Despite concerns over “proposed standards that would prohibit board members from publicly criticizing the organization’s policies and internal operations,” during a meeting held 17 June, A.C.L.U. board members voted “against motions to strike the controversial provisions from the proposals and instead opted for further discussion.”
The day before the meeting, a lawyer from the New York state attorney general’s office registered an informal concern about the proposals with the executive committee of the A.C.L.U. board who did not inform board members of the call prior to the vote.
“What if we had voted to approve the proposals?” said Wendy Kaminer, a board member who has criticized the proposals and other actions taken by the board and the A.C.L.U. leadership over the last couple of years. “We had a need and a right to know that if we passed them, we might get into trouble with the attorney general’s office.”
Nadine Strossen, the board president, confirmed in an e-mail message that “someone” in the attorney general’s office had called in his personal capacity to tell the A.C.L.U. of concern about the issue and that the executive committee had discussed it.
“It determined that these details were not germane to the board’s general discussion of the issues raised” in the report on the rights and responsibilities of board members that contained the controversial proposals, she wrote.
Ms. Kaminer, who is leaving the board, and two other board members who were granted anonymity because they were afraid to speak publicly given the pending proposals, said an executive committee member had told them that Gerald Rosenberg, the assistant attorney general in charge of the New York State charities bureau, recently had spoken with Antonia Grumbach, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U., and told her the proposals might raise issues for his office if they were adopted.