Chess Forum / Chess Politics / July 2009

Thank you.  I just wanted to be polite and respectful, since I am the "new
guy" on the block.

Chuck

I think I remember you from many years ago, and might have played you at
least once OTB.

Former Florida Chess Association President Andrew Scherman was removed from
the Board (for the third time) recently.  This time, his offense was the use
of illegal proxies, both at the 2008 Annual Election and after the Board
amended the Bylaws to explicitly forbid proxies.

A little background.  The Florida Chess Association has never allowed
proxies.  The topic has never come up as we have always voted by show of
hands, or a variation thereof, from the attendees at the Annual Meeting at
State.  At State in 2008, Mr. Scherman solicited "general proxies" (which
give him the "right" to vote as he pleases on any business or election that
comes up at the meeting) from his associates who would otherwise had to be
present to vote.  This was done in secret, and he produced 18 "general
proxies" to quell a recount of one tight race, and used those proxies to
overrule the vote of those present in two other races, where the hand vote
was largely against "his" candidates (who are either current or previous
members of his club and/or have been his students).  I am not proud that the
Board was shocked, and while it should have been taken care of right then,
players were pouring in for the round and after some discussion, which did
not include the necessary motion to disqualify these, Andrew adjourned the
meeting.

In the late September/early October time frame, the Board voted by majority
(8-5) to disqualify the proxy votes.  After this vote was concluded, Andrew,
as Chair, ruled it "out of order" in that while Roberts Rules clearly
forbids proxies for non-profit organizations unless the Bylaws explicitly
allow them, State law trumps Roberts Rules of Order in that unless specified
in the Bylaws, proxy votes were entitled to count.  Unfortunately, we were
referencing RR 8, which was not the current.  More on that later.

We did solicit at least one pro-bono legal opinion, and based on selective
case law that Scherman provided, the original impression was that the
proxies were legal.  Shortly afterwards, it was discovered, in Roberts Rules
10, (the following is quoted):

p414-415 32-35:

"If the law under which an organization is incorporated allows proxy voting
to be prohibited by a provision of the bylaws, the adoption of this book as
parliamentary authority by prescription in the bylaws should be treated as
sufficient provision to accomplish that result."

This means the original proxies were definitely illegal, and Andrew was out
of order in his ruling.  I discussed this with the two attorneys consulted.
One agreed immediately and the second required some convincing, but also
agreed.  I respected their privacy and did not need to grandstand or
namedrop.  Anyway, a compromise was reached which included creating an
additional At Large position for me in exchange for the ceasing of personal
attacks by one of our Board members (which, unfortunately, never did cease),
and the recognition (but not certification) of the 2008 results.
Additionally, the Bylaws were to be amended to explicitly forbid proxies.

The Bylaws were then amended to (1) forbid proxies, (2) open the vote to the
electorate via mail balloting, (3) update the Bylaws to align with current
technology, and (4) make changes that more closely align with Robert Rules.
Shortly after this, Mr. Scherman was caught red-handed distributing proxies
at one of his local tournaments.  Upon confrontation, he called it a
"mistake".  Additionally, he referred to my amendments to the Bylaws as a
new set of Bylaws and since my position was not listed, I wasn't a member of
the Board.  I corrected him - much like I corrected him in, I think 2007,
when he tried to single-handedly remove Harvey Lerman as Editor over a
disagreement.  The President does not have that kind of authority.

Due to the obvious flagrant and brazen violation of the Bylaws inherent in
the new proxies, discipline was appropriate.  However, no matter how
egregious Andrew's activities, he and his four supporters who exemplify only
the fringe element, and not the mainstream, of the same club, voted as a
bloc to prevent a 2/3 majority - even when compromise disciplines, such as
removal from the Chair for 30 days or ineligibility to run in 2010 were
proposed.  The Vice President, Harvey Lerman, proposed his permanent
expulsion from the Board.  As the subject of the disciplinary motion, Andrew
could not chair.  As the proposer of the motion, Harvey could not chair.  I
took on the duty.  The vote was 9-3, with the votes of the two illegally
elected in 2008 discarded, as is proper according to Roberts Rules.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Recently, Andrew began circulating the following letter (which I'll put my
edits in to clarify the facts):
------------------------------------------------------------------------

