comments on the ICANN budget

[William Drake]

Hi Ed

I’m traveling and so late to see this.  I have no desire to insert myself into whatever the thing is between you and Milton, and I usually don’t prefer to stir sleeping dogs after the fact, but I do have a question and a comment.  

The question is, when we ran into each other in Copenhagen, I asked you what’s this rumor I’m hearing about you wanting to threaten to veto the ICANN budget.  You replied emphatically that you had no such intention.  But then you went ahead and submitted a letter doing precisely that.  So I’d like to understand why you told me this.

The comment is, I’m still an observer on the PC list so I did see the exchange.  Upon receipt of the draft letter (which I agree with you, was not as I’d have preferred) you replied “there was no way for me to edit the document without completely deleting much of what had previously been written there. I just didn’t feel that was an appropriate thing to do.”  So instead of trying to work with colleagues on a better letter you shot off a five pager of your own.  I understand that the timeline was tight, but since you wanted to be chair of the NCSG finance committee, wouldn’t it maybe have been better to try to engage people sooner with an eye toward crafting a group input?  I appreciate that you make clear that the letter was in your personal capacity, but in second sentence you do note that you are the chair, so the outside reader might readily conclude that there was some big back and forth debate in the finance committee and ultimately you had no choice but to go solo, and that doesn’t seem to have been the case.  Arguably, this doesn’t make the process you’re chairing or the larger group look all that good.  Maybe we should try to coordinate more and earlier?

I’m not sure where we are now.  You say ""Unless bound by my Support Group to support this budget, I would be inclined to favor rejecting the entire budget when it comes back to the GNSO Council if this amount is not restored to the budget prior its final adoption.”   I guess I’m a member of your support group and I very much do not share your inclination, so I’m wondering what is the process you have in mind for us to work through this together before it comes back to the GNSO Council?  

