Board Votes to Abolish Two Officer Positions

After defeating a proposal to drastically reduce its size, the APA Board of Trustees voted to enact a much smaller cut at its September meeting in Washington, D.C.

Board members were faced with a proposal from the Long-Range Budget and Planning Task Force to limit the number of participants at Board meetings, depending on options chosen. The most contentious of the options would have removed all but one of APA’s former presidents from the Board after their three years as a voting member were up. After considerable debate, however, the Board voted to make no change in their status. (Beginning with immediate past president Richard Harding, M.D., whose presidential term began in 2000, APA will stop paying expenses for former presidents to travel to Board meetings after their three years as a voting member end.)

The Trustees did vote to abolish one of the two vice-president positions and to combine the secretary and treasurer positions into one office to be known as secretary-treasurer. They also agreed to seat the nonvoting members at a separate table at the next meeting on a trial basis to see whether this enhances the effectiveness of Board discussions.

As currently constituted, the Board has 21 voting members (see box on Original article: page 38). In addition, every former president prior to Harding is entitled to attend Board meetings at APA’s expense, though in an ex-officio capacity, that is, without a vote. There are now 23 former presidents, though at most meetings approximately six to 10 attend.

The task force, which is chaired by APA President Paul Appelbaum, M.D., proposed that only the most recent past president be a member of the Board and that individual would have a vote. The task force could identify no other organization that offers lifetime Board membership to ex-presidents, Appelbaum noted.

The task force maintained that the size of the Board “makes discussion unwieldy,” Appelbaum explained. “It may take an hour to an hour and a half for every member of the Board to have his or her turn to speak about an important issue,” the report pointed out.

That 30 to 35 people sit at the table at most Board meetings “limits the number of issues that can be considered thoughtfully at any meeting,” he added. “The time given to nonelected members, however thoughtful their comments, takes time away from those members who have been elected contemporaneously to lead the Association.”

The proposal to limit the Board to voting members, the task force concluded, strikes a balance “between a size that allows efficient operation a-+nd the desire to be representative of the membership as a whole.”

Most of the Board, however, argued in favor of maintaining the former presidents’ ex-officio status. One of those former presidents, Rodrigo Muñoz, M.D., commented that “they have devoted a lifetime to APA in many cases and are a valuable educational resource” for the other Trustees.

Former president Joseph T. English, M.D., insisted that the opportunity to save money, and not, as Appelbaum maintained, the desire for greater efficiency and ease of discussion, drove the proposal.

Responding to Appelbaum’s statement that APA appears to be the only organization that keeps every ex-president on its Board for life, Area 1 Trustee Kathleen Mogul, M.D., suggested that “the fact that our Board is different from others is, in fact, a plus, not a detriment.” Several Board members pointed out that the experience and wisdom of the past presidents have been valuable in informing Board discussions.

Assembly Speaker Albert Gaw, M.D., said, however, that the Assembly is being asked to downsize “for the sake of better efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” and the Board should have to do likewise. The Assembly has already complied with a mandate to cut about 35 percent of its budget in the last few years, he noted. Gaw suggested forming a council made up of former presidents as a way to tap into their knowledge and experience.

Another task force proposal that the Board discussed was to stop inviting the representative of the Committee of Residents and Fellows (CORF) and to have the fellows who are jointly sponsored by APA and pharmaceutical companies continue to attend, since their expenses are paid by the sponsoring companies, but to halt the practice of having them sit at the Board table. There are three such fellows. In addition to the fellows and CORF representative, residents are represented by the elected member-in-training (MIT) trustee, who has a vote, and the MIT trustee-elect, who does not.

Though only one of the six resident positions—that of the CORF representative—would have been eliminated, a substantial majority of the Trustees insisted that approving the proposal would send the wrong message to residents—a group that is a major target of APA’s recruitment efforts.

MIT Trustee Susan Padrino, M.D., stated that more, not less, representation by residents is the path APA should pursue. “MITs provide a valuable perspective on many issues,” she said, and maintaining their visibility in APA’s governance “helps improve the image of the Board” in the view of the residents.

The proposal to eliminate the CORF position passed by a one-vote margin with two abstentions. The vote, however, turned out to be unnecessary because the CORF representative attends as a guest at the request of the president and is not a member of the Board.

The changes that the Board voted in its membership will now go to the APA Bylaws Committee. That committee will draft amendment wording and then report back to the Board.

In other actions, the Board voted to

• Sign a contract with James Scully, M.D., as the next APA medical director (see Original article: page 1). The Board agreed to a four-year contract and a total compensation package of $425,000 (an annual salary of $375,000, which will increase by 4 percent annually in subsequent years; $30,000 in deferred compensation; and $20,000 in benefits).

• reduce the annual meeting advance registration fee for international members. For 2002 the fee had been raised from $185 to $450 to compensate for the fact that international members’ dues are $150, much lower than dues paid by U.S. and Canadian members.

A substantial drop in attendance by international members at this year’s annual meeting, however, led to a re-evaluation of the fee level, though there was no evidence that the fee was the cause of the decline. The Board agreed to lower next year’s registration fee to $350 for international members and to increase nonmember advance registration fees by an as-yet-undetermined amount so that income from these fees ends up being budget neutral. On-site registration will remain the same.

• defer until the November Board meeting approval of APA’s 2003 operating budget. The Board instructed the Budget and Finance Committee to revisit several substantial program cuts that various Board members thought should be restored. If any of the cuts suggested by the committee are restored, offsetting cuts will have to be identified in other line items so the budget remains in balance. The 2003 operating budget will be approximately $52 million.

• authorize APA to lease an association management system. The system will cost about $3.38 million from 2003 to 2008 and is estimated to save APA between $2.4 million and $6.3 million over that period. The system is designed to integrate several now independent databases and internal processes that decrease APA’s effectiveness, according to a task force report to the Board, and to result in significant improvements in member and customer services. It will end the duplication of member records by replacing them with one comprehensive record and will allow “a single point of contact for member services.”

In addition, the Board was told of several actions taken by the Executive Committee prior to the September meeting. These included

• approval of a request for funds from the Texas, Virginia, Florida, and New Mexico district branches. All will use the funds for advocacy at the state level.

• endorsing proposed guidelines to govern APA’s participation in magazine supplements about mental health issues that are supported by commercial advertising, such as by pharmaceutical companies. ▪