ANDREW SCHERMAN AND THE ST. PETERSBURG CHESS CLUB
NEED YOUR HELP - AND WE'LL PAY YOU TO HELP US!
By Andrew Scherman
              Over the last decade, the Central Florida Chess Club has been
competing with the St. Petersburg Chess Club.  The Central Florida Club
(CFCC) use their majority on the board of directors of the Florida Chess
Association to do whatever they can to preserve their interest regardless of
what is legal, what is right, or what is democratic.

--------------[Opinion based on his own perception of reality.  The CFCC,
nor its Boards feels no animosity toward the mainstream membership and
leadership of the SPCC, and the individual discussed is considered as a
fringe element that does not reflect the opinion of the majority of the
SPCC.   As described above, Andrew has demonstrated that he does not wish to
participate in a fair election and will do what he can, ethically or not, to
tilt things in his favor]--

      The reason is that the St. Petersburg  Chess Club (SPCC) has
thoroughly clobbered them in terms of drawing players to tournaments, and,
rather than seeing our success as good for everybody, they see it as a
threat to them.  Figures from the USCF's MSA website show that on a typical
Saturday in 2009, the SPCC event draws well over 100 players; the CFCC
barely a dozen.  For instance, both clubs ran a tournament on March 7, 2009.
The SPCC had 133 players.  The CFCC had 12.  In April, it was 116 to 9.
Think about that situation as the context for their desperation.  This is
what I believe has motivated their actions against us in the FCA.

-------------[This is irrelevant.  Congratulations to them on their success!
However, look who is keeping score.  CFCC has no desperation, and the SPCC
doesn't in any way come to mind as a competitor.]--

      In 2008, St. Petersburg hosted the Florida State Championship and
annual meeting.  It wasn't't our turn, but nobody else wanted it, so, as
usual, I stepped up.  At the time of the annual meeting, many of the large
number of FCA members who were around were local to St. Petersburg and
wanted to support their colleague and gave me their proxies.  The result of
this was that Chuck Hall of the CFCC was defeated for both the Central VP
(Joe Virgin won) and for an at-large seat (Rob "Skippy" Forman won.)  Rather
than celebrating the participation of a wider group of voters, they just
protested.   However, state law says proxies were legal, and the board
sought a lawyer's opinion from Tampa attorney Alex Wagner, Esq., (who they
will probably use as the election master in 2009) and he told us in writing
that the proxies were legal.  To soothe the hurt feelings, the board voted
to adopt a special bylaws amendment to give Chuck Hall a seat on the board
and officially accept Joe and Rob.  This compromise explains why your
previous FloridaChess magazines have listed all three as board members.  I
thought we had buried the hatchet.  Turns out they did.  In our back.

--------------[Andrew collected these proxies in secret and proxies were
never used before.  A "general proxy" is not a participation of a "wider
group of voters" - those who signed the proxy didn't even vote - it was a
power of attorney that, if it were legal, would give Scherman the right to
vote 18 times as he chose on any issue and the signers had no say, not being
there.  Regarding the proxies being legal, I had corresponded with Attorney
Wagner subsequent to that after finding the above referenced clause in
Roberts Rules 10, and he agreed that I had a good case.  Another attorney,
an online pro-bono one, immediately responded that due to State law allowing
the Bylaws to forbid proxies, Roberts Rules was authoritative.  If you want,
you can also do research online, which confirms my position.]--

      The CFCC and their allies made it their first item of business to
amend the bylaws to eliminate proxy voting.  You have to understand their
strategy:  The fewer the number of people that20they let decide, the greater
their chance of controlling the decision.  They first used this tactic back
in 2001 when the SPCC ran the biggest Florida State Championship ever and
the membership voted overwhelmingly to award the 2002 tournament to St.
Petersburg.  The CFCC, looking to copy our ideas, had their=2 0people on the
Board override the membership and declare that the board should decide, not
the membership, and awarded the tournament to... you guessed it, the CFCC.
When I protested, they threw me off the board (no compromise to soothe
Andrew.)  Nonetheless, public sentiment was so against the CFCC that they
were forced to withdraw their bid, leaving the SPCC as the only bid that had
been presented a year in advance, like the bylaws require.  So, the
CFCC-dominated board had no choice but to award the bid... to Miami.

