PRIVILEGED Motions

1. PRIVILEGED Motions By Cliff Creel For National Association of Parliamentarians, White Mountain Unit April18, 2013

2. Characteristics • Do not relate to pending business. • Special matters of Immediate and overriding importance. • Take precedence over motions of any other class*. • Have an order of precedence. • Allowed to interrupt consideration of anything else. • *Except in certain instances where the immediately pending question may be a motion to amend, a motion for the previous question, or an incidental motion that was moved while a still higher-ranking privileged motion was immediately pending.

3. Precedence* (Highest to Lowest) • 1. To Fix the Time to Which to Adjourn • 2. To Adjourn • 3. To Take a Recess • 4. Question of Privilege • 5. Call for Orders of the Day • *Pronounced pree-SEED-n’s

4. Fix the Time to Which to Adjourn • Set the time (and place) for another meeting to continue the session with no effect on when the present meeting will adjourn. • Only in order if there are no more meetings scheduled within the same session. • If so, then must either suspend rules or amend something previously adopted. • Privileged only if a question is pending. • Out of order when another has the floor. • Must be set before the next regular meeting.

5. Fix the Time to Which to Adjourn (cont.) • Unlike a special meeting, it does not require notice. • An adjourned meeting is a continuation of the session while a special meeting is a separate session. • Business is taken up at the point where it left off at the previous meeting. • Adoption does not adjourn the current meeting. The motion is often followed immediately by motions to postpone the current business, then a motion to adjourn.

6. Adjourn • To adjourn is to close the meeting. • A motion to adjourn is always privileged unless: • It is qualified in any way (e.g. specifies a time to adjourn). • When a time for adjourning is already established. • When the effect would be to dissolve the assembly with no provision for another meeting. • Not in order when engaged in voting or before the vote has been announced by the chair, except is in order after ballots have been collected and before vote has been announced. • Out of order when another has the floor. • If no regular meetings, a motion to adjourn dissolves the assembly and is a main motion.

7. Adjourn (cont.) • Steps in order while motion to adjourn is pending (even after voting to adjourn and before the chair has declared the meeting to be adjourned). • Inform assembly of business requiring attention before adjournment. • Make important announcements. • Make (but not take up) a motion to reconsider a previous vote. • Make a motion to reconsider and enter on the minutes. • Give notice of a motion that requires previous notice. • Move to set a time for an adjourned meeting. • If the chair learns of one of these purposes immediately after declaring the meeting adjourned, the chair must call the meeting back to order for this purpose.

8. Adjourn (cont.) • No motion to adjourn needed if: • If adjournment is scheduled on the agenda or by adoption of a motion. • If there appears to be no further business, the chair can ask “Is there any further business?” If there is no response, the chair can declare the meeting adjourned.

9. Recess • Short intermission in the proceedings. • Business resumes afterwards exactly where it was interrupted. • Privileged motion only when another question is pending. • If provided for in the agenda, the chair just declares the recess at the appropriate time. • Time for recess can be postponed by 2/3 vote like any other order of the day.

10. Raise a Question of Privilege • Permits a request or main motion relating to the rights and privileges of the assembly or any of its members to be brought up for possible immediate consideration because of its urgency. • While business is pending. • Motion would otherwise be out of order. • Not to be confused with “Privileged Motions”. • If taken up, it is handled as a request or main motion.

11. Raise a Question of Privilege (cont.) • Types of Questions of Privilege: • Privileges of the assembly: organization or existence, comfort, noise, conduct of officers, employees, visitors, executive session. • Personal Privilege: correct record of member’s participation approved in absence, charges circulated against member’s character. • Form of the motion: • A member, Mr. Smith, rises and address the chair, saying: • “Mr. President, I rise to a question of privilege affecting the assembly.” • “Mr. Smith, state your question of privilege.” • “Mr. President, the open windows allow too much street noise making it hard to hear.” • “Thank you, Mr. Smith, I’ll have someone close the windows on the street side.” • The chair must rule whether the request or motion is in fact a question of privilege, and if so, whether it is urgent enough to interrupt the pending business.

12. Call for the Orders of the Day • A member can require the assembly to conform to its agenda or take up a general or special order at its time. • Call must be simply “for the orders of the day” – not some specific agenda item. • Is in order when another has the floor. • Upon call by a single member, the orders of the day must be enforced, except that a 2/3 vote can set them aside. • The call for orders of the day must be made before the chair states a new motion that differs from the order of the day. Otherwise, that motion must be disposed first.

13. Call for the Orders of the Day (cont.) • When orders of the day that interrupted business are completed, the interrupted business is taken up at the point at which it was interrupted. • The chair may state “Will the assembly proceed to the orders of the day?” A 2/3 negative vote is required to refuse to take up the orders of the day. • Any member may “Move that the time for considering the pending question to extended __ minutes” or “Move that the rules be suspended and the desired question taken up”. Either requires a 2/3 affirmative vote.