Detterick had told council budget priorities based on essentials, not individuals
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, April 28, 2006
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The official reason the General Assembly Council gave for meeting privately this week to discuss major budget cuts and staff layoffs for the remainder of this year, 2007 and 2008 was “personnel.”
But on April 6, during a conference call with the members of the council’s executive named, John Detterick said the issue was not about personnel.
Detterick, the council’s executive director, was quoted in the minutes of that meeting as saying, “The mission budget for 2007-2008 will presented in terms of the Mission Work Plan. The budget reduction will be based on the essential work to be done at the national level and not on individual positions. While work to be done at the national level that is being stopped will be identified for General Assembly Council members, individuals holding those related positions will not be named.”
Thus, it would seem, Detterick was not planning to have the budget issues weighed in private but for the General Assembly Council to consider only the essential work required and not the personnel.
There was no advance notice in e-mail packets sent to the media that most of the work of the council would be in private meetings. Detterick told The Layman Online before the executive committee met Wednesday morning and the first plenary session of the General Assembly Council that afternoon that the council would vote on a proposal to close its meetings to observers.
He also informed The Layman Online and other media that the details of what the council adopts this week will not be available until Monday afternoon. He said those details will be e-mailed to media members who cannot be in Louisville and that he would be available through a conference call Monday afternoon.
Indeed, the private meeting proposal was discussed and approved at the opening executive committee meeting and later at the council plenary. During the executive committee meeting, there was no discussion of using “personnel” as the reason for holding the meeting until late in the session.
That reason was raised by Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, who told the executive committee that the purpose of the meeting was personnel – one of the few areas that is exempted from the provisions of the denomination’s open-meetings requirement. Budget considerations must be conducted in open sessions.
Generally, when the denomination’s elected bodies – such as the General Assembly Council – decide to go into private or executive sessions to discuss personnel, they are doing so to evaluate performance or possible disciplinary action.
According to Detterick’s April 6 comments, the General Assembly Council is not considering the performance of employees this week, but the resources needed to provide the essential support for its programs under a Mission Work Plan adopted by the council. It is the executive director’s responsibility, with the help of division directors, to decide who stays and who goes.
But private meetings do provide a chance for the council to support individuals – particularly those in controversial positions, such as the Washington lobby office and ecumenical relations with the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches, by deciding that their work meshes with the requirements of the Mission Work Plan.
The Mission Work Plan establishes four priorities: 1) evangelism and witness, 2) justice and compassion, 3) spirituality and discipline; and 4) leadership and vocation.