---------------[Oh?  And why, pray tell, did we also amend the Bylaws to
open up the voting to mail balloting, instead of voting at the Annual
Meeting?  This was one of the more brazen lies and mischaracterizations.  As
far as the tactic referenced, the Bylaws already stated that the Board
awards the bids, and it was incorrect to bring this up before the
membership.  Scherman did more than protest.  I was not at the meeting, and
was not particularly involved with FCA business at the time, so I cannot
give too many details.  I do know that he wrote nasty comments in his
newsletter about the Board members, as I received a copy.]--

      Meanwhile, back to the present.  Instead of just adding a section
prohibiting proxies, Chuck Hall pushed for an entirely new set of bylaws.
It includes such niceties as reducing the 2/3 requirement from an actual 2/3
of the board to just 2/3 of those voting.  Remember, they didn't't have a
2/3 majority; this gave them a chance to pull fast ones if they could hold a
meeting that not everyone could attend (they tried to call an illegal
meeting on the other side of the state but couldn't't assemble a quorum.)
But Chuck forgot to include in the new bylaws the language that created his
extra at-large seat.  So, I informed him that he had legislated himself off
the board.  He angrily replied that even though I was President, I couldn't't
throw him off the board without a 2/3 vote.

--------------[There were a number of things needing cleaning up.  These
included the requirement for a physical meeting of the Board when we conduct
all our business now via email, as well as removing sections on snail-mail
Board voting.  The 2/3 requirement of the entire Board simply meant that
someone could not meaningfully abstain.  An abstention was the equivalent of
a "no" vote.  We had rejected a motion that was originated by one of the St.
Petersburg members simply because half of us didn't vote.  How silly is
that?  Roberts Rules clearly (page 390) comes down against this in
preference for the number of actual votes cast being the basis.  In
compromise, we agreed that 7 decisive (yes or no) votes were required, as 7
is a quorum.  These were amendments and not new Bylaws.  Technically, the
new language was not included even when the compromise was made, but the
vote was a mandate to do so.  I love his use of the word "angrily" - he
first sent this to me in one-on-one email and I politely corrected him and
told him I did not wish to receive any personal email from him.  He then
made the same claim on the Board email and it did not meet with any support
for him]--

      The next step in their plan was to renew their motion to throw me off
the Board forever.   ;During my presidency I had personally financed and
hosted the 2008 State Championship (because we had been scrambling for a few
years to find hosts ;) I had helped line up the 2009 State in Miami, set to
be the richest in our history and undoubtedly the strongest; and I even have
the 2010 event signed, sealed, and delivered.  The "SPCC guys" on the board,
Gary Sanders and Joe Virgin, were running the Florida Grand Prix.
Everything was smooth.  The State Championship and the Grand Prix are the
bulk of what the FCA does.  But remember, those things score no points.  The
only score that mattered was 133 to 12 and 116 to 9.

-------------[Notice how fixated Andrew is on attendance?  I have no problem
crediting him for his accomplishments - he has done fantastic work in St.
Petersburg.  Anyway, he cleverly omits the fact that between "steps" he
initiated that new illegal proxy.  I don't remember us scrambling to find
hosts on a regular basis.  Granted this is sometimes the case in the
lesser-active regions, but the West, South, and Central are consistent.  The
last North one was held in Daytona and was quite successful.]--