Thanks much

Bill



> On May 2, 2017, at 11:30, Edward Morris <egmorris1 at toast.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi Milton,
>  
> As too often is the case, you rush to personal attack without first determining the facts.
>  
> From the NCSG PC list (https://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/ncsg-pc/2017-April/000515.html <https://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/ncsg-pc/2017-April/000515.html> )
>  
> ___
>  
> Hi Rafik,
>  
> I’d like to thank those who stepped in to contribute to the budget comment. I sadly disagree with the tone and much of the content of the document. I do not endorse it.
>  
> There was no way for me to edit the document without completely deleting much of what had previously been written there. I just didn’t feel that was an appropriate thing to do.
>  
> Rather I have completed and submitted to the Comments Forum a Personal Comment, which I am attaching to this post. I welcome those who have stepped up to do the NCSG comment to consider what I had to say, borrow from my post, or disregard it completely.
>  
> My objection to the NCSG comment as written consists of the following objections:
>  
> 1. I believe it is too negative and accusatory and fails to recognize the hard work done by Finance and the unique nature of the first year of the Empowered Community.
>  
> I have major problems with the process, and have expressed them in my Comment, along with suggested ways of improving cooperation and community input. However, I don’t believe any slights were deliberate or intentional. I believe the Community, including myself, erred in placing so many hard deadlines on Finance as part of the budget process in the new Bylaws. This is a year of adaptation but generalized critical comments without specific proposed solutions serve no purpose. And that is what much of the proposed NCSG comment consists of.
>  
> 2.  I find the objections to ALAC expenditures to appear as a stand alone attack on the AC. There are a number of areas of expenditure that many of us would find questionable. Why focus only on these in the absence of criticism of other questionable expenses?
>  
> 3. I don’t find staff retreats to be among the most pressing fiscal matters. After all, as a supplemental request components of the NCSG asked for their own retreats and the GNSO Council was actually granted one. Should we not first oppose these retreats or is there a reason staff retreats are so onerous?
>  
> 4. As noted in my personal comment, my biggest concern involves the lack of funding priority for core policy activities. I have focused on one unfunded proposal – that of $100,000 for external PDP support – and would encourage the NCSG to consider adopting this view.
>  
> Although I can not endorse the comment, out of respect for the work done on the document I will not oppose it. I will abstain and hope my comments above as well as those in my personal comment will be considered by the PC.
>  
> Regrettably, I have some domestic responsibilities to attend to this evening that must take priority over my volunteer activities here. Consider my abstention to be a permament one and feel free to borrow from, or ignore, my offerings on this matter.
>  
> Best,
>  
> Ed Morris
>  
> __________________________________________________________________________
>  
> Public comments are the purview of the NCSG Policy Committee, not the NCSG Finance Committee. With rare exceptions, discussions of the content of the public comments occur within the PC and not on the DISCUSS list. Maybe that is something we should re-think, however that problem is not unique to this comment. If you’d like to know why the NCSG did not submit a public comment on the budget I’d suggest you read the NCSG PC archives, ask the NCSG PC Chair or ask those who volunteered to write the comment at the last NCSG PC meeting.
>  
> Contrary to your assertion, Milton, as above, I did share my comments with those who stepped forward to draft the comment for the Policy Committee. I should note that I was not one of those who volunteered to draft this comment for the PC. As a member of the P.C., though, I saw things I disagreed with in what was being done and shared my views. We were all on deadline, though, which made things difficult.  In fact, one P.C. observer suggested the NCSG might want to endorse my comment (although qualifying her comment by stating she had yet to read my comment and may not even agree with her suggestion) (https://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/ncsg-pc/2017-April/000518.html <https://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/ncsg-pc/2017-April/000518.html> ).
>  
> Not much else I can say Milton. You seem to delight in attacking me personally, facts notwithstanding. I hope you had fun. You can criticize me for being late to the conversation, but this is a volunteer position and I was busy elsewhere early in the comment period. I guess that doesn’t fit your narrative, a narrative which has little to do with fact. 
>  
> Ed Morris
>  
>  
>  
>  
> On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 4:17 PM, Mueller, Milton L <milton at gatech.edu <mailto:milton at gatech.edu>> wrote:
> I was interested in the public comments on ICANN's budget - I believe this is the first one since the transition.
> 
> I noticed that all stakeholder groups and constituencies except NCSG filed comments on the budget. I was disappointed to see that instead of a NCSG comment we have a lone individual, Ed Morris, commenting with his personal opinions. Since Ed is supposed to be the chair of our NCSG finance committee, one would have thought that he would post his comments to the NCSG list for some feedback.
> 
> Ed's comments (http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/comments-fy18-budget-08mar17/attachments/20170428/440be454/budgetcomment-0001.pdf <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/comments-fy18-budget-08mar17/attachments/20170428/440be454/budgetcomment-0001.pdf>) make it clear that they are his personal opinions and not necessarily those of the NCSG, but I find this very odd. Normally, if you file comments individually, it is because you tried to achieve NCSG consensus but could not. In that case, it's OK for folks to file comments to reflect the different views.
> 
> In this case, Ed made no effort to inform the group of his views on the budget, much less attempt to gain some support for them. I think this is not acceptable. The Chair of our Finance Committee needs to think of himself as a delegate of the SG, not as someone who goes off into a silo and does whatever he wants, without even informing the members who appointed him.
> 
> This becomes more serious when one realizes that in his comments, Ed basically threatens ICANN with rejecting the entire budget because of a disagreement over a small item. He says:
> 
> "Unless bound by my Support Group to support this budget, I would be inclined to favor rejecting the entire budget when it comes back to the GNSO Council if this amount is not restored to the budget prior its final adoption."
> 
> I am not sure what Ed means by his "support group" but presumably that means his Stakeholder Group and/or Constituency. But how are we supposed to "bind" him to favor or oppose the budget if we don't even know that he has made this threat?
> 
> In sum, I am sure we all appreciate the willingness of volunteers to go through the budget and make sense of it, but our delegates to these committees have to understand that they are agents of NCSG and it is their responsibility to liaise with the SG and inform the membership of their actions, and to build consensus on positions when possible. It's not that hard to write an email to the list and attach a draft of your proposed comments.
> 
> 
> Dr. Milton L Mueller
> Professor, School of Public Policy
> Georgia Institute of Technology
> Internet Governance Project
> http://internetgovernance.org/ <http://internetgovernance.org/>
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