies.
A thread has been dedicated at the Actuarial Outpost for additional discussion of the competing calls for proxies.