      They insisted I could not chair the vote against me.  So Harvey did.
But then, he passed it off to Chuck.  Why?   All that the "chairman" is
supposed to do in a situation like that is to count up fourteen votes.  The
vote predictably failed.  But instead of honorably reporting that result,
Chuck announced that he, as temporary chairman, had decided that the proxies
back in 2008 were illegal and therefore he was invalidating the election.
Never mind that stat e law said proxies were legal; never mind that the
independent lawyer's opinion sought by the board verified that they were
legal; and never mind that the board had regardless voted to accept them.
He unilaterally removed Joe and Rob as board members, something he said
nobody could do without a vote (when it a pplied to him.) Then, even though
the vote about me had already concluded, Chuck "discarded" Joe's and Rob's
votes and declared that the motion to remove me had passed.    Then, within
hours, they removed all three of our names from the website and cut us out
of the email list.  Picture a bunch of old men with their fingers in their
ears giggling and shouting "we can't hear you."  They referred to this as
their "nuclear option."  If that doesn't't sound like war, what does?

-------------[Prior to this final vote, we had tried several compromises to
avoid the situation, including sitting Andrew off the Chair (while retaining
voting rights) for 30 days, and ineligibility to run in 2010.  These were
all voted down by Andrew's bloc.  I will grant that one Daren Dillinger had
a penchant for "stirring the pot" with grandiose posts, some of which were
personal attacks, some of which indicated that he had researched into the
personal lives and histories of his opponents, and this did not make
Andrew's block any more eager to find a better solution.  Where else would
someone be offered 30 days off the Chair as punishment for multiple election
fraud?  Anyway, it became crystal clear that his bloc would not sanction
Andrew no matter how egregious his behavior.]--

-------------[It was passed to me because Harvey made the motion and thus
couldn't chair it.  "I" had not unilaterally decided that the proxies in
2008 were illegal - I had researched it and built a clear case.  In any
case, we could not legally accept the results of 2008 because Roberts Rules
forbids, even with a unanimous vote, a body from doing something that is
against federal, state, or local law, or against the Bylaws (p. 332, RROR
10).]--

      Since then, they've gotten busy trying to change (or simply violate)
every rule they can think of so they can prevail in the upcoming election.
It may not be possible or practical to get a judge to sift through their
lawlessness and correct things anytime soon.  The solution is to do what
they fear most:  mobilize those that support the St. Petersburg Chess Club
and vote the opposition out.  "They" are Chuck Hall, Harvey Lerman, Steve
Lampkin, Paul Leggett, Willard Taylor, and Kevin Ledzian.  I will pay your
membership into the Florida C hess Association and give you a membership in
the St. Petersburg Chess Club to go along with it.  This gives you a
discount when you play in any of our events.  Please hit "Reply" and send me
your name, your snail-mail address, and your age (I need someone 16 years of
age or older for the FCA; t he SPCC membership and the tournament entry fee
discount can be in anybody's name.)  Thank you for standing by us.

--------------[And we also know (from our sources) that Mr. Scherman has
been busy devising ways to try to circumvent the Bylaws again.  In this
case, Andrew is offering to buy memberships from his own pocket, and likely,
their votes.  The people he is sending to are those who either are his
students or who attend his events, so they may not have access to the truth.
It is a horror story that one man's vengeance and megalomania threatens to
challenge the will of the membership of the State organization - the actual
players, organizers, coaches, and directors, who will be most affected.]--

-------------------------------
The following is the text from Andrew's 2008 General Proxy.

(print name), a member of the Florida Chess Association, do not intent to be
at the 2008 Annual Meeting.  I give my general proxy to ANDREW SCHERMAN, FCA
President, for the duration of the 2008 annual meeting of the FCA (sign/date
line).

-------------------------------

Sorry about the length of this.  As you can see, it's a serious issue and
it's important that people are made aware of the lies that are being spread
and the tactics that Mr. Scherman has chosen to use.

Chuck

On Jul 3, 8:09 pm, "Usenet" <centercoun...@cfl.rr.com> wrote:

=====================
Hey, Chuck... I'm in the Bradenton / Sarasota area.  What is the
political issue in Florida that concerns you?

OldHaasie